Is Ukip's spectacular showing in the English council elections a flash in the pan or what their leader yesterday called "a real sea-change in British politics"?

There were many lines in the narrative of these elections. The Conservatives suffered big losses, but from an extremely high base in 2009. The Liberal Democrats did badly but were saved from humiliation by the fact that many of their sitting councillors were in two-way fights with Conservatives. Labour held David Miliband's South Shields parliamentary seat comfortably and predictably but failed to achieve the 300 council seat breakthrough it had hoped for. Yet the story of the day was Ukip and the man of the moment their maverick leader Nigel Farage.

The party not only took about one-quarter of the vote in the council seats they contested but 24% of the poll in South Shields, once again knocking the Tories into third place. If this was a protest vote, it was a pretty monumental one. Some commentators were quick to compare it with the Greens taking 15% in the 1989 European elections or the support achieved by the SDLP in its early days in the 1980s. Neither managed to sustain the achievement. Their point is that voters feel free to vent their frustration with those in Government in mid-term elections but then revert to mainstream parties at general elections.

However, this is less and less the case. While just 3.2% of the vote went to parties other than Labour and Conservatives in 1951, by 2010 the other parties won 32% of the vote, with the rise of Scottish and Welsh nationalism a large part of that story.

What made Ukip so appealing to so many and how has what was a single-issue anti-EU party now been selected by so many to represent them in England's town and county halls? Like Beppe Grillo in Italy, Boris Johnson and Alex Salmond, Mr Farage can raise a smile and represents a refreshing contrast to cosmopolitan career politicians who often seem like grey carbon copies.

More seriously, when voters see their living standards squeezed and fear unemployment, immigration always rises up the political agenda. It is no coincidence that Ukip did best in agricultural Lincolnshire, where thousands of East European immigrants pick fruit and vegetables. Boston has the largest number of non-British EU passport holders outside London.

In Scotland, where EU immigration is less of an issue, the SNP will use these results to demonstrate that England is drifting dangerously to the right. But even in Scotland Ukip claims about 5% support and it is too easy to portray the two countries as diverging politically.

It is wrong to dismiss the concerns of Ukip voters over homes, jobs, living standards and, in some cases, pressure on council services as a result of immigration, even if Ukip is unlikely to provide serious answers. A party that promises to slash taxes while increasing public spending by billions is likely to lose its gloss under close scrutiny. Meanwhile, if it is to get beyond being a party of protest, those newly elected Ukip councillors have to show they can exercise power responsibly and efficiently.

As for Labour, add Ukip's vote to the two-thirds of electors who failed to vote at all and Ed Miliband – the man who would be Prime Minister come 2015 – has a measure of public disengagement from mainstream politics. Many of them believe Britain has gone to the dogs. Is he capable of convincing them that he can turn it round?