Our UKIP future?

If you were looking for one individual responsible for Thursday’s Brexit vote, you could do a lot worse than single out Neil Kinnock.  It was Kinnock – faced with a wave of working class unrest in the face of a callous Thatcher government – who decided that it was easier to ward off dissent with rule changes rather than arguments.  Beginning the process of disconnecting the Labour leadership from its grass roots, Kinnock lit the fuse than exploded last week.  Kinnock’s reforms paved the way for the war criminal Blair – whose endorsement of the Remain campaign added at least 10% to the Brexit vote.

The harbingers of Thursday’s result were there for anyone who cared to look.  The draining away of the Labour vote (hidden by the lack of a credible Tory party) after the 2001 election.  The rise of the LibDems as a protest vehicle for disgruntled ex-Labour voters in 2010.  The annihilation of Labour in Scotland and the rise of UKIP in the Labour’s former urban and ex-industrial heartlands.  For the most part, Labour MPs had been able to ignore these storm clouds because support among the metropolitan middle classes and the vagaries of the First Past the Post electoral system worked to keep them in office.  But faced with a referendum in which every vote counted, the mass of disenfranchised working class voters took the opportunity to kick the political elite in the only way on offer – Despite the calls of the Labour leadership, the Tory high command, the leaders of big business and high finance, the chose Brexit.

The Parliamentary Labour Party’s (PLP) choice to commit ritual suicide by removing Jeremy Corbyn as leader does nothing to win back the mass of people who voted for Brexit; not least because the PLP is staunchly pro-remain.  Quite rightly, working class voters will see the attempt to change leader as a precursor to ditching the referendum result.  And beyond this, the idea that an already out of touch PLP is going to win seats in constituencies that have long-since ceased being pro-Labour is fantasy.  By removing Corbyn, all they are doing is divesting the party of tens of thousands of metropolitan activists.

In these circumstances, outside Scotland, UKIP is well placed to take swathes of Labour seats in Britain’s most depressed regions.  In this, they will be ably assisted by Boris Johnson who, if he becomes the next Prime Minister, will actively seek to overturn the referendum result.  Johnson’s backsliding over immigration controls; remaining in the single market; and continuing to pay into the EU smack of a betrayal of Brexit voters that is unlikely to be forgiven.

This creates the grounds for an In v Out election in the autumn. 

An election is inevitable given the tiny majority that Johnson will inherit if he becomes leader.  But to heal the division within the Tory party, Johnson will have to back pedal on all of the promises made during the referendum campaign. Labour, under their new leader, will also be fighting on a pro-remain ticket.  But unlike during the referendum campaign, by ditching Corbyn they will have lost many of the activists they depend upon to turn out their voters.

Given the peculiarity of their situation, the Scottish National Party will bolster their support north of the border.  In England and Wales, however, UKIP will emerge as the only pro-Brexit party that voters can rely upon to protect last Thursday’s result.

Close on the heels of such a major political upheaval, it is inconceivable that the Brexit vote is simply going to go back into passivity – staying at home and allowing Labour and the Tories to slug it out.  While the pro-remain vote (already a minority) will be split between Labour, the LibDems, the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the Tory party; the Brexit vote will gravitate to the one party they can be sure will protect the Brexit result.

As we learned in the course of the referendum campaign, jumping up and down and shouting the word “racist” at the top of your voice does absolutely nothing to deter people from voting for a right-wing proposition.  Clearly extolling the virtues of remaining in the EU is not going to work.  Only a serious package of reforms aimed at reversing the growing inequality of the past 40 years can prevent the mass of the working class staying with UKIP.

It is unlikely that UKIP will be in a position to form a government in October.  This said had Britain voted under a proportional electoral system in 2015, we would now have a Tory-UKIP coalition government.  That coalition is a very real possibility in the event of an autumn election… I don’t like it, but I can see no way of avoiding it.