All big political parties start out as little political parties, but not all small political parties become, or even truly aspire to be, big. UKIP and Respect attracted huge attention at the European and London elections and at the two recent by-elections. They may even have made a material difference to the outcomes. But they are not telling their candidates to prepare for government.
Instead, UKIP and Respect remain utterly fixated on the Tory and Labour parties respectively, trying to attract their members or to influence their policies. They talk about the larger parties all the while with the obsession and the bitterness of a truly messy divorce. The challenge for the Labour party, if Respect and UKIP continue to draw attention, supporters and votes, is to learn how to combat niche parties that do not even aspire to hold the centre-ground of mainstream opinion.
For the time being, there is even the danger of complacency. The extravagantly tanned pair of George Galloway and Robert Kilroy-Silk may actually have been helpful to the Labour party in the Birmingham and Super Thursday elections earlier in the summer. In Hodge Hill, Respect won 1,282 votes. Less than half that number would have given victory to the Liberal Democrats. No one can know for sure which way, if any, Respect voters would otherwise have gone, but the smartest guess (and Charles Kennedy’s) is that it would have been a worse night for Labour.
In the European elections, with their large proportionate element, the results are startling. Together the Greens, BNP, UKIP and Respect scored almost 4.5 million votes, more than the Tory party, the most successful of the ‘big’ parties that night. The Tories, as a result, ended up losing even more European parliament seats than Labour. Finally, the combined Tory and UKIP vote was larger than the Labour vote in three of the London authority constituency seats that Labour won. Losing just one of them would have given opposition parties the power to veto the mayor’s budgets. Again, it would be a mistake to pick out a lesson of complacency there. These small parties demand a closer look.
UKIP’s manifesto is written in saloon-bar code. Britain is ‘crowded’, multiculturalism has ‘failed’, schools are not producing enough plumbers. There is too much political correctness and red tape. The only example given on UKIP’s website of political correctness going too far is the case of a Liverpool pensioner who was arrested for fly-posting UKIP posters and penning his own robust nationalist statements on the wall beside them. UKIP seldom bothers with too much proof for its contentions. It understands that it is talking in code, to prejudice. This party is the natural home for newspaper columnists.
But the jubilation following UKIP’s successes is not making the party look for a major national breakthrough. Instead, it is just giving it more confidence in dealing with the Conservative party. It crows each time a former Tory joins it or when the Falmouth and Camborne Conservative association is suspended for showing a UKIP video. At the end of July, in a press release, UKIP leader Roger Knapman announced that the party might not stand against Tory MPs who admitted that they would like to leave Europe.
What does that mean for Labour? It raises the strong possibility that the Tories will not contest the centre ground at the next election. Following the summer’s elections, the Tories have pulled out Hague’s 2000 strategy book. All its recent policies are soothing, cooing noises to a Middle Britain held to be seething about tax, red tape, political correctness, Europe and the need to obey the speed limit. Perhaps some Tory strategist worked out that adding UKIP votes to the Tories would have quite an effect at the election. That would be the Tory version of Labour’s ‘one more push’ fallacy, thinking that this time it would be enough to galvanise the base vote. William Hague is in danger of becoming the Tory party’s most influential leader.
Again, though, Labour cannot simply wallow in schadenfreude. If the Tories are confirmed in their habit of speaking to their supporters, not the electorate, there are long-term problems for Labour. The nasty ‘culture war’ politics of race and identity issues will have to be countered. The lack of strong opposition raises popular disenchantment with all politics, too. Finally, when we do face the EU constitution referendum, the ‘no’ campaign will be formidably organised and staffed – they will know exactly where their vote lives.
So what of Respect? Will they ever achieve such leverage over the Labour party? The first signs are none too promising for them. The summer’s elections have delivered them almost nothing in the way of representation. The fact that Respect has turned into a George Galloway vehicle is a free gift for Labour. Also, the party has shown a dual tendency to split and embrace extreme voices. If there had to be a populist leftwing party this would be the one to wish for – the body of the Socialist Worker party, with the head of George Galloway.
Again, however, complacency would be wrong. It looks as though the summer elections, at least, allowed Respect to work out where their vote is. Writing on 18 June in the Guardian, Lindsey German identifies Birmingham, Luton, Peterborough, Slough and the East end of London as target areas for the next election. In an interview with Arab Media Watch on 8 June, George Galloway said:
‘We’ll choose the 50 or so seats where we are very strong and where the members of parliament have most atrociously betrayed their constituents. So we’ll, as it were, produce a matrix, and where we’re strong and the member of parliament is a pro-war, pro-Israel activist, then we’ll stand.’
This summer has taught Respect where their vote is. It seems also to have schooled them in the ‘UKIP strategy’ of achieving leverage through pressuring a large party. Both Galloway and German have said that they would not like to stand against a ‘good’ Labour MP – the example they give is Jeremy Corbyn. Their press releases delight in tales of Labour defectors – just like UKIP and the Tories. If they have the discipline to focus their efforts in a few constituencies and the guile to woo the right elements of the Labour party, then there is no doubt that they could make life harder for Labour. Perhaps the greatest risk of all is that they involve the Labour party in a discussion about itself, distracting it from the electorate.
Taken together, what do these two new parties tell us about the shifts in the political landscape? The one policy they have in common is a refusal to make choices according to the world we live in. Both share one mantra: ‘we are the world’s fourth biggest economy’. UKIP uses it to argue for EU withdrawal; Respect to fund limitless state projects. They each think, contrary to all evidence, that they have found the one thing that the British public really cares about: Europe and Iraq, respectively. Clearly, when people say that they care about health, education, crime and tax they are only kidding. Both parties achieve their purity of ideas by addressing few interests and no consequences.
That is the main reason to suspect that they will not prosper unduly at a general election – that, and the first-past-the-post voting system. The Lib Dems have managed to succeed – to an extent – as a populist party that builds representation from local factors (non-conformist traditions, council seats, unpopular MPs). It looks as though that is about to become a very crowded marketplace. The result, after Labour has done all it can, is also in the hands of the electorate, who have repeatedly shown themselves to be very canny when their vote becomes the act of choosing the government, rather than expressing an opinion.