Is Nigel Farage simply leading a bunch of renegade Tories that will harm David Cameron next May? Matthew Goodwin disputes the prevailing wisdom

Nigel Farage and the UK Independence party are leading the most significant revolt against the British political class for a generation. To find a revolt as significant you would need to go back to the Social Democratic party in the early 1980s, although even that comparison is not accurate. Led by disgruntled Labour members of parliament, the SDP revolt came from above, led by insider politicians who already enjoyed access to Westminster’s corridors of power. By contrast, Ukip’s revolt on the right is coming from below, led by a small band of genuine outsiders who have no governing experience, no detailed offer for the electorate and an almost kamikaze-style talk of inflicting damage on both the Conservatives and Labour. Yet even so, Ukip is currently winning over more than one in 10 voters and, at the European parliament elections this month, is likely to win over more than one in four.

Ukip, we are repeatedly told, is merely a by-product of enduring Conservative divisions over Europe; a temporary revolt among single-issue Eurosceptic Tories who are animated mainly by their disdain for Britain’s membership of the European Union and Cameroon Conservatism that appears more interested in gay marriage and climate change. Some progressives have also bought into this wisdom, welcoming the Ukip rebel army as a force they can use to bolster Labour’s prospects in 2015. As one senior Labour strategist told me recently, this view remains relatively widespread within the party. But, as Robert Ford and I show in our new book, Revolt on the Right, this insurgency throws up as many questions for Ed Miliband and Labour as it does for David Cameron and the Tories. Those who buy into the portrayal of Ukip as simply a renegade Tory splinter group are very mistaken.

In broad terms there are four reasons Ukip matters for Labour. The first is that our analysis shows quite clearly how the party is capitalising on very deep divisions that should otherwise be benefitting leftwing progressives. It is impossible to make sense of Ukip without first exploring the roots of its revolt. It is not being fuelled by winds that swept into British politics after the 2010 general election. Instead, Ukip is capitalising on far deeper divisions that opened in the 1970s, which have been expanding ever since, and which have widened still further since the post-2008 great recession. This faultline separates those with the skills and qualifications to compete in our global and multicultural society from ‘left behind’ groups who cannot compete let alone get ahead: blue-collar, insecure, anxious and low-educated voters who once sought protection in trade unions and relied on the state for housing.

These left behind groups once enjoyed a commanding majority, and so were often the focus of parties come election time. But since the 1970s they have been left behind by the rapid transformation of our economy and the rise of the new, university-educated professional middle class. Subsequently, they have been cut out of the nation’s political conversation. Labour has had few incentives to talk to these left behind voters about the issues on which they hold a radically different outlook when compared to the middle-class, university-educated majority. The left behind are instinctively Eurosceptic, intensely anxious over immigration, more likely to view national identity through the prism of ancestry, and feel incredibly disillusioned with Westminster politics. In fact, never before has Britain’s working class felt so alienated. Today, a staggering 40 per cent of this group agree ‘strongly’ that they have no voice in government, which compares to just 16 per cent among the middle-class majority. They represent an army of Gillian Duffy voters who have become mere spectators in the battle for middle-class votes and feel entirely ignored.

Farage and Ukip are essentially tearing off a section of the financially insecure, angry and vulnerable left behind and bringing these latent conflicts back into mainstream politics, mobilising a reservoir of potential for the radical right that has existed for decades. In fact, their electoral base is the most working-class electorate since Michael Foot led the Labour party in the early 1980s. There is no ‘Farage-ism’ but there does not need to be. He is simply telling these left behind voters to ‘say no’ to three things they are already instinctively hostile towards: no to Westminster elites; no to Eurocrats in Brussels; and no to immigrants.

A second reason that Ukip matters for Labour is that it has already launched successful incursions into red territory, and will continue to do so. The biggest myth about Farage’s votes is that they come heavily from disillusioned Tories. Yes, it is certainly true that Conservative voters are a big source of support for Ukip, and that remains true today. But, crucially, this was not always the case. Before 2010, during the eras of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, more Ukip voters said they had voted for Labour at the last election. This is what happens when you look at Ukip’s support over 10 years, as we have done, and not just in a handful of polls since 2010; you see how the party can thrive no matter who is in charge.

This raises big questions for Labour. Why are these struggling voters not moving from the Tories to Labour during a period of fiscal austerity and an unpopular incumbent coalition? Why, in an era of falling incomes, rising inequality and insecurities, are the left behind not turning to the traditional defender of redistribution and equality but to an untested band of radical-right amateurs? Why, instead of Miliband, are they choosing a party that is broadly at ease with neoliberal economics, calls itself libertarian, wants to curb welfare and, at the last election, sought to abolish inheritance tax?

This brings us to the third reason that Labour should think seriously about Ukip. Since 2009 Ukip has actually grown fastest among the social groups that traditionally supported Labour. Farage is not becoming more popular because he is widening his reach. Young people, women, ethnic minorities and middle-class professionals continue to avoid Ukip, while they are flocking to Labour. At the same time, we find that among Ukip’s more financially disadvantaged core groups Labour has only grown by around three per cent since 2009, much less than Ukip’s rate of growth. In other words, and in relative terms, Ukip is now growing faster than Labour among blue-collar workers, those with no qualifications, the over-65s, whites and men.

Clearly, this hints at a wider problem facing not only Labour, but our politics more generally. When we track the proportion of left behind voters who say they identify with the two main parties over the past 30 years we are left with a worrying picture. In the 1980s and 1990s working-class Britons and those with no qualifications were more or less ‘locked in’ to our two-party system; most identified with Labour or the Conservatives, though a majority sided with Labour. But during the first decade of this century, the left behind steadily lost faith in Labour, and instead of attaching themselves to the Tories they simply stopped identifying with either of the main parties.

A final message for Labour is that the left behind also tend to be geographically concentrated. This helps explain why Ukip has performed so well in Labour seats, like Rotherham and South Shields, and why Labour majorities in seats like Doncaster North have slumped over recent years. It is in Labour areas where you will find the largest concentration of left behind voters. What we are not saying is that Ukip is going to cause an earthquake in these Labour seats in 2015, as it is impossible to know where Farage will target and work. But what we are saying is that many Labour-held seats contain lots of voters who hold the exact social profile and outlook that we would expect to make them receptive to this revolt on the right. Even if Ukip withered away tomorrow, the divisions that underpin this revolt will remain entrenched for many years to come. The rise of Ukip has opened a window on Britain’s left behind. Labour would do well to take a good, long look.

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Matthew Goodwin is associate professor of politics at the University of Nottingham. He is co-author with Robert Ford of Revolt on the Right: Explaining Public Support for the Radical Right in Britain

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