UKIP, They Pick

Prime minister Tony Blair, Tory politicians, and political pundits were all “reeling,” as the tabloids say, from the British results of the European elections and, in particular, from the almost vertical rise of the United Kingdom Independence Party. UKIP had won only 1.5 percent of the national vote in the 2001 general election. Even under the proportional representation used in the European elections, small parties usually poll in the low single digits. And UKIP had been caricatured by its opponents as a kind of Ealing-comedy political party—all squires, vicars, tarts, and assorted eccentrics fighting the election as a jolly good lark.

As it happened, the joke was on the Big Battalions. UKIP scored 17 percent of the popular vote and won twelve seats in the European Assembly. That put it ahead of the Liberal Democrats, Britain’s long-established third party, and only five points behind Labour, which, with 22 percent of the total vote, delivered the party’s worst electoral performance since the 1920s. It was the Tories, however, who were most damaged by UKIP’s rise, even though they came out on top of the poll with 27 percent of the vote and won the largest number of seats. That was a decline of over 10 percent in votes and a loss of seats at a time when the Tories, uniting under an effective new leader in Michael Howard and facing an increasingly unpopular government, should be gaining ground. What gives?

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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Prime minister Tony Blair, Tory politicians, and political pundits were all “reeling,” as the tabloids say, from the British results of the European elections and, in particular, from the almost vertical rise of the United Kingdom Independence Party. UKIP had won only 1.5 percent of the national vote in the 2001 general election. Even under the proportional representation used in the European elections, small parties usually poll in the low single digits. And UKIP had been caricatured by its opponents as a kind of Ealing-comedy political party—all squires, vicars, tarts, and assorted eccentrics fighting the election as a jolly good lark.

As it happened, the joke was on the Big Battalions. UKIP scored 17 percent of the popular vote and won twelve seats in the European Assembly. That put it ahead of the Liberal Democrats, Britain’s long-established third party, and only five points behind Labour, which, with 22 percent of the total vote, delivered the party’s worst electoral performance since the 1920s. It was the Tories, however, who were most damaged by UKIP’s rise, even though they came out on top of the poll with 27 percent of the vote and won the largest number of seats. That was a decline of over 10 percent in votes and a loss of seats at a time when the Tories, uniting under an effective new leader in Michael Howard and facing an increasingly unpopular government, should be gaining ground. What gives?