John Humphrys asks: was UKIP’s success in Thursday’s elections just a protest vote, or is UKIP now a serious contender for office?
There can be no doubt which party emerged happiest from Thursday’s elections in England. The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) exceeded all expectations by attracting around a quarter of all the votes cast and pushing itself into second place in the parliamentary by-election in South Shields. But was the support it won just a protest vote, or must UKIP now be regarded as a serious contender for office? And how should the other parties respond to its success?
UKIP has been around at the margins of British politics for a couple of decades but most people thought it relevant only to one issue – Europe. Its distinctive policy (indeed, in many people’s eyes, its only policy) was British withdrawal from the European Union. None of the major parties shared that aim, but UKIP came into its own during elections to the European Parliament, where the proportional representation voting system played to its advantage. It won seats and gained a public platform.
But although British membership of the EU is a matter of intense importance to some people, ‘Europe’ is not high up on the list of what really matters to most. That’s why UKIP has, at least until recently, seemed of marginal importance. That’s all changed in the past few months.
First there was UKIP’s success in knocking the Conservative Party into third place in the Eastleigh by-election, held by the Liberal Democrats earlier in the spring. Since the constituency was once a pretty safe Tory seat, this was quite an upset – but not as much as its performance in the local elections. So why is it happening?
Here are three possible explanations:
- UKIP happens to be no more than the current beneficiary of a large protest vote that cannot be relied upon to stay loyal. At a time when the economy seems stuck in the doldrums a large protest vote is inevitably going to emerge. With the main opposition party as yet seeming unable to offer a clear alternative and with the usual recipient of the protest vote, the LibDems, part of the government and therefore itself the object of protest rather than the beneficiary of it, UKIP is in a wonderful position to rake in the protest votes.
- UKIP is fortunate in having a charismatic, populist leader in Nigel Farage. As Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, has pointed out, he has the talent, shared with only a few other politicians such as Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson, to make people laugh. He is one of the most media-savvy politicians around and is brilliant at talking in a language people understand and at articulating their frustration at the state of affairs. Perfect, then, for rallying protest.
- The very notion of a ‘mere’ party of protest may be an out-of-date political concept anyway. These days, it’s pointed out, parties of protest can wield real power, as Italy’s Beppe Grillo (a professional comedian) proved when his party took a quarter of the votes in the country’s recent general election, causing political paralysis for a couple months and forcing the creation of an unstable grand coalition of the mainstream parties. UKIP could become such a force here, it’s argued.
Part of the case against UKIP is that it’s not much more than a single issue, one-man band. Indeed, so rudimentary are the party’s organisational structures that several candidates in the local elections had to be disowned by the leadership during the campaign. This seemed to confirm David Cameron’s jibe about UKIP made several years ago, that it was a party of “clowns, loonies, fruitcakes and closet racists”. As recently as last weekend Ken Clarke, the veteran Tory cabinet minister, repeated the ‘clown’ remark.
What we cannot know at this stage is how voters will react when they are choosing a new government – a party to lead the country. UKIP’s defenders point out that its success has been in part due to its ability to link several issues that really do matter to people. Immigration is the most striking example of this. It is certainly high on many people’s list of concerns and UKIP has directly linked it to EU membership by arguing that it is only because Britain is in the EU that it has to accept unlimited numbers of immigrant workers from other EU countries such as Poland. The potential influx of unknown numbers of Romanians and Bulgarians next year has given ammunition to UKIP’s campaigns.
The party has also been able to articulate socially conservative views on issues such as gay marriage on which David Cameron has taken a more liberal view in order to modernise his party’s image. In other words, far from being a mere protest party, UKIP is turning into an alternative conservative party with a friendly, funny, populist leader. Mr Farage may come across (refreshingly to many) as a politician from a bygone era, but he is not yet fifty and his appeal is not restricted to elderly voters.
As a party that needs to be taken seriously, then, its most obvious threat is to the Tory Party. That’s not just because Euroscepticism is strongest among traditional Conservative voters, but also because of UKIP’s wider conservatism. Some Tory MPs argue, therefore, that their own party needs to head in a UKIP direction. For example, John Baron, a Eurosceptic Tory MP, argues that it is not enough for David Cameron to promise a referendum on British membership of the EU if the Conservatives win an outright victory at the next election. He must also try to legislate in this parliament for that later referendum. Others think the Tory high command must junk its social liberalism on issues like gay marriage.
But the Tories are not alone in being potentially threatened by UKIP. Labour has to worry about its white, working class vote. It knows from the experience of fighting Margaret Thatcher that this vote cannot be depended on to stick with the party of organised labour. Especially on issues like immigration, Labour is vulnerable to UKIP.
The LibDems too have cause to worry. Their vote has already been slashed as a result of being part of the coalition government and the party must fear that those voters who have always voted LibDem on the grounds that their chief concern is to vote against both Labour and the Tories now have somewhere else to go.
Some in the mainstream parties may take comfort from the first-past-the-post system. UKIP may be able to win a few dozen seats on local councils, but winning parliamentary seats is quite another matter. To which Mr Farage says: look at Canada. There, a party supposedly on the fringes went from having only one seat after a general election to having the most seats after the following one. Could that happen to UKIP?
What’s your view about whether UKIP should be taken seriously and what the other parties should do in response to its remarkable success this week?
