Burqas, thugs and Brexit betrayal: what's behind UKIP's renaissance?
London: UKIP is back. The nationalist anti-immigration party, which had sunk almost into irrelevance, has polling numbers with a pulse after a long flatline.
Perhaps not coincidentally Boris Johnson is ridiculing women in burqas, a convicted far-right troll has somehow become a poster boy for free speech, and a bunch of thugs wearing ‘Make Britain Great Again’ caps stormed a socialist bookshop in London, shouting “we love Trump”, harassing staff and customers and (reportedly) ripping up magazines.
Meanwhile, the Tory government is locked in an endless civil war over the terms of Brexit, having almost entirely lost the country’s trust, and the Labour opposition is lost in a quagmire of anti-Semitism accusations and counter-accusations.
Other than that, it’s a lovely summer in the UK. A pleasant, warm, sunny slide into political chaos.
Prof Jonathan Portes, from King’s College London’s department of political economy, says UKIP is a symptom, not a cause.
“Both the substance and the handling of [the government’s Brexit deal] has galvanised the hard Brexiteers,” he says. “You now have a substantial faction in the Tory party who see May as having sold them out, a substantial number of MPs and activists who feel betrayed.
“And the second thing going on is the general populist, nationalist, white supremacist and Islamophobic far right that we’ve seen elsewhere in Europe spreading to the UK.”
He points to ex-Breitbart chair and Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon being seen visiting Brexiter Tories Johnson, Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg.
He points to the Tommy Robinson affair – a remarkable amount of attention given to a man who put a trial at risk through ham-fisted, provocative ‘reporting’ aimed at stirring anti-Islam sentiment.
And there was this: UKIP has suspended three party members involved in an attack on a socialist bookshop in London on the weekend.
Twelve people wearing ‘Make Britain Great Again’ caps, with one wearing a Donald Trump mask, entered the shop brandishing ‘goodbye fake news’ placards, ripped up magazines and chanted ‘Trump Trump we love Trump’, ‘f—k Communism’ and ‘traitor’. A video showed them shouting at people in the shop, harassing shopworkers and yelling ‘paedophiles’ and ‘Corbynite scum’.
Labour MP Andrew Adonis said the scenes were “straight out of 1930s Germany”.
And on Monday Boris Johnson was widely criticised over a column in the Daily Telegraph on Monday, in which the former foreign secretary said women in burqas look like letter boxes or bank robbers – and argued that businesses, universities and government branches should be able to ban burqas, though he didn’t appear to support a complete public ban.
On Tuesday Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis told Johnson to apologise - however he has so far refused to, reportedly calling the demand "ridiculous".
Portes says if Johnson took the Tory leadership – a prospect suddenly not as unlikely as it was a month ago – he might be able to align the conservatives under a platform of hard Brexit and standard right wing populism – taking back the UKIP defectors but holding onto the centre.
“He’s obviously trying to market test what he can get away with,” Portes says.
Prof Matthew Goodwin, research director in politics at the University of Kent, is about to publish a book titled National Populism, the Revolt against Liberal Democracy.
He says there’s no doubt UKIP has seen a bump in the polls, doubling its numbers (from a low base) since Theresa May unveiled the government’s Brexit plan (prompting the resignation of pro-Brexit ministers Johnson and David Davis).
“That deal angered a lot of grass-roots conservatives,” Goodwin says. More than half of Conservative voters say they would be open to supporting a right-wing party that was unequivocally committed to Brexit – something they don’t think the Conservatives currently are. Most are very dissatisfied with prime minister Theresa May and want a cleaner break from Brussels than she is offering.
“It is clear there is public appetite for a revolt on the right of the Conservative party. There is a catch: the UKIP of today is not the UKIP that we knew under (former leader) Nigel Farage.”
Current leader Gerard Batten is more interested in Islam, more willing to develop links with groups further to the right (such as Robinson), and is wary of and uncomfortable dealing with the mainstream media.
Farage had managed an alliance of working class voters who cared passionately about immigration, with middle class conservatives who cared passionately about leaving the European Union.
The new UKIP is showing little sign, yet, of being able to permanently attract both types. But it is an increasingly comfortable place for conservatives to park a protest vote.
“This is not a first date, a lot of these voters have gone out with this party before, they might have voted for UKIP at the local or European elections,” says Goodwin. “The Conservatives don’t have the tribal loyalism they once had.”
Portes says once Farage left UKIP, the leadership decided to mimic Europe’s far right – such as France’s Front National, or Italy’s Lega.
Britain hasn’t had 20 years of economic stagnation and corruption to completely discredit the established parties and leave the door wide open to populism.
“On the other hand there is a 10-15 per cent constituency for this approach, and we have had periods in the past in the UK, the mid to late '70s for example, where you had openly racist parties running about level in the polls,” Portes says.
“Is there a constituency for an Islamophobic populist party? Either UKIP, new-UKIP or some new party? Potentially, yes. It would not be astonishing.”
But Goodwin says political movements seen to associate too closely with Islamophobic views are still viewed as highly toxic to mainstream voters.
Public attitudes have changed – but surveys suggest they’ve become more favourable, not less, to immigration since the Brexit vote.
Concern over immigration is still widespread and concern over crime is rising, which both play into right-wing themes.
“But I still think the British are very wary about political parties that look too willing to push those controversial buttons,” says Goodwin.