Nigel Farage's rigid leadership will eventually run its course
Yesterday it was reported that the BBC is being investigated after it showed a 10-year old boy saying he supported UKIP because they ‘get all the foreigners out’. Because of the backlash which now threatens the child, who was identifiable, Ofcom has suggested the broadcaster breached child welfare standards.
This is the first time there has been such explicit vilification of UKIP and its policies since the election. The result of 7 May meant that practically everyone focused on the ‘nasty party’ rhetoric of the Tories; and there hasn’t seemed much point in talking about UKIP since we realised the electoral system was an effective barrier to its gaining real power.
UKIP won 3.9 million votes but only one seat, an undemocratic result by anyone’s standard. In a way, this plays into UKIP’s hands; it has always positioned itself as the victim of an establishment which wants to silence its authentic voice. Nigel Farage has always maintained that his party is treated unfairly, and in this instance it has been.
But what will happen to UKIP now? There was some brief post-election farce with Nigel Farage’s un-resignation and Patrick O’ Flynn’s ugly outburst about the party leader, but on the whole UKIP has been quiet both on new Conservative policies and on analysing it’s own defeat. What’s more, the press seem to have forgotten about it.
So is UKIP about to slide off the scene?
In May 2010, BNP leader Nick Griffin suffered a humiliating defeat in his Barking constituency. A promised election breakthrough by the party never materialised and in 2014 Griffin lost his European seat too. The party unravelled fast; at this election it garnered just 1,667 votes, compared with 563,743 in 2010.
I don’t like UKIP/BNP comparisons in general. The BNP’s reach was never as wide as UKIP’s, and it is much more extreme; until 2010 it had a ‘whites only’ membership policy which was only overturned by a court order. I can see that many UKIP supporters are not racists but vote based on their feelings about the EU; I don’t think the same could be said of BNP supporters.
But the parties are alike in that they came in a surge, from obscurity to the front page, that they polarise people, and that ultimately they promised great things that they could not deliver. The refusal to let Farage go spoke volumes – without him UKIP is too shambling to carry on and the fate of the BNP must have been in everyone’s minds during the few days without him.
But Farage broke a promise – he had always said he would step down if he failed to win in Thanet South – and in doing so he will have lost credibility. A few days after the election, Kent police closed an allegation of electoral fraud in the constituency – UKIP supporters believed the election had been rigged to keep Farage out, but there was no evidence. All this points to the fact that Farage couldn’t quite believe he hadn’t won, and things have become a little hysterical since.
Deputy chairman Suzanne Evans stepped down after being accused of plotting to undermine Farage’s leadership; economic spokesman O’Flynn called Farage ‘snarling, thin skinned and aggressive’ and said his return made the party look like a ‘personalitAdd Mediay cult’.
O’Flynn was right in that it is difficult to see who could take Farage’s place. He has had consistently high approval ratings, topping a YouGov popularity poll in April. He has spent years reciting the spiel of ‘we’re not a racist party, we just have some bad eggs’, and has had ample opportunity to practice it. The party’s rejection of his resignation shows that they know no one else is up to this job, that getting the public to accept a new leader as an ordinary, honest bloke who genuinely doesn’t mean to attract so many racists will be a mammoth task.
Plus, criticism seems to bounce off Farage. This week Douglas Carswell, UKIP’s only MP, accused him of ’employing ‘mean-spirited arguments’ during the election campaign, particularly in regard to comments about immigrants with HIV.
Carswell said that, as a party which ‘didn’t do as well as it wanted’, UKIP needed to ask some ‘awkward’ questions. Farage rejected this entirely, saying that:
“Though many in the Westminster bubble were outraged by my comments about the impact of Health Tourism, and appalled that I mentioned those with HIV as part of that problem, what was clear was that the general public did not share that outrage.”
UKIP is reliant on one man, and that man has zero capacity for self-reflection. The success of Carswell has led Farage to accuse him, essentially, of going over to the other side, of being consumed by the ‘Westminster bubble’ simply for assessing how the party could improve.
