Nigel Farage is outflanking the Tories – and they have no answer
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Version 0 of 1. At the Conservatives’ last conference before the 2010 general election, William Hague issued a rallying cry to the party members. They were, he reminded them, in the oldest and most successful political party in the world. Today the claim sounds less impressive than it once did. The Conservatives have not secured a majority since 1992. They have failed to find peace and discipline on the issue of Europe. A unifying vision of Conservatism feels increasingly distant. And now, remarkably, they are being outplayed by Ukip. The Conservatives are offering a masterclass in how not to manage a radical right insurgency. Far from containing it, they have haemorrhaged support. The scale of the desertion to Ukip is striking. Since 2010, more than one in four Conservative voters have left David Cameron, with more than half going to Ukip. If this continues, Nigel Farage will cost the Tories the general election. This is ultimately a story about political failure, and an intriguing one given the disparity between the two parties. For every one Ukip member, the Conservatives have three. For every £1 Ukip raised last year, the Conservatives raised £10. And while Ukip depends on fewer than 20 full-time staff, the Conservative war room is filled with rows of researchers, overseen by the legendary strategist, Lynton Crosby. So what has gone wrong? The most obvious problem is that because of where the Conservatives started, they had nowhere to go. Their fightback against Ukip began with public and personal ridicule – the gadflies, fruitcakes, clowns and racists. Even Cameron joined in. It was the political equivalent of pouring gasoline on a raging fire. To the average Kipper, Cameron was already a symbol of the Oxbridge-educated, socially liberal and financially privileged political class that has pushed Britain in a direction they find abhorrent and betrayed their brand of conservatism. This is why his personal ratings among voters who are Eurosceptic, anxious about immigration and angry with Westminster have plummeted. With Cameron in charge, most Ukip voters will not return. It really is that simple. Nor have the Tories learned their lessons. On Monday evening, while Cameron talked about reassuring these voters, Boris Johnson was suggesting that they have sex with vacuum cleaners . Some suggest that the strategy is more nuanced and designed to polarise opinion on Ukip: to accept the risk of entrenching its appeal among an (older) 30% while strengthening wider opposition. But this makes no sense. Why push three in 10 voters behind a rival party before one of the most unpredictable general elections in history? Either way, it has been a failure. Recent surveys suggest Farage has become more popular since May. By the time the Conservatives had moved on to policy offers, Ukippers had left the conversation. Those offers include a referendum on EU membership, raising the volume on the net migration target, cutting benefits for EU migrants, and now tweaks to pensions in the hope of winning back Ukip’s older voters, more than one in three of whom are over 54 years old. These are the most distrustful voters in British politics, and they do not think in transactional policy terms. What Conservatives (and Labour) fail to understand is that Ukip’s appeal is as much about a diffuse but intense feeling of unease over the direction and pace of social change in modern Britain as it is about a specific and yearning desire to end immigration, leave the EU or reform Westminster. These voters do not like how Britain is changing, and they loathe politicians even more. This explains their nihilistic quality. In their hearts most Ukippers probably know that they might not get what they want. But some people just want to watch the world burn. This is why it is remarkable to hear Conservatives now talk of neutralising Ukip by stressing the economic recovery. Ukip’s left-behind voters are the least likely of all to have felt the recovery or feel it in the future. Pessimistic and insecure, they are voters who struggled long before the crisis and then got hit the hardest by recession and austerity. They do not share Cameron’s optimism about the economy. Why would they? Throughout all of this Cameron, Crosby and the Conservatives have also underestimated Farage. Like him or loathe him, Farage has evolved into a formidable operator who commands total control of his party. His awareness of Ukip’s weaknesses, growing ability to communicate outside of the traditional political space (for example the Ryder Cup ad ) and refusal to forge a pact with the Tories are his core strengths. Momentum is also on his side. In managing the Carswell and Reckless defections, Farage has twice outflanked Crosby in as many months. And there may be more to come. If the Tories have a containment strategy then Farage is showing it to be woefully ineffective. And for the Conservatives, it might all be too late. |