Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

The UK's Tea Party?

Pay attention, UKIP might become the UK's third largest party. Then again...

UKIP, The Farage farrago: Chaotic, undisciplined—and exceedingly dangerous for the Tories

THE United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) has come far, chortles Nigel Farage, its leader. Not so long ago, he admits, UKIP was a “hardline protest party” dogged by scandal and monomaniacally focused on ending Britain’s European Union membership. Now, he says, it is a force to be reckoned with and a grown-up party of government. He is half right.

At a time of public hostility to politicians and Eurocrats, UKIP is doing a roaring trade in populist outrage…

Peter Kellner, head of YouGov, a polling firm, says it is quite possible that the party will then come first in the 2014 European elections…

Despite growing Euroscepticism in the country as a whole, Mr Farage intends to use every electoral opportunity to show that UKIP is not a single-issue party. It already champions lower immigration, selective grammar schools and lower taxes, he stresses… The party even claims to be the “third force in British politics”, supplanting the Lib Dems. Some polling supports that assertion (see chart)…

The comparison is inaccurate. UKIP’s growing media profile obscures the complex psychodramas and organisational chaos below the surface. A former adviser describes a hollowed-out structure with few engaged members, opaque finances and little internal democracy…

So far its successes at easier-to-fight European and by-elections have not been matched at general elections. In 2010 it won just 3.1% of the vote; even with an electoral pact, the party would probably secure few—if any—seats in 2015. It has many fewer local councillors even than the Green Party, which, unlike UKIP, is already represented in the Commons.

It is, then, too large and popular to be a mere protest party, but too chaotic and ill-defined to be a viable party of government. For the Tories, this is the worst of both worlds. It is hard to imagine David Cameron going anywhere near an electoral alliance with UKIP, whatever Eurosceptics and fearful activists may want. The jaws of the pincer await.