UKIP is a threat to Labour – it needs a serious response

 Many wrongly see UKIP as a net positive for Labour – this is wrongheaded. Labour needs to get serious about UKIP, says Sam Fowles. 

Last week Nigel Farage announced his ambition, not just to be David Cameron’s “worst nightmare” but Ed Miliband’s as well. The general perception amongst the progressive media appears to be that UKIP’s increasing threat (aptly illustrated by the, suspiciously timely, resignation of Douglas Carswell) will be a net positive for Labour, making it more difficult for the Conservatives to win the next general election. This is a mistake.

All too often we see politics as being only about the next election. It’s not. Politics is about the sort of nation we want. Winning an election is a means to an end. That end is the principles we support becoming the principles that govern our nation. Elections themselves are not defining moments but the inevitable products of public debates. They are won and lost in the collective consciousness, not at the ballot box.

Margaret Thatcher defined the public discourse. Although she herself lost office, every government since, including those comprised of her political opponents, have pursued policies based on the ideology she espoused. They view the world according to the paradigm which she established.

Here’s an example: Most good economists will argue that the financial crisis was caused by a failure of the (private) financial sector. Yet all economic arguments in our public debate are based on the premise that we must cut back on the state. We don’t discuss the logic behind this; it’s become an irrefutable “fact” of British politics. The “private: good/state: bad” paradigm is unsupported by history or economics but every political party conforms with it because it is the paradigm which defines our public debate.

To win elections but, more importantly, to see their principles realised, a political party needs to define the debate. Unless it can do so (as I have argued before) it will always be arguing according to it’s opponent’s terms and thus will always lose.

UKIP may prove to be of short-term electoral advantage to Labour. In the long term, they will push the public discourse further to the right. Labour may be in power but their principles will not. A party that is content to maintain power by implementing ideals that it should fundamentally oppose does not deserve to exist.

In the United States some liberals privately welcomed the rise of the Tea Party when it appeared that its effect would be to make the Republican Party permanently unelectable. Instead American public discourse was pushed to the right. GOP establishment figures like Karl Rove were made to appear centrist and reasonable while Democrats were forced to refight old battles on abortion and race.

If UKIP continue on the road to mainstream acceptance how long will it be before progressives in the UK are forced, once more, to defend hard won legislation on equalities, employment rights or the minimum wage? Rather than arguing for a better future, the left will be forced to devote all its energy simply to prevent it becoming worse.

So how should the left respond? It’s tempting to mollify UKIP voters, acknowledge that they have real concerns about immigration or Human Rights, in the hope of winning them back into the fold. But history should teach us that pandering to xenophobes only breeds more xenophobes.

UKIP supporters do not have reasonable concerns. The basis on which most positions in support of UKIP are founded are factually inaccurate. Supporting UKIP requires believing things which are simply not true. Pretending anything else will move the political discourse to a place where reality is permanently eclipsed by provocation.

There are real reasons that UKIP voters feel disenfranchised and these should be addressed but not in the way they are expressed by Farage and co.

In the 2008 election Obama For America destroyed John McCain’s credibility by focusing on the ludicrous positions of his running mate, Sarah Palin. Her most famous statement, “I can see Russia from my house”, came from the lips of Saturday Night Live’s Tina Fey. Palin’s politics were absurd so she was effectively laughed out of office. UKIP should be treated the same way. A party which bases it’s electoral appeal on ignorance and xenophobia should be a punch line, not an election contender.

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. Labour needs to get serious about UKIP. But the only way to do so successfully is not to take them seriously at all.

Sam Fowles is a researcher in International Law and Politics at Queen Mary, University of London

68 Responses to “UKIP is a threat to Labour – it needs a serious response”

  1. Gary Scott

    The Tories are pulled to the right to counter UKIP, Labour is so far to the right as to be unrecognisable to older voters. Sadly, what is forgotten is that this ISN’T a business. Proper principled ideas and policies must be put forward to show voters a vision of what true SOCIALism is. It hast to be a consistent vision and can’t be pulled right every time UKIP are on TV. The major party of the left is no longer. Labour still exists, but it can no longer be considered ‘left wing’. If a YES vote is had in Scotland then the Labour Party will have to decide if it wishes to continue as it is. To do so may see decades in the wilderness. No more bloc vote from Scotland and no more pull to the left from them either (although the Scottish Labour Party could not claim to be left wing either)

  2. clif

    When are you lefties going to get it through your heads that people are going UKIP because they talk common sense to your average working person.
    Its not racist to have your own immigration system that only lets people in that are a benefit to this country, indeed it is racist only to let in any old sponger or criminal as long as they are in the EU.
    Its not homophobic to not want to see gay men kissing in public in front of children, just normal.
    Its not judgemental when you are going to work everyday to be angry at the benefit household accross the street live a better lifestyle than you because they play the system and you get taxed to the hilt for doing the right thing.
    It doesn’t mean your a nazi because you want a vote on the EU, PR, death penalty, just a democrat. Ah yes, democracy, something that your average educated leftie hates because it puts power in the hands of ordinary working people with low IQs but lots of common sense.

  3. Poultice

    You are spot on clif.

    “UKIP supporters do not have reasonable concerns. The basis on which most positions in support of UKIP are founded are factually inaccurate.Supporting UKIP requires believing things which are simply not true.”

    Comments such as that display such a lack of any grasp of the realities, I 4-1 have not been sucked in by UKIP disingenuity, I came to the conclusion that all politicians are lying scumbags by watching the LibLabCon over the last 40 years or so, looking around for an alternative I found the BNP, Greens and the Kip, not a difficult choice.

    FYI Sam Fowles, I have many concerns, some of them actually quite reasonable, I have yet to find myself being taken in by a myriad of dishonesty from Kippers, certainly not more so than the drivel emanating from the LibLabCon and their cohorts in the meeja and yes, academia.

    You carry on not taking the Kip seriously, you may as well because lefty academia is never going to be taken seriously by anyone with a clue ever again.

  4. wj

    The Left’s obsession with Sarah Palin is all too indicative of the chasm between the ‘progressive’ Left and the man/woman on the street – most of the politically-motivated people that I talk to have a great admiration for Palin.

    It’s that “Thatcher’s working class Tories” thing again, isn’t it – there are a large part of the working class who are naturally conservative with a small ‘c’ and it’s these people that are switching to UKIP.

    Just because I’m a manual worker, who pulls in less than £20,000 a year and regularly gets his hands dirty, it doesn’t automatically entitle Labour to assume my vote is in the bag.

  5. Peem Birrell

    >>Most good economists will argue that the financial crisis was caused by a failure of the (private) financial sector. Yet all economic arguments in our public debate are based on the premise that we must cut back on the state

    Yes, so what’s your point? That the state should run the financial sector? That there should be no financial sector? Or – which I would agree with but I’m sure is *not* your point – the state shouldn’t have bailed out the financial sector?

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