25.04.2013
Aiming for the big time
Nigel Farage is in the process of rebranding his party in an attempt to shed its protest vote image. Micky Coulter wonders what his chances are
In recent months the rightwing UK Independence Party has seemed to be on an upward trajectory. Not only is its leader, Nigel Farage, invited to cut deals over lunch with Rupert Murdoch (just like a real politician!), but his party finds itself riding high in the opinion polls. It stands at 17% at the time of writing, in the lead-up to the May 2 local elections, which the Ukip command is hoping will mark the next step in its progression into the big time. Indeed, given the level of coverage Ukip is enjoying in the media, and the fact that Farage seems to be pulling in good numbers on his ‘Common Sense’ tour, we can expect it to do well.
In March there was a frenzy of speculation over the meaning of Ukip’s solid second placing in the Eastleigh by-election, where it pushed the Tory Party into third place and gave the Liberal Democrats a good scare in one of their safest seats in the country. Given the role in that election of local political concerns and dynamics, however, and the fact that Eastleigh is a naturally rightwing seat, that success did not yet represent a break from the political fringe which the party still inhabits.
This does not mean that Ukip is not making a start though, irrespective of whether it can succeed. At the party’s March conference Farage gave a keynote speech intended to reflect the new-found seriousness of intent and claimed broadness of appeal of his party. “A protest vote?” he spat. “No, we are seeing a wholesale rejection of the career politicians” - and presumably, therefore, a move towards the likes of his own party. Ukip is, at least publicly, puffing itself up to look like a contender. The Daily Telegraph reporter present noted: “The crowd hooted with laughter at the idea of a Tory majority government in 2015.”1 The last time the Tories won a parliamentary majority was in the 1992 general election - coincidentally Ukip was formed in that same year, following the Conservative Party vote for the European Maastricht treaty. However, given the considerable crossover in the voter base between the Tories and Ukip, one wonders if they should really have found this idea so funny.
Nevertheless, Farage thinks that a timely rebranding will do the trick. Out is the symbol of the pound-sterling on the party logo (though it may remain on Farage’s socks) and in is talk of widening the appeal of the party, and the possibility of forming future parliamentary coalitions with the Tories or even Labour.
In a parodic echo of a famous Churchill quote, Farage told one journalist: “If we found ourselves in the position” where Ukip could do a deal after the 2015 general election, which “could usher in this country’s exit from political union” then “we’d do a deal with the devil”.2 For its part, Labour has refused to rule out a referendum on UK membership of the EU, should it obtain a parliamentary majority - which, of course, leaves the door theoretically open to a deal. And many within the Tory Party would be delighted to do a deal with Ukip, particularly as its terms would, at Farage’s insistence, have to include the dumping of that incorrigible old wet, David Cameron - something that Rupert Murdoch is also seeking; hence his interest in courting and promoting Ukip and Farage. Boris Johnson, another cultivated ‘eccentric’ like Farage, waits in the wings amongst the potential replacements.
Ukip is aiming to break out of its ghetto of support among stereotypical enraged petty bourgeois and hard-right Tories in the shires by attempting to articulate a more strongly populist Thatcherism that it hopes will draw in the ‘aspirational workers’ - the sociologists’ so-called C1s and C2s from the working class. Farage himself is very clear about what he thinks is wrong with the modern Tory Party, which would otherwise be his and most other Ukip members’ natural home: “They are suffering from a major disconnect,” he says. Whereas they used to be “a party of free enterprise and wealth creation”, these days it is all “gay marriage”, “wind turbines” and other “Notting Hill claptrap”.3
This ‘anti-politics’ opposition to ‘all that new-fangled nonsense’ is a constant theme for Farage. It was to be found in his maiden speech as Ukip leader, when he complained: “We’ve got three social democratic parties in Britain ... indistinguishable from each other on all the main issues.”4 But it does represent an attempt to broaden out the party’s programme from its focus on the European Union, so that it can be viewed as a political party proper rather than a mere recipient of protest votes.
This actually gets to the heart of the problem Ukip faces. It cannot simply serve as a repository for the votes of disgruntled Tories, most of whom will probably return to the Conservative Party in the context of a general election in order to keep Labour out, just as disgruntled Labour supporters tend to revert to the party in the same context in order to keep the Tories out.
So Ukip had two broad strategic options. The first was to continue to serve as a protest party for Conservative voters in an attempt to pull that party further to the right. The second is to attempt to become a truly national force that can compete against the established parties. Whatever Farage’s protestations to the contrary, it is Ukip’s character as a recipient for Tory protest votes that explains its fury with the Conservatives. Precisely because the actual Tory Party accommodates itself to the reality of winning national elections, particularly in the marginal swing seats, where radicalism of all colours is watered down and tailored specifically to win over the pollsters’ ideal ‘average swing voter’, it cannot afford to indulge in the hard-right hobby-horses of angry Ukip supporters.
But, ironically, in order to become a serious national force Ukip would have to become another party “indistinguishable” from all the rest - to the consternation of its activists. It is possible to envisage it blowing itself up as a result. Perhaps more realistic then is the prospect of Ukip capturing some crucial marginal seats in the 2015 general election and being able to function as king-maker afterwards.
This approach would have its strengths and weaknesses. Insofar as all the main political parties tailor their politics to a sort of soft Thatcherism in these swing seats - pro-business, tough on immigration, for ‘aspiration’ and self-reliance, anti-scrounger, etc - the advantage for Ukip is that it would simply be saying all this more loudly and consistently.
There would be problems though. Farage may think aloud that if Thatcher were alive today she would be a Ukip member, and lament that, if only Thatcher had not been knifed by her fellow Tory MPs and deposed in 1992, then Ukip itself would have no reason to exist. However, the reality is that in order for Thatcherism to work as an electoral ploy, it has to appeal not just to those C1 and C2 ‘aspirant workers’ as well as the enraged petty bourgeoisie - who, furthermore, already have parties to vote for!
Detached from a party which can also win millions of others’ votes, ‘pure’ Thatcherism would risk descending into madness. When the party articulating it is itself wholly comprised of the most extreme versions of the enraged petty bourgeois, divorced from the semi-sanity imposed by hard electoral realities, then this is another reason to question whether Ukip will get anywhere, rebrand or no rebrand. It will also find it hard to move beyond its single core issue, EU phobia, and its reliance on the cartoonish personality of Nigel Farage himself.
Nevertheless, in the May 2 local elections Ukip will be contesting three quarters of all available seats, fielding around 1,700 candidates. Its national membership has reached an official figure of 25,000, or five times that of the organised Marxists in the country (a sobering reality). It has the support of the Murdoch press and also receives fairly generous coverage in the Telegraph, as that newspaper attempts to lever the Conservative Party further to the right. In an attempt to prove its national credentials, Ukip is fielding candidates in places where it does not have the faintest chance of winning - for example, in strongly pro-Labour areas. In view of this Farage only expects an average national vote of around 14% - as compared to the 13% it picked up in more selected seats in last year’s local elections.
Perhaps Ukip will attain some measure of success. After all, populism does not have to be completely in order to attract support in the short term, and the party’s programme is certainly not coherent (although its supporters do not seem to be too bothered by this - it is the general Ukip message which resonates). It seems to have found a certain political niche, but it remains to be seen whether it can break out of it.
Notes
1. The Daily Telegraph March 23.
2. The Daily Telegraph April 6.