The rise of Europe's far right will only be halted by a populism of the left | Seumas Milne

Ukip's advance is part of a wider discontent, fed by EU-wide austerity and revulsion against an anti-democratic stitch-up

Nothing, it seems, can stop the rise of Ukip. However outrageous its luminaries' pronouncements or hypocritical its leaders' behaviour, it is still expected to top next week's European elections.

No matter that the rising star of Ukip's youth wing resigns in disgust at the party's racism, or that its ex-Tory banker leader is involved in one expenses scandal after another, or that on most issues from a flat tax to wholesale NHS privatisation the majority of Ukip's voters don't remotely share its ultra-Thatcherite politics.

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