In March this year, I wrote on this blog a post entitled ‘Will
UKIP Cease to Exist after the EU Referendum?’ I speculated that after the
UK’s membership of the European Union (EU) referendum, whichever way the result
went, UKIP would probably fade away from politics in this country. Getting a
referendum on our membership and then campaigning to leave the organisation was
the party’s raison d’etre and if we voted to stay, the issue would be dead for
years to come. If we voted to leave, then they would have achieved their
objective and their members could safely (re)-join the Tories.
It should be said, they were successful in forcing the
referendum by worrying the Tory government (and MPs) about taking votes from
them in the 2015 general election. This made the then Prime Minister, David
Cameron, promise the referendum within two years of the election. Which, as we
now know, was a fatal error from Cameron, who has now left politics altogether.
In the general election of 2015, as it turned out, UKIP took
just as many, if not more votes from Labour than the Tories, particularly
in Labour's northern heartlands, and the party thought that this trend would
continue, with even their leader, Nigel Farage, talking about standing in a
Labour held seat at the next general election. UKIP’s stated aim was to replace
Labour as the opposition to the Tories, after the 2015 election.
Since the referendum, things have not gone so well for UKIP.
Members have started to drift away and join the Tories, you can read about
three UKIP activists who have made this journey on the Conservative
Home website. The rumours are that thousands of UKIP members have now
joined (or re-joined) the Tory Party. The Tories have stolen UKIP’s grammar
school policy and appear to be heading for an uncompromisingly ‘hard’ Brexit
from the EU, so UKIP seem to be redundant as a political force.
At the beginning of October, UKIP’s newly elected leader,
Diane James, resigned after only 18 days in the job, saying publicly that it was
for personal reasons (politicians always say that), amid talk of clashes with
senior members of the party’s hierarchy.
Last week, two of their MEPs were involved in what was
described as an ‘altercation’, with one, Steven Woolfe, ending up in hospital.
Woolfe has since left UKIP, and will probably join the Tory Party now, which is
reportedly what the altercation was about. Of course, when we leave the EU, all
of UKIP’s MEPs will also be redundant, and the party will be deprived of
substantial funding from the EU. Wealthy donors also appear to backing away
from the party too.
But UKIP have, by and large, kept their opinion poll ratings
in double figures since the EU referendum, until now. A poll
by Ipsos MORI published on Wednesday, only gives UKIP a 6% share of the vote,
so it looks as though the voters are drifting away as well, and probably to the
Tories (who are on 47% in the same poll). It is true though that this polling
company has had UKIP lower than the other pollsters for a while now, but never this low,
for the last couple of years.
Then we had yesterday’s by-election in Witney, the former
constituency of the resigned Prime
Minister, David Cameron, where the UKIP candidate finished behind the Green
Party candidate, polling just 3.5% of the vote, down from 9.1% at last year’s
general election.
It looks as though my predictions from March about the
demise of UKIP are turning out to be pretty accurate. They may not be
completely finished yet, but it is just a matter of time, and they will
probably have largely disappeared by the time we do leave the EU.
As we know, there is a small constituency vote for the far
right in this country, which the BNP have exploited in the past, to some
extent, and UKIP could carry on courting these voters, but the high water mark
for UKIP has passed. The future looks to be of a terminal decline.
Their brand of xenophobia come racism will not be missed.
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