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In May 2014, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a Eurosceptic and populist party, made history when it became the first party in over a century other than Labour or Conservatives to come first in a UK election. The party gained 24 of the UK’s 73 seats in European Parliament. UKIP was founded in the 1993 by members of the Anti-Federalist League. Throughout most of its history, UKIP only became important once every five years during the European Parliament elections, when their anti-EU campaign became relevant to voters. However, the party has slowly and steadily gained momentum from 1997 onwards, and has managed in the past several years to successfully transition from a single-issue pressure group to a broad radical right populist party and legitimate contender in British elections. This was marked by a series of record results in parliamentary by-elections, a wave of victories in the 2013 local elections, and ultimately in the 2014 European elections. With charismatic leader Nigel Farage leading the way on themes of Euroscepticism, populism, and opposition to immigration, the party has suddenly found itself at the centre of political debate.
The UK has historically been fertile ground for movements thriving on popular xenophobia, Euroscepticism, and discontent with mainstream political institutions. Since the 1960s, large majorities of the British population have been opposed to immigration, and research from the Migration Observatory has noted that over the past 15 years immigration has become one of the most salient issues in Britain.
However, before UKIP, Britain’s Eurosceptic and anti-immigration far right had been characterised by failure and marginality. It had been less well organised and less successful electorally than similar organisations across Europe. There is broad consensus among researchers that the failures of the far right owe much to the agency of parties and movements themselves (i.e. due to failures of leadership, strategy, ability to maintain unity, and ability to shed extremist pasts). Despite the local successes of the British National Party (BNP) over the years in places like Burnley, Dudley, and the London borough of Barking and Dagenham, as well as the two European Parliament seats they acquired in 2009, the party has today collapsed and will likely bear little weight on British politics in the coming years.
In the wake of the BNP’s failure to effectively harness the fertile environment for far right politics, a new form of radical right politics emerged and has posed one of the most successful challenges to the established political parties in modern British history. Though UKIP is not a far-right extremist party, there are considerable overlaps in its policy proposals: calls to end "uncontrolled immigration", the removal of benefits for immigrants, and even calls from some party representatives to deport all immigrants.
Defining features of UKIP supporters
According to a study by British researchers
UKIP has struggled to galvanise support of young people and women. Similar to the BNP, UKIP supporters are male dominated (57 percent male) and ageing groups, often attracting middle-aged or elderly men. 57 percent of UKIP voters are over the age of 54, while just over 10 percent are under the age of 35.
It has never been the poorest in society that support parties like UKIP; voters tend to be spread evenly across skilled workers, unskilled workers, and those dependent on state benefits. Many supporters are in full-time employment.
However, UKIP does remain more working class than any of the main parties. 42 percent of UKIP voters work in blue-collar jobs or do not work at all. 30 percent hold professional middle-class jobs. This is similar to the support base for the BNP, which is 55 percent blue-collar jobs, 22 percent middle-class. UKIP voters are less educated than voters of other parties. 55 percent of UKIP voters left school before the age of 17, with only 24 percent having attended university. Again, this is very similar to the profile of BNP supporters, with 62 percent having left school before the age of 17, and less than 20 percent having attended university.
UKIP voters are diverse in their historical party loyalties, ranging from disaffected and Eurosceptic middle-class Conservatives who supported Thatcher and are today disappointed by the compromises made by the coalition government, to working-class voters, many of whom were once Labour supporters.
There is a varying intensity of attitudes from conservative, to radical to the extreme within UKIP. Though UKIP voters are all driven by a similar set of concerns, some voters and indeed some UKIP politicians, are more hostile towards immigrants, or have made public claims that certain racial groups are superior to others. A YouGov poll in September 2013 noted that 60 percent of UKIP voters are uncomfortable with the idea of an ethnic minority Prime Minister.
As with most radical right forces, there are connections between the radical and extreme, both personal and institutional, as well as overlaps in support base. The English Defence League has professed support for UKIP, despite the fact that UKIP denies any relationship and denounces this affiliation.
