Ukip won’t go away. Nigel Farage in the wake of the Godfrey Bloom “women are sluts” furore is making Ukip toe the party line.

For the past few years Labour has watched from the sidelines, delighted that Ukip was taking voters away from the Tories, thus splitting the Tory vote open.

But watching from the sidelines has to stop.

Step into the street and never has a party with just one main policy — immigration control — been so popular among working-class traditional Labour voters.

How can working-class socialists turn full circle and vote in the opposite right-wing direction? This can’t happen, the Labour hierarchy thinks.

Well, I could tell Ed Miliband why in a heartbeat.

Labour is ignoring its traditional core working-class voters at its peril.

Sidestepping thorny issues on social security in order to woo the middle-class vote has made us working-class people feel cast to one side.

Labour is directing many policies towards the middle class, such as increasing childcare to 25 hours a week for three and four-year-olds and providing 8am-6pm primary school care.

While this is to be lauded, it should not come at the expense of ignoring other issues that matter to the working class.

On the issue of immigration, Labour cannot pretend some things are not happening.

Set foot into some factories as a young 18 to 25-year-old, working-class British male employed by an agency.

My son’s had this experience. Last year he was sent to a factory that was dominated by eastern European people, from managers to staff.

He found it very difficult because the factory kept asking him to turn up daily then telling him there was no work available.

In the end he left entirely and found a better factory job elsewhere.

Ukip, using its one policy mantra, is appealing to young workers like my son by simply saying they will stop immigration or send foreign workers back to their homelands.

Labour should be looking at what is going on in these factories — zero-hours contracts, agency working, erosion of working conditions and poor racial integration.

These are reasons why some factories are powder kegs that could ignite at any time.

Young working-class men and women aren’t bothered what other policies Ukip stands for in these circumstances, as long as Ukip keeps repeating that it will stop immigrants “taking British jobs.”

Likewise, older workers who have been lifelong Labour voters find Nigel Farage and his “blokey” image of being down the pub with a fag and a pint appealing.

This is simply because they are unable to recognise a Labour Party and Cabinet full of middle-class suits with posh voices and lives not remotely connected to the workers on the factory floor.

Sure, the working class hears the occasional bit of policy like the scrapping of the bedroom tax coming from Labour — but these are the scraps from the table and the odd exception.

They are not a backbone of policies that will appeal directly to the working class and make us feel proud to be Labour voters.

What is needed from Labour is a full headlong attack on Ukip — pointing out Ukip’s policy on the very rights trade unions have spent 100 years fighting for.

For example, Ukip wants to see public-sector jobs dissolve entirely and be privatised completely.

The result would be thousands losing their jobs and hard-fought-for rights, to be replaced by some private company to pay poverty wages and make maximum profits for themselves.

And women, how will we fare under Ukip? Well forget maternity pay for a start!

Ukip thinks businesses should not have to pay for pregnant women while they take time off to have a baby.

A leading Ukip campaigner Alexandra Swann resigned from the party recently after not being able to take the party’s rhetoric on immigration and anti-gay marriage.

And Ukip MEP Marta Andreasen defected to the Tories as Farage thinks “women should be in the kitchen or the bedroom.”

Ukip wants to repeal the Human Rights Act, slash the NHS budget, slash the public sector by £77 billion, increase defence spending by a staggering 40 per cent, ban any showing of global warming films in schools, scrap renewable energy, abolish inheritance tax for the rich and cut corporation tax for big companies.

Why isn’t Labour shoving these policies under the noses of working-class people like myself so we appreciate exactly what Ukip stand for?

Let’s break Ukip’s immigration mantra and look in depth at what would happen should it gain political representation in Parliament.
This is what the electorate needs to be told, not the slick TV news items, or allowing Farage to come across as a “man of the people” on BBC Question Time.

The real truth of what would happen if Ukip gains enough MPs to form a coalition for five years with the Tories should be laid bare in front of the electorate and particularly working-class people.

Unite the union, for example, is busy currently preparing working-class people on its Future Candidate programme to gain selection in their Constituency Labour Party, and so to win elections as MPs.

This will provide more working-class voices to speak out on issues within the Labour Party which affect ordinary people and is very much needed.

These candidates have their ears close to the issues which matter to us working-class people and will speak out on our behalf.

Many trade unionists and workers old and young will be reading this and feeling alienated from a Labour Party they think has lost touch with the working class and are desperately seeking an alternative party to vote for. This is entirely understandable.

But look at those Ukip policies and realise Farage’s image of a nice bloke is a facade — a front to get him elected.

A vote for Ukip in 2015 could well put David Cameron and the posh boys back in power for another five years — and which of us wants that?