If I feel a sense of déjà vu as I watch UKIP’s rise today, just imagine the view from Crosby’s chair at Conservative Party HQ. David Cameron’s election strategist hasn't just seen this film before - he's already written the script.
Tim Dixon is political director at New York-based Purpose.com
With all the disorder in Conservative ranks, it’s tempting for progressives to see UKIP as David Cameron’s worst nightmare. Yet UKIP’s ultimate legacy could be to change the politics of immigration and national identity, weakening one of Britain’s greatest strengths and eroding the progressive vote.
We won’t know the real damage UKIP inflicts, or against whom, until the smoke clears – but one recent historic parallel underscores how right-wing populists present a greater long-term threat to the left than the right.
Parallels with Australia
Fifteen years ago in Australia, a similar populist insurgency pulled the rug out from under the established parties, breaking records with 23 per cent of the vote in a Queensland state election. Spectators of the UKIP phenomenon will see many parallels, starting with the same 23 per cent vote this month.
This party – somewhat disconcertingly for today’s British politics, called ‘One Nation’ – energised its supporters with grave warnings about open-door immigration, the betrayal of national economic interests and the self-serving behaviour of the political class. Its leader, a former fish-and-chip-shop owner named Pauline Hanson, spoke in the common sense nostrums of mainstream voters.
And just like Nigel Farage, wherever Hanson went, she was welcomed by voters expressing their relief that at last someone was ‘saying what the rest of us have all been thinking’.
Within a couple of years One Nation went off the rails. Like Farage, Pauline Hanson had been a powerfully disruptive force, who brought colour and movement back to politics. She even taped a video message to be released in the event of her assassination, in which she stared down the barrel of the camera to announce, “Fellow Australians, if you are seeing me now, it means I have been murdered”.
However the One Nation members who won elections were unready for public office. Their ranks were filled with just a few too many crackpots, opportunists and cranky malcontents.
Farage knows the risks and wants to prevent UKIP flaming out as One Nation did. It won’t be easy. Populist parties lack political polish. At first that’s an invigorating change from the mind-numbing soundbites of professional politicians. But the moment UKIP’s inexperience morphs into public displays of incompetence or indiscipline from its members – fiddling expenses, getting uppity or turning on each other – public support could collapse.
Long-lasting influence
While pop-up populists may be put back in their box, they can exercise influence long after they have disappeared. Power is derived from changing the debate as much as by winning seats.
In Australia we learnt the hard way. For a time, One Nation boosted Labor’s electoral prospects. As mostly conservative votes bled to One Nation, Labor first won office in Queensland and then won a majority of votes in the national election in 1998. Both were Labor’s first election from opposition, following successive terms of government.
Maybe UKIP will have a similar effect on British politics, splitting the right-of-centre vote and returning Labour to office. Certainly, it has destabilised the Tories and driven down the Conservative vote.
But UKIP’s legacy might be quite different. Australian conservatives also stumbled at first in the face of the populist insurgency.
But over time, that changed. Conservatives got smarter. First One Nation shifted the political debate to the right, bringing into the mainstream views on immigration, Indigenous affairs and asylum seekers that had previously only simmered on the political fringes. Then conservative prime minister John Howard followed, embracing many of those once-fringe views with a relish that often dismayed his own party’s moderates.
This was the legacy of Australia’s populist insurgency: a new politics of identity, race and asylum seekers. It delivered some short-term gains for Labor, but ultimately it cost Labor heavily. Conservatives learned from One Nation how to tap into a set of concerns shared by many Labor voters.
Labor’s response was confused and seemed disconnected from voters’ concerns. A swathe of blue collar voters defected to conservatives and stayed there.
Maybe UKIP’s rise may be just another example of the ‘flash politics’ of a news cycle obsessed with novelty and surprise. Maybe. But more dangerously, UKIP might break-up Britain’s broad consensus on immigration and Europe. That is dangerous, both to Britain and to Labour. It demands a front-footed response, and one that engages people while shifting the frame of the debate, as reports from organisations like British Future and Hope Not Hate have argued in recent years.
It won’t be easy. It may be crucial.
Country to country parallels in politics only extend so far, of course, and the Tory madness on Europe often feels like it’s from another planet. But there’s one last correlation. The campaign director for Australia’s conservatives during the whole period of One Nation was Lynton Crosby. If I feel a sense of déjà vu as I watch UKIP’s rise today, just imagine the view from Crosby’s chair at Conservative Party HQ. David Cameron’s election strategist hasn’t just seen this film before – he’s already written the script.
