The "people's revolution" may be slowing down. Flicr/RPM. Some rights reserved.What a difference a year makes. A year ago, in the lead up to the European Parliamentary elections Nigel Farage was proclaiming UKIP to be a “people’s revolution.” At the party’s Spring Conference on February 27 and 28 in Margate, Farage and his team were more subdued. Rather than launching new policy, they used the conference to emphasise discipline. Patrick O’Flynn, UKIP’s economic spokesperson, asked UKIP’s “people’s army” to be “understated rather than hyperbolic.” Without any new policy announcements, analysis of the Margate conference has focused on the party’s “Dad’s Army” delegates. Indeed, with a steady 4 point drop in polls since October, questions abound as to whether the people’s revolution has fallen asleep at the barricades.
UKIP’s narrative has been stated many times before. The major parties, all increasingly similar in their approach to professional politics, do not understand what it is like for “real Britons.” They don’t understand the squeeze immigration places on the community; they want to stay in the EU for their own benefit, not for the people’s. This has created a class of left-behind voters to whom UKIP’s “real talk” appeals. This is, primarily, a group of working class voters, smashed by Thatcher’s neo-liberalism and abandoned by Blair’s New Labour. The line goes that these voters do not recognise the Britain they live in, and UKIP articulates this feeling. This is how populism works. According to Cas Mudde, a populist party aims to distinguish a pure people from the corrupt elite, while framing its policies around the “volunte generale” (general will) of the people. In this way, UKIP’s “common sense” approach to immigration and the EU was specifically designed to connect with the left-behind.
An idealised Britain
UKIP’s focus on immigration has gradually developed, in line with its articulation of a lost British identity that carries distinct collective rights. It was UKIP’s 2005 General Election manifesto that first voiced its support for a “Britishness test.” The manifesto espoused a deep despair at the effect of EU immigrants on British culture. This was matched by concern at the decline of immigrants from Commonwealth countries. And from 2010, UKIP started to formally link this impact on British culture and identity with the degradation of social services. UKIP’s 2010 General Election manifesto describes the effect that increased immigration has on schools, the NHS, overdevelopment, youth unemployment and stagnant wages. It even suggests the environment can be improved by halting immigration, as this will ease demand for construction.
