Friday 23 May 2014

First thoughts on the great rush to UKIP

Some years back, one of the fifty seven different varieties of anarchist group that could be found within spitting distance of my then home in Hackney, put out an anti-BNP leaflet, consisting solely of the words "NICK GRIFFIN : POSH TORY TWAT".

There was, I want to claim, a wisdom in that verbal economy. If nothing else, the leaflet's authors recognised that simply running around shrieking "racist" and "fascist" at far-Right politicians is neither effective, nor gets to the heart of the motivations of those who vote for these people. These days, of course, Nick Griffin looks set to be consigned to the electoral equivalent of Hitler's bunker. And yet, the spirit of that anarchist leaflet finds new application. I give you Nigel Farage, former commodity broker, hard-line Thatcherite, and Arthur Daley impersonator:


At the time of writing, UKIP are making gains in Labour's north-of-England heartlands. And it's not just a northern thing. They have won a sufficient number of councillors in Thurrock to shift the council from Labour to No Overall Control. Those who have pointed out that UKIP has a working class electoral base, and those who feared the impact of this for Labour, stand vindicated already.

What to say about this? A few quick things.

UKIP : Racist Eurosceptic Tories

First, Nigel Farage is a racist. UKIP is full of racists. These things are true. Even the Sun thinks they are true. There is no harm whatsoever in saying them. Had Ed Miliband done so, it might have stopped a proportion of people voting UKIP. His equivocation on this basic point is initially puzzling, although not inexplicable (see Lenin here).

As I said a moment ago, mind, crying 'racist' isn't enough, and on its own would be counterproductive. Two other things about UKIP:

They are Eurosceptics. Whilst this, seemingly crucial, part of their stall took a back-seat to their desire to protect Britain from a surge of Romanian ne'er-do-wells in the campaign, it wasn't entirely absent. Witness the  flag poster,



Apart from looking like an album cover by a mid-90s Guns 'n Roses clone band, it's a reminder that the politics of Europe do actually feature in European election campaigns. A good number of people are not terribly happy with the EU. This is not universally because they don't like foreigners, or fear their good honest bacon and eggs being displaced by croissants: there's a sense of power being distant from them, of life being increasingly beyond their control. Now, I'd want to say a lot about this being primarily a result of capitalism, rather than the EU. But the latter is a tool of the former, the EU is not beyond criticism, and opposition to the EU is not intrinsically Right-wing. It's about time the Left started talking more about this issue. As your host suggested a while back.

Also, UKIP are Tories. Massive Tories. Nigel Farage is the economic equivalent of Nigel Lawson on crack cocaine. Within UKIP you'll find support for a flat tax, the dismantling of pretty much all employment protection and trade union rights, the privatisation of anything that moves, and opposition to the NHS. They have succeeded in this election in getting significant numbers of people who would never dream of voting for these policies if advocated by the actual Tories to vote for them. This is partly because their electoral opponents didn't tell the truth about UKIP's policies loudly enough; although, let's face it, it would be hard for Ed Miliband to push the 'arrrggg, UKIP support really bad austerity, which is likely to cause unemployment' line too hard given his own support for quite a lot of austerity. It is also partly because UKIP were savvy enough not to talk about their policies so much as about an out-of-touch political elite governing in their own interests rather than those of their voters. About this they were correct, even if they did carelessly fail to mention that Farage himself is part of said elite.

UKIP voters : neither racists nor stupid

So, then, we have established that UKIP are a bunch of arse. What to be said about their voters? This is surely the kind of question on which the liberal internet will have a subtle, nuanced, opinion. What says it?

Well, first of all. UKIP voters are bigoted, nasty, racist, xenophobic, sexist, homophobes. All of them. For instance:

Not only are there lots, and lots, and lots of convinced Nazis sprinkled throughout the towns and villages of Britain. No, for the panicked liberal narrative, the UKIP gains evidence the stupidity of voters. The brainless masses have come home to roost.

The Huffington post can be relied on usually to come out with this sort of thing; and it does not disappoint. And check this out:
Yes, that's right. Fear for the security of your job, or being in (what gets termed) unskilled work, makes you an excellent target for comedy. There's a strand of class hatred dressed up as progressive values running through the UKIP jokes. This is the 'chav' narrative rewritten for Guardian readers. It reminds me of nothing more than American liberalism, which sees itself as a bastion of educated civilisation against a redneck terror, and as a consequence plays straight into the hands of a populist Right which accuses it (correctly) of elitist metropolitan disdain for the mass of the population.

Making out that UKIP voters are basically just variants on Homer Simpson saves the bother of actually engaging with their fears and concerns, with the feelings of being ignored and of discontent with the status quo. It also avoids tackling the issue of immigration. Because, yes, no small number of people do see immigration as a threat. They are wrong, but they are not all signed up members of the Master Race. The Left can win arguments about immigration - we can talk about the use of low wages to divide workers on the basis of nationality, and we can talk about alternatives based on internationalism, solidarity, and levelling up. But we can't win arguments in which we don't engage. On immigration we've ended up talking only to those who already agree with us, and that leaves rich pickings for the likes of UKIP.


Disillusion versus smug liberalism

 It's an unedifying choice isn't it? But it's one which not a few people felt themselves faced with.

Here be dragons, of course. The Blue Labour wing of the Labour Party - Glasman, Cruddas, and their cronies - will agree with pretty much all of the foregoing analysis. Their solution would, and in the coming weeks will, be the familiar cocktail of Family, Faith, and Tradition. This is a kind of homeopathic remedy for UKIP, a useless, diluted version of the real thing. As an attempt to reassert Labour's identity as a party of the working class  it fails not least because it is premised on ignoring those members of the working class who happen to be, say, women or members of ethnic minorities.

A socialist alternative, based not on getting a bunch of students and caring professionals to stand behind a, "Support Palestine. Defeat the Tories" stall on the High St once a fortnight, but on rootedness and hard work on estates and in workplaces, is really the only way to go. I can't say I'm optimistic, but we need a proper class-based, labour movement. I'll give the last word to Owen Jones,



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