Ukip scuppered the Eurosceptics
The untold story of the election was the absurdly disproportionate impact of the UK Independence Party. Although their vote may have looked derisory, in no fewer than 26 seats where the Tories narrowly lost, including Harlow yesterday, the Ukip vote was greater than the winner's majority.
If most of those votes had gone to the Tories (a fair assumption) they would thus have won 26 more seats, Labour 17 fewer, the Lib Dems nine fewer. This would have wiped out most of the Lib Dems' 11 net gains, giving them only two seats more than in 2001. Mr Blair's majority would have been cut to a mere 32.
Ukip's net effect may thus have been not only to cost the Tories a swathe of seats such as Battersea, Hove, Torbay and Westmoreland, but to deprive the Commons of strongly Eurosceptic MPs, while assisting the return of Europhiles. In Eastleigh, for instance, Ukip kept out the Eurosceptic Conor Burns, ensuring that it was held for the Lib Dems by Chris Huhne, a rabidly Europhile former Euro-MP.
An unresolved riddle of the 2005 election must therefore be what might have been the result of Michael Howard taking a more robustly intelligent line on the "European" issue, rather than stuffing it away out of sight. If the Tories hope to win next time, this is one of the first lessons they must ponder.
If you look at the actual figures mr Booker has added together the tallies for UKIP and Veritas - however, the effect would probably have been the same.
Booker's hypothesis makes little sense - the people who voted UKIP clearly felt strongly enough that the policies of the Conservative Party were wrong to vote for a minority candidate that had no chance of winning rather than a Tory that did. You can't just assume that the UKIP votes would be a net gain for the Tories if the Tories adopted UKIP policies (a complete withdrawal from the EU), as this takes no account of the votes that they did get that could be lost from people who would not agree with that policy.
You might as well look at all the constituencies where the Tories were first and Labour second and see how many Labour would have won if they had recieved the votes that went to the Lib Dems. Doesn't mean that if Labour had adopted Lib Dem policies they would have got an extra 23% of the vote.