Are Kippers going up in smoke?

The United Kingdom Independence Party – UKIP – should be in their element. The party founded to campaign for the UK to leave the European Union (EU) has succeeded in winning a referendum. Now all they need to do is to win the vote. You would think they would be in their element – like Scottish Nationalists going hell for leather for an independence vote, UKIP should be everywhere, lining up the silent anti-EU majority to rush out to vote on 23rd June.

Not a bit of it. UKIP is muted and lacklustre – and more than a little divided. David Cameron must be wishing he’d had the bottle to hold out against them in the run up to last year’s General Election. Fearing the loss of tens of seats and, therefore, the chance of a Tory Government, he promised to renegotiate the terms of UK membership of the EU and then hold a referendum on whether to stay on the new basis. UKIP tanked (probably not as a direct result) – but Cameron now had to keep his promise to hold the referendum. If he hadn’t panicked, he could have saved so much time – not to mention the air miles.

One sign that it’s not all going swimmingly with UKIP is their website. It’s not unusual for a Party to display its manifesto prominently, as UKIP does – but it’s last year’s one. As we head into the May 2016 local and Assembly elections, UKIP’s manifesto page is headed “The UKIP Manifesto 2015” and goes on to promise what a good opportunity May 7th (the General Election polling day last year) presents.

The “who’s who?” pages display an impressive haul of 22 MEPs – but, of course, only one MP (though there are three Lords too). Nine white men in suits and one woman, the Party’s officers, gaze out from the “key people” page.

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UKIP had been tipped to win seats in the Welsh Assembly – possibly to the extent that would deprive Labour of their majority. The Wales section of the national website does not look like the Party will live up to this promise, with a news release only every few days and photos missing from the list of candidates the most obvious drawbacks.

However UKIP does in Wales, it is unlikely to enjoy high level of support from ethnic minority voters. Gareth Bennett – Chair of UKIP’s Cardiff branch, who also tops the party’s list in the South Wales Central region – has claimed that migrants are “unhygienic” and are responsible for rubbish getting left around some parts of the city. Ironically, a load of UKIP leaflets have recently been found dumped at a rural site near Cardiff. A UKIP investigation concluded that the leaflets had merely been left there by an activist who intended to collect them later and continue to deliver them.

There are internal party squabbles in London too, where one candidate has apparently been suspended after criticising another party member’s homophobic views and the Party has had to expel its London Chair for shouting anti-semitic abuse at another member at a Christmas party.

UKIP has recognised its weakness in Scotland, where it has given up on winning any constituency seats in the Scottish Assembly and is only standing candidates in the “list” section, where candidates pull together votes from the whole of Scotland to win a seat. The Party won just over 10% of the vote in the last Euro-elections in Scotland, which were probably a high point for the Party, which may see its support sink to single figures next month.

Against this background, UKIP leader Nigel Farage has today announced… not a major campaign initiative or a new policy direction, but that he is a bit fed up with some aspects of the Party’s rules. Fararge used an appearance on BBC Radio 4’s morning news programme, Today, to reveal that he made two proposals a “long time” ago. He wanted to reduce the cost of party membership from £30 to £10, and wanted to start making party policy by online votes of party members. He is now frustrated that party officers have not yet implemented his proposals

Is this a sign that Farage has already forecast poor results in May and has given up on the referendum? Some commentators have speculated that he is already preparing to dump UKIP and move on to creating another party, based more on his own personality rather than a single political demand such as “quit Europe”/

UKIP has defined itself far more on the basis of what it is against (the EU) rather than what it is for. If there is a “no” vote in the referendum, UKIP will lose the main policy that keeps it together. If UKIP follows the demise of the Lib-Dems, England could find itself back on the road to two-party politics.

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