This does not bode well for UKIP’s longevity. Add to Farage’s ego the fact that Cameron could well manage to siphon off some of his less right-wing followers with Europe reforms, and it looks very likely support for UKIP will be dwindling by 2020.
This is why seats for UKIP are a price worth paying for electoral reform. A party so rigidly resistant to change will eventually start to look ‘mean-spirited’ even to its own supporters. Meanwhile the UK can say that it truly gave all parties a chance, and that the people in power really are there because the public want them.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
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68 Responses to “Comment: UKIP’s days are numbered”
Rallan
Banter aside, the “unfettered globalized capitalism” is the common theme of protest across every insurgent political party in the developed world. The prescriptions are different, but the root diagnosis is the same. Forget the politics of left/right, the effects of Corporatization and Globalization are fundamentally at odds with human nature and our common instinctive understanding of right/wrong. Soulless efficiency serving a tiny international elite cannot dictate human societies for very long.
It’s only a matter of time before insurgencies start to break through the mainstream political consensus. Whether it’s under the banner of Patriotism or Social Justice, what these insurgencies are really crying out is “Human”.
In my opinion, anyway.
Joe Bloggs
Oh DO dream on!
UKIP is here to stay, and you may as well get used to that fact.
As for staying quiet, what reasons are there for being otherwise until the referendum lead up?
Rallan
You can face whatever you want, but it’s not reality.
Matt
“there hasn’t seemed much point in talking about UKIP since we realised the electoral system was an effective barrier to its gaining real power” – So you think it’s a good thing that 5 million voters (UKIP and Green party) pretty much had their votes count for nothing when they both would have got over 100 MPs under PR just because you personally don’t like UKIP? Please explain to us how this is “progressive” as so many of you on the left love to boast, and you even admit this is undemocratic. It seems that when it suits you, just like the EU, you do not appreciate the idea of democracy.
Are you admitting also that the media was on an anti-UKIP overdrive because the election was coming up but are now quiet because there’s no reason to attack them at the moment?
“Deputy chairman Suzanne Evans stepped down after being accused of plotting to undermine Farage’s leadership” – This is factually incorrect. Her contract as head of policy ran out because this is AFTER the general election. No doubt she will be invoved in the next one. She is still deputy chairman, she hasn’t stepped down. Get your facts right.
UKIP are not gone, they will be back and in greater force the sooner the referendum approaches and after. And if Britain votes to stay in the EU, it will be the biggest mistake this country will make because the EU has it’s days numbered, as did the Soviet Union, my fear is that it will cause more pain to the people of this country when this happens.
damon
I agree that Ukip may well be finished. It takes a lot to get the amount of votes that they did and it’s even harder to maintain that momentum. And they are not a very professional organisation, although not being slick is part of their attraction too.
They could loose all their energy and power, but that doesn’t mean that the grumbling mood that underlies the surge of support for them will go away. It will just go back to the margins again.
Because there is real and genuine dissatisfaction with the political process and the spin machines of the main parties. I should be a Labour voter, but I can’t stand the parliamentary party.
And Andy Burnham is part of it. All that ”24 hours to save the NHS” crap they’re always going on about.
Only really looking to win the maths in the marginal constituencies.
Because we lived under Labour all those years with Tony Blair. Not much changes. It’s a hard nosed capitalist society and that’s the end of it. Employment agencies offering wages barely above minimum wage, and competing with loads of young fit migrants for manual work. If you’re fifty and just a glorified labourer like a van driver or a warehouse worker, you may well not be as attractive to employers as bright young new migrants who have come all the way from Poland just to work in your town’s factory or distribution centre.
Not a sniff of a trades union and proper wage negotiations. You take what’s offered or try to remain on the dole – which is pretty impossible for long as you will be hounded and sanctioned off it.
And then what the left do …… what the likes of Owen Jones does – they deny realities like those shown on Benefits Street exist at all, and call it poverty porn and lies. That there aren’t really streets in Birmingham and Stockton that are like those one shown in the TV show.
So people end up thinking ”F the left wingers – I’m voting for Nigel”.
That’s how I see it anyway. They may be finished though.