DESPITE Ukip winning one Parliamentary seat and the failure of Nigel Farage to take South Thanet the notion that the "Little Englander" party is going to go away is misplaced.

Until recently, popular opinion indicated that the Conservatives in the region’s suburbs were the main losers. Nothing further could be from the truth.

In fashionable Gosforth, Ukip barely achieved four per cent of the vote. And this was with an established and well known candidate.

Yet, across Newcastle, Ukip came a respectable second in more than a dozen of Labour-held council seats on May 7. In the traditional Labour stronghold of Scotswood and Benwell , the ‘Kippers’ achieved almost a quarter of the popular vote, with limited campaigning fronted by an unknown candidate. In the East-end of the city, Ukip, gained 20 per cent of the vote in Byker, Walker and nearby Walkergate. In the outer west of the city in Newburn they gained a fifth of the vote by doing very little.

Throughout the North East Ukip gained 17 per cent of the vote. Nationally almost four million people backed them in the 2015 General Election. And they polled so well in ‘Middle-England’ – the Midlands and North-West that it had the net effect of allowing scores of Conservative candidates to be elected. Ukip ironically turned out to be the Tories "secret weapon".

In their book, ‘Ukip: Revolt on the Right’, Bob Ford and Matthew Goodwin argue convincingly that England’s third largest political party is getting its biggest support from low-income, cash strapped and insecure male working – class voters, who feel alienated from the ‘metropolitan liberal elite’, who dominate Labour, a party originally founded to represent the interests of working people and their families in urban communities.

According to Ford and Goodwin, Ukip voters look like ‘Old Labour’, and the surge in support has come from unskilled/low-skilled manual workers – the group that Labour has lost support since 2010.

They say: "Ukip articulates a more specific idea: the resentment and anger of the old Labour working-class base.’’ To many of these people, Newish Labour cared more about the welfare of migrants, minority interest groups than its core vote – those being hit hard by the recession with rising unemployment, declining wages and competition for scarce public resources such as social housing – despite the fact that Labour under Ed Miliband promised to build 200,000 affordable homes a year, tackle youth unemployment and adopt immigration controls.

Back in 2010, Gillian Duffy, an elderly working-class woman from Oldham, tackled Gordon Brown about recent patterns of EU migration undermining wages. Brown’s insensitive response, captured on microphone, was that the poor woman was a ‘bigot’ who had never voted Labour in her life. Yet, Duffy, in a crude sort of way, articulated the feelings of thousands of poor white voters across urban areas who feel insecure and helpless in light of the changes brought about by globalisation, the fracturing of traditional close-knit communities and de-industrialisation. She had been a long-standing Labour voter all her life.

Although migration has brought many benefits to our city and region including filling skill shortages, greater diversity in culture, life-styles and food, those who feel threatened by it, are not the white professional middle-class living in the leafy suburbs of Jesmond and Ponteland, but disaffected, financially insecure blue-collar workers and the long-term unemployed.

Some thoughtful Labour MPs woke up to this reality three years ago such as Frank Field, John Mann and John Cruddas. Mann, for instance, stated that Labour "must wake up and get real on immigration’’. Miliband’s London-Centric youthful advisers turned a blind eye until it was too late.

Labour must re-think its whole policy strategy, development plan and get the right people into the right top jobs. In my book that’s Andy Burham as leader, a bright working-class lad who went to university and the able, chic and media savvy Gloria De Piero for deputy - again from a modest background. These potential leaders have ability, talent, know-how and are able to connect with ordinary working people and their families.

the party's immigration policy must be spelt out clearly. There’s nothing racist about having genuine concerns about migration.

Furthermore, Labour must argue the case for Europe: improved workers’ rights, continental ales, cuisine , café culture , inward investment, jobs and economic benefits. And it must stress that Newcastle is a leading European city which has more to offer than Ukip – a pint of ‘Watneys Red Barrel and a meat pie.

Labour must get re-established in its urban heartlands by re-connecting with its core vote. Local councillors need to hold surgeries in communities, family pubs or coffee shops where real people go either before or after their Saturday shopping trips.

If Labour is to win big in future council elections and see off Ukip, the major challenge is to win back the hearts and minds of a significant section of the region’s male blue-collar workers.

* Stephen Lambert is a Newcastle City Councillor and local sociologist. He achieved the highest Labour vote of all 26 candidates in the May elections.