The blitz on UKIP has redoubled in frenzy over the past few days. Accusations of the leadership “rigging” candidate selection, another contrived MSM row over policy “confusion” on sex education for primary schoolchildren, bogus Twitter accounts impersonating UKIP branches with a view to discrediting the party – just another round in the David and Goliath struggle between Nigel Farage’s insurgency and the Europhile, pro-immigration, PC consensus that rules this country via a sense of entitlement rather than popular mandate.

There has never, in living memory, been such a concerted attempt to suppress a political movement in Britain as the blizzard of misrepresentation, media ambushes and demonisation directed against UKIP. While it is only fair to concede that Farage and his colleagues appear to thrive on it, that should not blind us to another aspect of this campaign: the cynical, unprincipled contempt it exhibits towards the electorate and the national interest.

It is not really UKIP that is under attack: it is the people and principles the party represents, i.e. the indigenous, patriotic, largely Christian, non-metropolitan majority of Britons who simply want their country back. That aspiration is anathema to the three consensual legacy parties, the Islington and Notting Hill dinner party circuits, the mainstream media, the BBC, the equality-and-diversity industry and all the other engines of degeneracy that have all but destroyed Britain.

These anti-national forces are hugely powerful and massively rich. They will not give up the power they have usurped in our former democracy without fighting tooth and claw to retain it. They fight dirty and that could be their Achilles’ heel. As they become increasingly desperate to derail UKIP it is more than likely that one element in the anti-national alliance – the clever money is on the gilded youth in the Tory bunker – will perpetrate some extravagantly crass ploy that will backfire spectacularly before next May, with devastating consequences for the perpetrators.

That said, there are serious pitfalls for UKIP. The most menacing is the possibility of the party falling victim to its own success. Its membership has now passed the 40,000 mark. Its electoral success is such that talk of UKIP holding the balance of power is no longer a whimsical speculation by its supporters in the pub but a nightmare haunting its enemies. With each advance and the prospect of power, or at least significant influence, becoming a real possibility, a dangerous temptation presents itself.

In the drive to increase the vote, to reach out to more and more voters, UKIP’s leadership could fall victim to the siren delusion that destroyed the Conservative Party: the myth of the need to occupy the “centre ground”. There is no such place – just a black hole that swallows principles and repels supporters.

Since it might be 2020 before UKIP has sufficient support to implement policy, it would be unwise to close down options that might by then be unavoidable, e.g. repatriation, awarding the Left a veto on policy. There should be no knee-jerk reaction to accusations that members have voiced “unacceptable” views, no rush to “disciplinary proceedings”. This is a favourite ploy of the PC establishment. By responding exaggeratedly to any opinion contradicting the consensus, the establishment – supported usually by a Twitter lynch mob of blushing violets who profess themselves “offended” – seeks to exact abject apology and disowning of “inappropriate” views. Mostly it succeeds.

This is a crucial weapon in the hands of the Frankfurt Marxist Left, policing the frontiers of orthodoxy in public discourse to silence all dissent. The Left is alarmed because it failed to hold the line on immigration, with opinions being voiced today that were suppressed five years ago. That has made the Thought Police more determined to censor opinion on all other topics. It must be frustrated in that ambition. Nigel Farage said two years ago he did not want “a party made up of a bland lot of ghastly people”. Nor does he have such a party; let’s hope he keeps it that way.

UKIP should even resist the temptation to have a policy on every issue: there are some areas of activity from which government should simply withdraw. Having failed to halt the advance of UKIP, the establishment’s next trick will be to try to Ramsay McDonald it, to draw its teeth by expanding the cosy consensus from three parties to four. That will fail, like all the previous transparent ploys.

But there is one trick UKIP itself must not miss. It has been gifted a slogan infinitely more inspiring than the plastic soundbites for which PR firms have trousered millions of pounds from the legacy parties. The memorable words of Mark Reckless, MP when he announced his defection, articulating the pride of British nationhood and this country’s determination to regain its sovereignty, should feature on every UKIP poster next May: “We are more than a star on somebody else’s flag.”