6 - The Identity Conservative Insurgency and the Rise of UKIP

Summary

We examine the emergence of a new party, UKIP, which exploited the new political opportunity presented by growing identity divides, mobilising discontented identity conservatives to secure the strongest electoral performance by a new British party since the 1920s. We unravel the puzzling timing of UKIP’s surge. If immigration rose to the top of the political agenda in the mid-2000s why did it take nearly a decade for a radical right party to fully capitalise on public discontent over the issue? This delay was the consequence of an older reputational legacy from the first wave of immigration. Since Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher, the Conservatives had been seen as the party of immigration control. The Conservatives were able to use this reputation in opposition in order to win over the anxious identity conservatives. But doing so required setting up expectations of radical cuts to immigration, expectations the party was unable to meet once it returned government. It was the collapse in the Conservatives’ reputation for immigration control at the start of the Coalition that opened up space for a new party, space that UKIP rapidly filled as disappointed identity conservative voters abandoned the Conservatives and turned to the radical right.