Ukip's leader, Nigel Farage, campaigning
for the European elections. YouGov put Ukip on 31%, Labour on 28% and the
Tories on 19%. Photo: Tom Maddick/Ross Parry
|
Ukip likely to come out top in European elections,
warn Hain and Tebbit
Poll giving
anti-EU party a three-point lead suggests racist candidates and Nigel Farage's
expenses are not harming Ukip
Andrew Sparrow, political correspondent
The Guardian, Sunday 27 April 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/27/ukip-likely-win-european-elections-despite-racism-scandals
Ukip is on course to win the highest share
of the vote in next month's European elections, senior political figures warned
on Sunday, in a result that would be viewed as a collapse of trust in the
political establishment.
With a European election poll showing Ukip
forging ahead, after a week that saw the party involved in a row about a racist
candidate and buffeted by other controversies that would damage conventional
parties, Peter Hain, the Labour former cabinet minister, said Ukip seemed to be
immune from criticism and that he expected the party to beat Labour.
Lord Tebbit, the former Tory chairman, also
said he expected Ukip to make history by becoming the first party other than
Labour or the Conservatives to win a UK-wide election since the first world
war. Tebbit said his party was still paying the price for David Cameron's
decision to brand Ukip supporters "fruitcakes, loonies and closet
racists" eight years ago.
At the weekend, Ukip became embroiled in a
fresh racism row following revelations that William Henwood, a local election
candidate for the party in Enfield , north London , had said Lenny
Henry should emigrate to a "black country" after the comedian and
actor suggested ethnic minorities were poorly represented on British
television.
Asked to explain himself on Sunday, Henwood
chose to repeat the racist sentiment. He told the BBC: "I think if black
people come to this country and don't like mixing with white people why are
they here? If he [Henry] wants a lot of blacks around, go and live in a black
country."
But a European election poll for the Sunday
Times giving Ukip a three-point lead suggests scandals are not causing harm.
The poll was conducted at the end of last week, after a controversy over a
racist local government candidate, Andre Lampitt, and questions raised by the
Times over party leader Nigel Farage's office expenses. The YouGov survey put
Ukip support at 31%, ahead of Labour on 28%, the Conservatives on 19% and the
Lib Dems on 9%. Of 16 European election polls conducted this year, this is only
the second showing Ukip ahead, and the first showing a lead higher than two
points.
Hain said the mainstream political parties
had to recognise that Ukip's success was symptomatic of a wider loss of trust
in politics. "The political class needs to wake up because Ukip are
capitalising on the big anti-politics sentiment that is out there," he
told the Guardian.
"Despite the fact that their
candidates have blamed flooding on gay marriage, called women sluts, and
expressed openly racist and Islamophobic prejudice – some really nasty stuff –
and Nigel Farage has been accused of all sorts of allegations, all of it just
seems to wash off, just like water off a duck's back, because they are the
expression of a deep antagonism to the political class.
"It is really disturbing that they
seem to have developed an immunity to the truth. It's for that reason that I
expect them to be in the lead on 22 May."
Hain said Labour could win, but that it
would be "very hard" and that the party would have to get its vote
out effectively. His analysis was backed by Matthew Goodwin, an associate
professor of politics at Nottingham
University and co-author
of a new book about Ukip, Revolt on the Right. He said that, until recently, he
had expected Ukip to come second in the European elections, but that he had
changed his mind.
"Having looked at the shift in opinion
polls in the last 10 days to two weeks, I think what we are beginning to see is
what we saw at this point before the 2009 European elections and the 2004
European elections, which was a Ukip surge, which always happens late on,"
he said. "My instinct is that they will probably end up ahead at the European
election."
Goodwin said there were two reasons why the
extensive media coverage over recent days of scandals and embarrassments
involving Ukip did not seem to be having any impact on the polls.
"First, the core Ukip electorate are
the most distrustful in British politics," he said. "And, second,
over the last 20 years in European politics, one of the lessons that has been
learned has been that, when it comes to the radical right, the strategy of
condemnation and of ridicule has got us nowhere."
Goodwin added that a Ukip victory in May
would have profound implications. "If they finish second, that raises
awkward questions for David Cameron. But if they finish in first place, that
amounts to an entire rejection of the British establishment's political past."
Tebbit said the party was a "quite
remarkable phenomenon" and that it seemed to be "inured" to
attacks from the media. "On present form, it looks like they will poll the
most votes," he said, claiming the Ukip supporters who commented on his
Telegraph blog constantly referred to Cameron's decision to label them
"fruitcakes, loonies and closet racist" (a claim Cameron has
subsequently retracted) as one reason for their rejecting the Conservatives.
Cameron's jibe was a terrible mistake, the
peer said. "If I were running a retail business, and if I suddenly
discovered that my customers had been walking past my shop and going to a
competitor, I would not stand in the street cursing them. I would go to the
other shop and see what they were selling," he said.
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, said
that the comments from Ukip's Henwood about Henry were "absolutely
disgusting".
While promising to investigate Henwood's
comments, Ukip declined to disown him outright, instead claiming that the party
was the victim of smear campaigns orchestrated by other parties alarmed at
Ukip's success in the polls.
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