UKIP support is thus concentrated amongst those that may be considered to have been "left behind" by economic and social changes. In this sense support for UKIP is not necessarily a protest vote due to political disillusionment, but indicates a very real and new group of electorate that has grown in the past several decades due to divides in the social and economic experiences of the British public. They lack the qualifications for social mobility in a time when public spending and incomes are falling, and inequality is rising.
Drivers of UKIP support: Beyond Euroscepticism
Eurosceptic attitudes are widespread in Britain, and according to Eurobarometer surveys, consistently more so than nearly every other EU member state. Britain has the least trust in the EU among all member states in the last 16 out of 20 Eurobarometer polls.
Though for the average UKIP voter (and, according to Ford and Goodwin, particularly for ‘strategic’ voters), Euroscepticism is certainly the most powerful motive, a Eurosceptic agenda is not their only motive for voting. This is closely followed by political dissatisfaction, opposition to migration, and economic pessimism. Europe has come to function as a symbol of numerous other perceived problems in British society, as well as perceived threats to the nation. This includes the perceived threat of immigration, or loss of cultural identity. Europe is seen to be the source of Britain’s immigration problems, and there are strong perceptions that Britain is at the whim of Eurocrats, who want to rid of national identities and flatten and conform Europe.
Opposition to immigration: jobs and cultural conflict
A core motive for UKIP support is opposition to migration, often founded on perceived prioritisation of immigrant communities in public policy, perceived negative impact of immigration on economic and welfare structures in Britain, and growing perceptions of cultural conflict. Diversity and migration are seen to threaten native groups. Though this anxiety is often enhanced by media and hear-say about migrant abuse of the system and other scandals, in some cases it can be motivated by a personal experience (e.g. having struggled to find a job and seen new arrivals to Britain succeed in finding work). Islamophobia in particular has become one of the strongest drivers of anti-immigrant sentiment, particularly in a post 9/11 climate. Large majorities of UKIP (87%) supporters are convinced that Islam poses a serious danger to the West (again, this is very similar to BNP attitudes, where 85% were convinced of this). Similarly, 64% of UKIP supporters would feel "bothered a lot" by the presence of an Islamic institution in their community, which is over twice the national average (31%).
Unresponsive and out-of touch elites
Britain has, like many European countries, seen a growing sense of resentment of political and social elites. As UKIP supporters are predominantly from the aforementioned new voting group of those ‘left behind’ by economic changes, it is thus unsurprising that surveys and claims by UKIP supporters demonstrate that they also feel ‘left behind’ by a political system run by an elite that is predominantly Oxford and Cambridge educated and entirely out of touch with working-class Britain.
What does the future hold?
UKIP has risen through a combination of successful issue framing: an anti-immigration platform that is explicitly not racist,
Despite that UKIP has gone from strength to strength, it is important to remember that UKIP only connects with one in five voters who are strongly Eurosceptic, and only half of the British electorate who explicitly disapprove of the Britain’s EU membership.
A perhaps unique contradiction in UKIP’s success, different from the rise of other Eurosceptic and anti-immigration parties in Europe, is that UKIP’s growth has taken place under one of the most Eurosceptic and immigration-focused governments in recent British history. It cannot be argued that the mainstream political parties have not addressed immigration concerns or refuse to acknowledge public grievances about the European Union. UKIP’s success will not necessarily shift the political debate in Britain, as Euroscepticism and anti-immigration politics have already been at the forefront.
However, what UKIP’s success has done is twofold: On the one hand, it has pushed the possibility of exiting the EU onto the political agenda in a very real way. Following the May 2014 European elections, Prime Minister David Cameron appointed a new Eurosceptic Cabinet of ministers in July 2014, and has promised to try to renegotiate Britain’s EU ties before holding a referendum on EU membership in 2017.
On the other hand UKIP’s success has signalled the arrival of a new group of the electorate that has been not only ‘left behind’ by social and economic changes but by political elite that do not relate to them and is not looking after their interests. How the other major parties shift their modus operandi to deal with the importance of this portion of the electorate will determine not only the future of those parties, but of UKIP itself.
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