29 Responses to “UKIP’s populism could present a greater threat to the left than the right”
Jon Danzig
You express a view that is shared by many. However, we still have our sovereignty. Only 8-10 per cent of British laws originate from the European Union, and not 75 per cent as UKIP falsely claims. And most laws of the EU are decided by the democratically elected European Parliament.
There are advantages for us and the other EU nations to work together on specific international issues in an increasingly globalised world. For example, the United States wants to negotiate trade with the entire European Union, and not with the UK alone.
I am a citizen of Britain, but also our membership of the EU gives us all some additional benefits. Such as being able to live, work, study or retire in any other country of the European Union.
If there is a referendum, and British people vote to leave the EU, so be it. But I think we do need a full and open debate first, with respect on both sides. If we leave, it will be a one-way ticket that could affect the country for 100 years or more. So this needs to be considered most carefully.
Lady Magdalene
With the greatest of respect, your statement that only 8-10% of British laws originate with the EU is complete hogwash.
Approximately 80% of policy areas are now either completely or significantly controlled by the EU. With the extension of QMV which was incorporated in the Lisbon Treaty, we will lose a veto on another 100 or so areas of competence.
The EU imposes laws in a variety of ways: through Directives and Regulations and by requiring the British Government to conform to EU norms. The example this week of the proposed ban on Olive Oil containers is just one example of the myriad ways in which the EU seeks to impose uniformity thoughout the EU, riding roughshod over elected Parliaments.
The EU Parliament is a sham. It has no Opposition (other than UKIP) and MEPs can simply accept the deluge of Directives and Regulations which spew out of the Commission, or it can propose changes. It cannot reject.
More importantly, there is NO European Demos. You cannot have a Democratic Parliament when there is no Demos. All the MEPs are there to do is give a fig-leaf of democracy to an organisation which is profoundly undemocratic and anti-Democratic.
By forcing us to remain a member of the EU, LibLabCON have effectively disenfranchised the British electorate. But people are waking up to the fact that our own MPs can do nothing to address many issues which are of significant concern to ordinary people – not least the deluge of Eastern European immigrants who have come and will continue to come.
There are advantages to working with our European neighbours when it is appropriate for us to do so. That doesn’t require us to sink our Sovereignty into a wasteful, arrogant and corrupt organisation like the EU.
Jon Danzig
In my blog, I provided a link to the House of Commons library that conducted independent research into the percentage of UK laws that originated from the EU as being around 10%. You have quoted that the figure is 80%, but without providing a link to any independent empirically sourced research.
Last year William Hague commissioned a full audit of the impact of EU law on the UK, but unfortunately this will not be completed until next year. Clearly, the issue is complicated, and not at all clear cut, otherwise it would not take the government two years to conduct and conclude their research. Mr Hague promised that the audit would constitute, “the most thorough and detailed analysis possible on the extent of EU powers.” Here’s a link to the BBC news item about this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18810566
It’s tedious to go around in circles, with each side claiming different statistics. I welcome any independent and factual research into what the EU does and how it may or may not benefit the UK, especially as some of the research is now somewhat dated.
I think it’s important to follow evidence. In my blog, I provided links to research demonstrating that some of the assertions made by Mr Nigel Farage of UKIP during a radio interview did not appear to stand close scrutiny, including his claim that the EU is run by people we cannot elect. (The European Parliament is democratically
elected, decides most EU laws, and has the power to reject all its
Commissioners.)
I believe that the free movement of EU citizens across Europe benefits us all. According to statistics from the IPPR, more British people live in Spain than Polish people live in Britain. It’s a two way street. I am proud to be a British citizen, but I don’t want to lose my rights as a citizen of Europe.
http://jondanzig.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/what-nigel-farage-told-british-expats.html
Finally, I feel reluctant to engage further with posters who will only comment anonymously. Please have the courage to post under your real name, and enter the debate openly.
Jon Danzig
At a debate this week about the future of the European Union, I asked politicians and academics, “How can we raise the level of debate in the UK about Europe?”
http://eu-rope.ideasoneurope.eu/2013/06/06/questions-about-the-debate-about-europe/