It was the rise of populism in Britain that resulted in the historic moment when the country voted to withdraw from the European Union after more than 40 years of membership. And it all started with the U.K. Independence Party and its leader, Nigel Farage, who took to calling himself “Mr. Brexit.” The party was founded in 1993 and it gained 12.3% of the vote in the General Election in 2015.
Its primary emphasis is on Eurocepticism with lowering immigration, opposing multiculturalism, and encouraging a unitary British identity. Under Farage’s leadership the party capitalised on concerns about the rising immigration which resulted in significant gains in local elections and in the 2015 General Election. Most importantly, they influenced mainstream parties’ policies and agenda, which resulted in the 2016 referendum that led to ‘Brexit’.
However, it seems that they have reached their high water mark with that and now the party is over: Farage quit as leader (several times) and the party’s vote share declined. In the local elections on May 4 2017, UKIP lost all of the 145 seats it was defending, and is currently polling at 6.2%. So does this mean the end populism in Britain? Not quite. The end of UKIP? Probably.
Voters recognize that the Conservatives are much more credible in delivering their promises, and because of the U.K.’s first-past-the-post electoral system they are not going to ‘waste’ their vote on UKIP.
“Ukip was late to understand that if you want to be a full popular radical right party you cannot be a one issue party - you have to widen the narrative. They should have addressed the problem many years ago and they should have developed credible policies on things other than the EU,” says Daniele Albertazzi, Senior Lecturer in European Politics at the University of Birmingham.
“In addition to this they don’t seem to be able to put together a decent class of representatives. People in UKIP are simply not serious and they cannot be taken seriously, I am not sure the reason for this but this is what is happening.”
Although UKIP specifically is going to find it very hard to survive at least in the medium term, Mr Albertazzi believes that populism will not disappear anytime soon.
“UKIP is basically finished but populist radical right is not finished in Europe.They have accessed government and they also have an effect on mainstream parties, you can see this very clearly in the UK where you see the Conservative party fighting an election using the exactly same keywords that UKIP used 10 years ago.”
