British Democracy Forum - View Single Post - UKIP show little sign of threatening anyone

John Page · 19-08-2006, 08:22 PM

Cameron can relax: UKIP is still stuck in the doldrums

Quote:

WHEN David Cameron is accused of alienating traditional Conservative voters with his tree-planting, hoodie-hugging and Israel-bashing, he has an easy riposte. Where are all these frustrated souls going to go? Defect to the high-taxing Liberal Democrats? Sign up to Gordon Brown’s progressive consensus? For as long as Cameron has his membership cornered they will have no choice. And this is why the UK Independence party (UKIP) leadership contest is so potentially important.

Britain seldom does well at producing political parties outside the mainstream, and UKIP has had a pretty miserable time. But it sprang to life two years ago when it claimed 16% of the vote in the European Parliament elections –forcing the Lib Dems into fourth place. The question for the Tories is whether UKIP could manage this trick again. It is not psephologically impossible. The British electorate is increasingly fed up with its three big parties. The protest vote is there for the taking.

But it needs leadership. UKIP’s surge came when Robert Kilroy-Silk, a former BBC chatshow host, became its figurehead (if not its leader) and proved himself a skilled populist. He portrayed UKIP as a rebel army and started something which caused the Tories deep panic. When he left, the party’s profile sank as quickly as it has risen and at the last general election its voting share returned to a derisory 2.2%.

Last April, Cameron betrayed more concern than he perhaps intended when he denounced UKIP as “a bunch of fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists” – which does not say much for the judgment of the 2.65m who voted UKIP in 2004. Importantly, he expressed disdain for the UKIP message on immigration – which was as much of its message as Euroscepticism during that campaign. For the Cameronians, this is beyond the pale.

This marks out political terrain which mainstream parties see as too downmarket to cultivate. Polls show that the C2DE voters – the ones who tend to live in housing estates where immigration has made the sharpest impact – are deeply concerned. A full 50% of these voters say they “strongly agree” that “Britain is losing its own culture” and 76% consider Britain “already overcrowded”. The pro-immigration camp (including this columnist) may argue such people are wrong. But they have a vote. And no party in Westminster seems to want it.

The UKIP leadership contest shows that it is highly unlikely to revive itself. One of the four contenders is David Noakes, whose mottos are that the “EU is a police state” and that UKIP should “tell the truth”. He boasts his family tree can be traced back to the 1066 Norman invasion. “Apparently before that we were Vikings,” he says on his website. “Well, no one’s perfect.”

It’s a fair bet that this comment is designed to strike a contrast from the Welsh-born Richard Suchorzewski, another contender, whose pitch is to take UKIP “from an anti-EU party into a full pro-British party”. His supporters emphasise he is a Christian and imply out that his family life stands up to scrutiny more than the favourite, Nigel Farage, who recently denied newspaper claims of extra-marital adventure.

The main challenger is David Campbell-Bannerman, a former chairman of the Bow Group, a Eurosceptic think tank, and great-great-great-grandson of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, former Prime Minister. His pitch seems to be little more than a plea for deputy leadership under Farage, whom he expects to win. Insofar as it is possible to gauge opinion among the 16,000 UKIP members, then Farage, a founding UKIP member and former Tory MP, is likely to pull through when the vote is decided on 12 September. But he will be leading from Brussels, by remote control.

For Tories, it’s a huge relief. Political loyalty in Britain has never been thinner, and a UKIP which had a populist leader and strong centre-right message may have struck a strong contrast to Cameron. The next UK general election may well be decided by just 250,000 votes – so it matters hugely if the Tories are about to face a right-wing rival party. Blair was able to move so far from Labour’s roots because he faced no real contest from a socialist rival and his frustrated party members had nowhere else to go. If UKIP remain in obscurity, Cameron will have the same licence to roam.

But a wild card will still hangs over British politics. There are 17m who did not vote in last year’s election – showing a dealignment, rather than a realignment. They could turn to anyone who manages to strike a message which resonates. The risk is that this leaves space for a genuinely racist party, as exists in Austria and The Netherlands.

The space could be filled by a new party, or scores of local, single-issue parties – a “carnival of the animals”, as one Downing Street strategist calls it. But the Conservatives, for now, can relax: UKIP are showing little sign of threatening anyone.

Good fun, and interesting. In the words of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, UKIP is "mostly harmless".