After all councils across England and Wales have declared, UKIP has 147 councillors, far in excess of where it was predicted come before the elections.
First it was about 25 then 50, then people said they were exaggerating, now it stands at 147!
Although there have been murmurs of protest, that the party's success was a self-fulfilling prophecy once the press started boosting Farage and co as a viable electoral force, there is no doubting that it's an important threshold for the erstwhile members, and the conversation has turned to what happens next.
For the Conservative party, the consensus seems to be that treating the party as laughable collection of far right xenophobes hasn't worked. Instead, the commentators suggest, it's time to look back to UKIP's roots as a single-issue anti-EU party, and outflank them their.
For the Labour party there have been gains, presumably voters that were not happy with a protest vote for UKIP. That should offer very little comfort to Ed Miliband. Farage’s party came a respectable second place in South Shields, suggesting that voters who have been culturally inoculated against backing the Tories for a generation have no such qualms about UKIP.
For the Lib Dems, what can I say, they seem to be returning to the ranks of a pressure group, which frankly is scary considering they are in government at the moment!
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