It's OFCOM wot won it

Just a reminder of Ofcom's contribution to the current state of UK politics. In May last year, they deemed that UKIP, at least in England and Wales, had demonstrated "significant electoral support at the last two sets of European Parliament elections" and "significant current support" in opinion polls, sufficient to be declared a major party for the purposes of both election broadcasts and news and current affairs coverage.

It's impossible to untangle the European campaign from the rest of politics, so in England, we get a local government side-swipe, and in Scotland, where there was no direct UKIP election broadcast, the Farage effect delivers a 10% share of the Euro-vote north of the border; Salmond is fuming at this "Westminster effect". In Wales, UKIP get 28.1% of the vote, just pipped by Labour, and the UK-wide UKIP share stands at 27.5% as I write.

The broadcasting bean-counters have had to observe parity of appearances by the four "major parties" across the campaign; the smart UKIP manoeuvre was to make Brand Farage available for as many as possible - name three other UKIP spokespeople, apart from Winston in Croydon, if you can.

What will Ofcom do next ?  UKIP will want their status extended to the General Election. The Libdems, by Ofcom standards, may lose major party rights at Euro 2019. The Greens ought to be reconsidered, at least for consistency.