IT WAS expected to do well. But the success of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the local elections held across Britain on May 2nd was nonetheless startling. An upstart right-wing party, of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”, according to Prime Minister David Cameron, UKIP won almost a quarter of the vote in the council wards it contested. By one reckoning, it was the biggest surge by a fourth party since the second world war. That was quite some result for an outfit which, in the words of one commentator, consisted of little more than “two men on a golf cart” a decade ago. It was testament to the dissatisfaction many voters feel with Britain’s main established parties; but also to the charisma of one of that pair: Nigel Farage (pictured), UKIP’s leader, a jocular Eurosceptic MEP with a penchant for beer, fags and telling more sober politicians where to get off. His triumphant verdict on UKIP’s electoral success was typical of the man. A few days previously UKIP had been derided by Ken Clarke, a Conservative cabinet minister, as a “collection of clowns"—“Send in the clowns!” Mr Farage roared. He was in the pub at the time.

His party looked set to win around 150 council seats. That was only a modest portion of the 2,300 being contested; but ominous for all three main parties, the Conservatives especially. In their rural strongholds, the Tories looked likely to lose over 300 seats and control of ten of their 28 councils. That was to some extent inevitable. The Tories had furthest to fall, having swept the last major local election in 2009, and, as the main ruling party, were an obvious target for mid-term discontentment. But UKIP’s populist positions on immigration and the European Union, Mr Farage’s pet hates, have a fundamental appeal to core Tory voters—who provided well over half of UKIP’s vote. Asked if he stood by his “fruitcakes” slur, Mr Cameron wisely said he did not. “Well, look, it is no good insulting a political party that people have chosen to vote for,” he said: “But we need to show respect for people who have taken the choice to support this party and we are going to work really hard to win them back.”

Ed Miliband, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, will also have found the results more sobering than Mr Farage. Labour, which was largely obliterated in 2009, won over 260 seats: a solid but underwhelming result. At the same time, it won a by-election in South Shields, one of its safest seats, with a much reduced majority—largely at the expense of UKIP, which won almost a quarter of the votes there.

The Liberal Democrats, junior partners in Mr Cameron’s coalition government, were humiliated in South Shields. They came seventh, narrowly ahead of the Monster Raving Loony Party, and lost their deposit. They also lost over 100 council seats in the local polls, a result that is especially worrying for a party which has built a national platform on the back of its prowess at local politics. Seeking consolation, Tim Farron, the party’s chairman, noted that the Lib Dems had nonetheless held its own against its Tory coalition partner in many councils. That sounded like a promise of growing friction within the coalition.

Mr Farage must contemplate a new sort of political battle. UKIP is now clearly Britain’s main party of protest—having far outdone the other main claimants to that title, the Greens and right-wing British National Party. It will also be expected to thrive in, and perhaps win, an election for the European parliament next year. Whether Mr Farage’s party can proceed to win seats in Britain’s next general election, due in 2015, is a another matter. Britain’s first-past-the-post system makes this hard; especially for protest parties, which fare worse in national polls. UKIP is also not well disposed to bear the greater scrutiny its members can now expect.

Mr Farage, a former City trader, is its only nationally-recognisable member, and his party includes more than a few who answer to Mr Cameron’s erstwhile damning description. In the run-up to the local elections, several would-be UKIP candidates were shown to have odd-balls or extreme right-winger views. Mr Farage’s response at the time was good: “Have you met the cretins in Westminster? Our candidates can’t be any worse than them.” But that shtick would not survive the serious embarrassment which his party is probably now due.

All the same, Mr Farage may already have scored an important success: by jolting the Conservatives towards his right-wing positions. Citing the example of the centrist Social Democratic Party, a breakaway group from the Labour Party that flickered brightly during the 1980s, he likes to say that this is in fact one of his main objectives—and there are signs that he is fulfilling it. Under pressure from his dissatisfied base, Mr Cameron has been downplaying his longstanding effort to “modernise” his party—a euphemism for dragging it towards the respectable centre ground.

He says little these days of environmentalism, volunteerism and gay rights, three important planks of that programme. He is more likely to talk up the government’s efforts to curb immigration or his pledge to hold a referendum on Britain’s EU membership, should the Tories win in 2015. Yet these measures have clearly failed to placate Mr Cameron’s disgruntled supporters. The prime minister, who is due on May 8th to outline the government’s main policies for the year ahead, must now be wondering whatever might.

(Photo credit: AFP)