The advice to get into the “real world” daily rings out from the media as politicians vie with each other to convince people that their views are supported by the majority of the populace.

It’s sound advice even though when I dare to glance at it my puzzlement only increases. Its complexities become more so but I am able to fall back on the histories of the trade unions and its allies whose struggles with “real life” have been, well, real.

The labour movement, even if not in the robust state it once was, will need all its experience and sagacity to advance again and, more likely, to protect the conditions of working people against sometimes implacable enemies to maintain even a semblance, at least, of its resolve in a challenging six months until polling day. 

The debates before the vote on Scottish independence and attitudes taken since will require the Labour movement’s best efforts, based on its know-how of the “real world” in the run-up to a critical general election.

The TUC’s fight to increase pay levels must be at the heart of the struggle not just for the people’s pockets but of the central economic policy, since the poor always spend and the rich keeping the money to themselves, and no more so than in Wales where low pay and low skills are our worst enemies. 

Wales faces some of the complexities of real life on two fronts in a general election campaign and ballot whose result is anybody’s guess. We must juggle with the new devolved powers now on offer, including tax gathering, and then how to develop them and use them.

There is just space here to give a taste of the tests ahead involving two of the protagonists involved in what will be a fascinating few months in a differing political situation than the norm of the two-party fight.

In Wales the entrance of Ukip was announced in no uncertain manner when it was just a point behind Labour on 27.55 per cent in this year’s Euro election, with Labour on 28.15 percent, Tories on 17.43 percent, Plaid Cymru on 15.7 percent and the  Lib Dems 3.9 per cent. 

Given Wales’s long history of huge inward migration to its lands over centuries, it should have been immune to Ukip’s racial blandishments but the fact it wasn’t is worrying. The chances that this will translate to a seat in Wales being unlikely doesn’t mean we can ignore the question of racism in Wales. 

Anyone studying the phenomenon should look at Ukip making its prime target north-east Wales’s Alyn and Deeside, where it has set up its office in white working-class Shotton. It is one of the most prosperous areas in Wales with BA Systems and steel providing well-paid and skilled work with low unemployment and a mostly white population but employing migrants mostly in the food-processing industry. 

Labour’s Mark Tarni has a near 3,000 majority but that has declined since 2001 when it was 9,000, with turnout usually better than the average for Britain and northern Ireland. The Tories have always finished second with 13,000 votes last time, so maybe that’s the clue to Ukip’s bid making it vital that Labour gets its vote out.

Plaid’s leader Leanne Wood (below), still in a commanding position, has put her party in the spotlight with a prediction — or hope — of being one of the smaller parties able to hold the balance of power in a hung parliament. The evidence based on recent polling is that its chances are good in Ceredigion and Ynys Mon, but the party will only win five seats.

The problem Plaid has is the need to challenge Labour to make progress but, if Wood is putting her faith in a hung parliament, she’ll need Labour to be elected as the biggest party in the House of Commons and Plaid could hinder that in a close contest by taking Labour seats. 

This follows an attempt in the Welsh Assembly in 2006 to form a “rainbow” coalition of the Tories, the Lib Dems and Plaid, when the right wing of Plaid nibbled at the bait. But the idea was strangled at birth when Wood and Helen Mary made it clear they would not then, and never in future, make a pact with the Conservatives. 

Keep watching this space.