In the wake of the UKIP conference, I talk about the relevance of the party
As Britain is one of the world’s greatest and oldest democracies, surely it is our right to vote for exactly who we want. We should vote for people who precisely match our own criteria and seem to act on everything we deem important. Well unfortunately, this is an impossibility. Politics is about consensus. Voters and supporters of the United Kingdom Independence Party, aka UKIP, do not seem to realise this. UKIP is not only a testament to the unpopularity of David Cameron and the Conservative Party, but also to the coalition government as a whole. Furthermore, the party proves a fundamental flaw of the First Past the Post system in which we democratically elect our leaders and their respective parties. Not only is it near-impossible for UKIP to ever win a general election; but the very nature of their existence helps their own opposition more than they may ever realise. This demonstrates the nation’s complete frustration with politicians and the ‘Westminster bubble’, but it also suggests that partisan politics is becoming an irrelevant facet of the democracy we live in. We should vote on agendas and priorities; not simply on a traditional stance that does not confront a modern political context.
Now, I could give a million reasons as to why the current government is so hideously unpopular. However this is not the time. Give me a couple of years and you can have a conclusive and definitive list. I’m no UKIP supporter by a long stretch because I am not particularly right-wing (I’m more of a centrist, a typical fussy floating voter) but I can see why certain people have gone from supporting the nasty party to supporting the even nastier party. It is obvious: people want clarity, delivery, sincerity and most importantly, substance. People root for Nigel Farage because they believe that the going has gotten tough and their Tory allegiance been more than tested, and reckon UKIP will deliver the goods. Any sensible political observer, or even enthusiast, will know that even if Farage did become Prime Minister, he would be crippled by both the House of Commons and Lords (possibly less so by the latter) as well as having to face ridiculously harsh scrutiny from the media. Moreover, The Times once reported that in order to achieve what they fully wanted, UKIP’s spending budget suggests having to pull £120 billion out of thin air. This is why they can only really work as a protest vote. If they were ever voted into power, we would all despise them deeply as they give our already damaged economy another brutal beating.
I realise that Nigel Farage knows he will never see the inside of 10 Downing Street. However, he is extremely proud of his party’s growing influence and national significance. UKIP claim to be the answer to the three tier party politics that Britain is currently landed with, with Farage even claiming that by next year they will have more party members than the Liberal Democrats. But fear not, because this doesn’t mean a thing. In fact, UKIP are not bowing to the will of the people or dramatically widening our democratic choice of parties. Ironically, they are actually helping out the party who, ideologically, are virtually opposite to them – Labour. This is a living, breathing example of what we call the ‘spoiler effect’. Simplifying it massively, the more votes UKIP receives in an election, the less the Conservatives get, if we assume that UKIP derives most of its voters from discontented Tory supporters. This is most beneficial for Labour, who as a result of the power of the UKIP protest vote, might just win in 2015’s general election simply for being the least hated, rather than the most popular. It is obvious that UKIP’s influence is growing and seemingly unstoppable, but it doesn’t seem to be generating the results they completely desire. You can argue that their party members are an ‘interesting’ group of people (I suggest you look up Godfrey Bloom’s recent antics if you’re not familiar with them) and make an interesting contrast to the apparent dullness of others in Parliament, however this does not alter the salient facts. UKIP cannot magically acquire voters, they must steal from other, usually right-wing or centre-right parties.
Though I was only just too young to vote on the Alternative Vote (AV) referendum at the time, I was stanchly against it for this reason. With the Alternative Vote, UKIP would garner more power and greater influence, with people perhaps saving their first preference for the Conservatives or Labour, and their second vote on UKIP. The deferral of votes would mean UKIP would seemingly become more popular and even gather more seats in Parliament. Call me conservative, which I definitely am not, but we simply could not allow this to happen. Call me traditional, which I am also not – but we know where we stand with a three-tier party system; fourth or even fifth more extreme parties would be an insult to our democratic right if they had the power to tarnish the integrity of proper, pragmatic, less partisan party politics. Winston Churchill said democracy is the “least worst” form of government, to which I add that First Past the Post is the least worst version of democracy, though its flaws are evident.
