UKIP is offering disengaged and disillusioned Britons a return to a less challenging, more cohesive past.
UKIP is offering disengaged and disillusioned Britons a return to a less challenging, more cohesive past
One UKIP result – Douglas Carswell’s resounding victory in Clacton-on-Sea – came as no surprise. The other – the extremely close result in Heywood and Middleton – was less expected.
Taken together they present a serious challenge to the political mainstream. But what is the nature of that challenge?
Political and media debates about the rise of UKIP have tended to focus on whether and to what extent they are splitting the Conservative vote. However, this week’s events hold broader lessons for all political parties around the nature of political disengagement in the United Kingdom.
This is reinforced by new IPPR research on class identities in Britain. Polling conducted to assess the views of different groups in British society on both their own and the country’s future challenges the view that UKIP’s support is primarily being driven by a disaffected and ‘left behind’ working class.
The survey confirmed that the white working class (defined in terms of occupation) are a large political constituency for UKIP. Half of those who said they intended to vote for them in the next general election had a white working class background.
However, nearly one in three of those who said they intended to vote Conservative or Lib Dem fell under the white working-class category, as did 43 per cent of those who intended to vote Labour.
Labour still overwhelmingly receives the largest portion of white working-class support (41 per cent of the white working class as a whole in our poll). Yet rising support for UKIP among the white working-class means that Labour is the party with the largest base to potentially lose.
IPPR’s research also showed that disengagement from the mainstream political parties is not isolated to working class voters. Only 31 per cent of Britain’s white working class think democracy in Britain works for them, but Britain’s middle classes (the ‘ABC1’ group) are only marginally more optimistic (43 per cent).
Well over half of respondents to our poll believe that the political system in the UK does a bad job at addressing their problems (68 per cent of Britain’s white working class and 59 per cent of the middle classes).
Meanwhile, a staggering 86 per cent of white working class respondents and 78 per cent of middle class respondents believe that politicians don’t understand the lives of people like them.
These figures should be cause for profound alarm across all parties.
There is a clear danger that politicians will respond to these developments with ever more extreme promises to slash immigration to levels that are unachievable in a globalised world characterised by relatively high and steady levels of migration.
Yet as Douglas Carswell has acknowledged himself, the UK cannot succeed without the skills and drive of those who come to the UK to make a clear contribution.
It is also unlikely that the introduction of restrictionist policies designed to dramatically reduce migration levels (which would involve further cutting the number of international students and substantially curtailing the right to family reunion), will on their own address the growing disconnect between the British public and the governing class.
Part of the reason why this is so is because immigration is an issue not just because it involves numbers of people coming in, but because those numbers are real people who go on to live in real communities. Some of the impacts that arise are beneficial, but not all. And the negative ones, IPPR would argue, are driving disaffection quite as much as the management – and level – of inflows.
A more effective approach therefore would involve supporting local communities that are struggling to adapt to change, and promoting inclusive public services and political processes that can re-engage and give confidence in the future to all British citizens. Whoever is in power has to help local areas to develop their own strategies to ensure that we can all live together more easily in a society increasingly defined by high migration and diversity.
For that is the reality now and into the future for Britain. UKIP – at its extremes at least – is seeking to offer disengaged and disillusioned Britons a return to a seemingly less challenging, more cohesive past. The mainstream parties mustn’t be tempted down that path but rather must set out a new vision – one which engages with Britain as it is but offers more hope for those who feel alienated from it.
Alex Glennie is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research
74 Responses to “UKIP is tapping into ‘left behind’ Britain”
GhostofJimMorrison
The Greens, The Left Unity Party, The Socialists Party, Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition….
You must be fully aware that these groups will NEVER unite. They will squabble, bicker and argue amongst themselves like they always have done; like they did in the Spanish civil war (read Orwell’s homage to Catalonia to see what I mean) or like they did in Weimar Germany. Left Unity offer nothing to the working people of this country.
HelenPender.blogspot.com.
All political parties have privileged the corrupt rich and punished the poor. Contracts and jobs are reserved for the privileged.
The electorate is disengaged and disillusioned enough to ditch the 3 party system. During the boom to 2008 they didn’t experience financial comfort or share in the boom. Since the bust they’re unable to have job security, are limited to nil hours contracts and wages have been driven down so that they no longer have any disposable income.
In these circumstances financial recovery is unlikely to occur. But the economic numpties running this country are unable to understand the bleeding obvious. Take away disposable income and eventually even the privileged will suffer, since economic growth or even the status quo becomes unsustainable. You can’t have a polarised society without creating bedlam for everyone. Driving profits up and wages down is a very myopic short term policy. Eventually the whole country – even the privileged – will be dragged down.
Is it any wonder that, having created a worldwide recession, stupid governments without one iota of economic sense are being rejected?
Corruption at every tier of government and in the police is rife. No one has the will to address the problems and ordinary people are fed up enough to choose anything other than Tory, Liberal or Labour – the authors of our economic decline. Growth figures are dependent on property price hikes not the purchasing of goods and services. Of course right wing parties rise during a recession – a recession made more painful by inept political decisions and outright corruption. The only way the Tories can win in Rutland is by fixing elections and it is clear they are prepared to do this at least in Rutland.
martinhoran
Exactly. Who marched to Enoch Powell’s door to congratulate him on his Rivers of Blood speech? It wasn’t Conservative toffs nor the upper class socialists like Tony Benn or academics like Michael Foot. It was a bunch of dockers who marched singing “Bye-ByeBlackbird”. The kind of people Gordon Brown would call ignorant bigots! (And, for once, he would have been right. He was wrong regarding Mrs Duffy!) I merely mention this to show that the “intellectual” left are clueless and arrogant regarding working people.
Sadly, we have a society where people use the term middle- and working-class. I think bourgeios and proletarian are more apt terms–because they are mindsets, not what people earn. Working-class and middle-class is, largely, living on what you earn. I’m in my sixties and have known people with dosh and skint to be utter proles and moneyed and poor folk to be classy.
GhostofJimMorrison
Couldn’t agree more. As I told my local MP today, whatever you might think of UKIP, they’ve given the Labour Party a massive wake-up call. The days of safe seats, it would seem, are long gone, and no party can afford to be complacent. This is a good thing.
martinhoran
Ghandi. Ah yes, the hypocrite who went to S. Africa and complained about Apartheid. Yet he ignored the worst class Apartheid that the world has ever known in his own country. Go and read about the Untouchables. Also check out on-line Ghandi’s “Love Letters to Hitler.” He believed in Hitler’s persecution of the Jews and other ideas the Nazis had. The Nazis even took an old Indian sign (the swastika) as their slogan. Lovey Richard Attenborough missed that stuff out in his hagiographical protrayal by Ben Kingsleigh.