A Pyrrhic success

Douglas Carswell's defection to the United Kingdom Independence Party and defecation over the Conservative Party continues to rumble on in the news cycle.  It is tempting to frame his decision as, if Nigel Farage is Monarch of the Glen(fiddich) then Douglas Arsehole, Hogswill, etc. is the Clown Prince of Cuckoo.  That, though, would be unfair of an intelligent man who has some very good ideas on making politics more responsive to the electorate.  Unfortunately, these latter will never have a chance of becoming policy as his utter abhorrence of all the works of pan-European co-operation have forced him to join UKIP.  The arch-turncoat Winston Churchill also had some very good ideas and some very bad ideas but disengagement from Europe was not one of the latter.  Arguably the reasons behind both World Wars in the European theatre was because the UK would not commit itself strongly enough to dissuade German aggression.  Even David Cameron's allies in the EU accuse of 'appeasement' of his irreconcilables - only Cameron failed to realise that no amount of red meat thrown will change the mind of an irreconcilable; they should be faced down and marginalised, not pandered to.  The appointment of the most EU-sceptic cabinet in living memory was not enough to keep Carswell on board and Cameron's policy is deservedly in tatters.
It is all reminiscent of Sir George Gardiner defecting to the Referendum Party when deselected by his local constituency party as the candidate for the 1997 election.  The reason for this 'coup' (if we apply the Vladimir Putin/Simon Jenkins test) against Sir George was because he had an article published in a Sunday tabloid where he compared John Major to a ventriloquist's dummy for Europhilic Chancellor Kenneth Clarke.  Major had his revenge: in his autobiography later that year, Major claimed that Gardiner was "so convoluted he could have featured in a book of knots." Of Gardiner's deselection in 1997, Major wrote drolly that "the Conservative Party was able to bear his departure with fortitude."  You would never hear Cameron saying that of Carswell.  It was certainly a coup of another kind for Sir James Goldsmith to have a representative of his party inside the House of Commons.  And it proved of absolutely no significance whatsoever.  At the 1997 election, Sir George finished in fourth place in his constituency of Reigate.
This will not happen to Carswell.  One opinion poll gave the support of two-thirds of the electorate in his Clacton seat to him, with 59% of Conservative voters prepared to support him in conjunction with 44% of Labour voters.  Indeed, Carswell will become the most senior elected official in UKIP, outstripping Farage's mere MEP status.  Yet, like George Galloway, he will become an irritant in the Commons, nothing more.  Maybe he hopes his grit will crystallise an anti-EU pearl in the Tories, one where Cameron (or his successor) will be compelled to campaign on a platform of taking Britain out of the EU on the proposed referendum.  More likely is that Labour will emerge as the largest party with public disgust over Tory indiscipline (as in the 1990s), Ed Miliband possibly forming a coalition or marriage of convenience with a truncated Liberal Democrat party.  Carswell's decision to join, is a victory for UKIP but a pyrrhic victory.