As we now know, last Thursdays elections (2/5/13) were a major success for the UK Independence Party, and Nigel Farage has been on TV and radio capitalising on it ever since. As well he might.
Although his party's success has been written off as no more than a protest vote and he's been slurred and insulted by David Cameron and Ken Clark, amongst others, he's entitled to make as much hay as he can right now.
Now I confess, I can't stand Farage, and I disagree with his political views almost entirely, but there are a couple of things about him that I think are really interesting.
Firstly, he has a level of authenticity that most other politicians lack. He believes what he says, has thought through his views and can articulate them with a reasonable level of clarity and consistency.
That puts him head and shoulders above most of the government front bench and most of the opposition who are usually parroting the party line using that that particular type of polished phraseology that I like to think of as ‘political vernacular’ that robs them of any semblance of conviction.
In the sense that he's a conviction politician, with a very clear view of what he wants and where he's going, he is far more the heir to Margaret Thatcher than either Blair or Cameron, quite apart from his core beliefs in small state, laissez-faire capitalism.
A second thing is that what he says obviously resonates with a big enough section of society, and these have traditionally been issues that mainstream politicians from across the political spectrum have shied away from addressing. It's good that they can no longer do that.
So the left has not wanted to go anywhere near immigration and the social change that largely working class communities have been experiencing for decades that is the result. Even though the Labour party is starting to have to grapple with this, you can feel the discomfort of senior labour figures like John Cruddas when forced to engage with these issues – it’s very much through gritted teeth.
I think that’s largely because of a disjunction between what we can still consider the working classes and lower middle classes, and the left wing political elite: a disjunction that Orwell noted in The Road to Wigan Pier where the urban, metropolitan, ‘enlightened’ elite find the natural conservatism of many real working class people disconcerting, not to say grating. Gordon Brown’s now legendary dismissal of Gillian Duffy as ‘just a sort of bigoted woman’ is this relationship in vignette form.
The second big issue that Farage raises that the political mainstream would rather he didn’t is obviously Europe. Politicians of all political stripes may now need to address the issue of why we should or should not be in Europe a bit more honestly, although you can already see them trying to interpret UKIP’s success in a way that lets them off the hook.
Up to now the majority of politicians of both left and right have been content to either ignore Europe, treat it as a necessary evil or be actively hostile, but in all cases, the preferred approach has been ‘don’t mention the war’ because it’s so potentially divisive.
Now my view is that for all its flaws, Europe is the only show in town, and aside from economic benefits of being part of that market, we are much stronger as part of a cooperative block than we are on our own. And looking at governance historically, it's clear that the direction of travel is for some decisions to be made at a higher geographic scale and that when this happens, everyone benefits.
Particularly in a world bestrode by giant transnational corporations and scarred by what amounts to financial racketeering driven by a super rich elite, such multinational political entities offer the only realistic mechanism to challenge their power. So in that sense, I think Farage’s anti-European view amounts to breaking the laager.
However, the biggest problem I have with UKIP is that I believe their views are fundamentally nostalgic and rooted in a misinterpretation of post war history. Essentially, they are harking back to something like the 1950s when we were still a 'great' independent power and commanded respect and fear in the world. The point of connection between Farage and Thatcher is the Falklands because that demonstrated, to some people at least, that we were still a great sea-faring nation with a fist class navy and the ability to project power around the world in defence of our interests.
Once again, this view marks the fault line between working and lower middle class people and the left wing elite, because I would guess that the majority of the former supported Thatcher’s approach to the Falklands, whilst the majority of the latter were at least sceptical.
For myself, I support Henry Leech’s analysis directed to Thatcher: ‘if we don’t do it, if we pussyfoot…..we’ll be living in a different country whose word will count for little.’ Swift, decisive military action was utterly critical to our global credibility.
The big problem is that in spite of the headlines and the famous victory, the Falklands really illustrated how far British military capacity and capability had fallen: it was a Heath Robinson, string and willpower affair that we won by the skin of our teeth. We probably wouldn’t have without significant (largely unaccredited) assistance from the French and the graceless acquiescence of the US.
This is skimmed over all too readily by those that want to recruit the mythology for their own purposes, and that includes Cameron’s ‘Thatcher saved Britain’ narrative along with all those who believe we can exist as a powerful independent state politically outside of Europe. Any experiment with doing this will illustrate just what a mirage this view is as both our credibility and economic leverage would drain away overnight.
All of this points up the fact that it well overdue for advocates of Britain being part of Europe to up and make a case for it, instead of just hoping the debate would go away. The problem is that to do that, they need to be much more honest about our diminished position in the world than they would like to be. It means ditching the pretence that we’re still a significant player globally by ourselves; that we ‘punch above our weight’ internationally. It means accepting a lowering of our supposed status and prestige internationally.
This is something that politicians of all sides really do not want to contemplate, partly because it means facing up to these harsh realities and fielding the criticism of being ‘defeatist’, and partly because they fear it will go down like a lead balloon with the public.
Judging by the growing appeal of UKIP, they’re might be right on the latter, but that does not excuse continuing political spinelessness in the face of thier challenge.
