United Kingdom Independence Party Research Articles

The End of the Ethnic Bloc Vote? Ethnic Minority Leavers After the Brexit Referendum

The 2016 referendum on UK membership in the European Union (EU) led to a realignment of voters along their referendum position (Fieldhouse et al. 2021; Sobolewska and Ford 2020). By December 2019, both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party received approximately 80% of their support from voters who had been on “their” side during the referendum (Fieldhouse et al. 2021). Brexit identities were akin to partisanship, with affective polarization and perceptual screening (Sobolewska and Ford 2020; Sorace and Hobolt 2021). Research also traces the Brexit vote to a growing values divide (Evans and Menon 2017), with ethnocentric attitudes found on opposing sides of the referendum (Sobolewska and Ford 2020). The views of ethnic minority voters, as traditional victims of white ethnocentrism, have been seen largely in this debate as the same as the identity of liberal Remainers. However, despite the assumption that minorities naturally would fall on the side opposing white ethnocentrism, the referendum marked the biggest departure from the traditional ethnic minorities bloc vote since 2005, when a substantial minority of Muslim voters deserted Labour over the Iraq War (Curtice, Fisher, and Steed 2005). The Leave side in the 2016 referendum received approximately one third of the votes of ethnic minorities (Martin, Sobolewska, and Begum 2020), despite Leave also drawing a majority of its support from “UKIP-curious” voters (Evans and Mellon 2019) who had voted for or considered supporting the anti-immigrant radical-right United Kingdom Independence Party.

The influence of the United Kingdom Independence Party on english national identity at the present stage

The article analyzes how the activities of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) influenced the development of English national identity in the years leading up to the British vote on Britain's membership in the European Union. A brief history of the creation and electoral success of the party is given. The focus is on the period when Nigel Farage held the post of head of UKIP. The factors that determined the current state of English national identity and its relationship with British identity are investigated. The article explains how the connection between these identities was reflected in the policy of UKIP. The article examines the attitude of the party leadership to the problems of the establishment of English parliament and celebrating St. George's Day in England. UKIP has always been viewed as a haven for the oppressed, disaffected and disillusioned people. This image was used by the party leadership to secure its support in England. Emphasizing the theme of unfair treatment of England by the British government and Brussels and the need to respect specific English national identity bore fruit. By 2014, the largest share of English people began to perceive UKIP as the party that best defended English interests. The strengthening of the existing eurosceptic sentiments in England ensured the decision to end Britain's membership in the EU in the 2016 referendum thereby contributing to the implementation of the UKIP's key mission. Thanks to the active appeal to the English question, UKIP was able to acquire a very significant weight in the British political arena.

Performing right-wing political identities on reader comments pages

Abstract Recent discourse research has examined the rise of right-wing populism. Yet the predominant focus on political parties and politicians means that we know less about how right-wing identities are performed among ordinary people with different degrees of political engagement. This paper examines reader comments pages in three British newspapers, analysing how participants perform, defend and reinforce their political identities in online fora. It traces how supporters of the far-right United Kingdom Independence Party perform collective identities and enact political antagonisms. The conclusions emphasise how online media particularly propitiate the blending of personal and societal discourses, and suggest that the internal dynamics of affordances such as comments pages propel conflict escalation and heighten antagonism.

A flash in the pan: why was UKIP’s electoral achievement so short-lived?

Why did the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) achieve short-term electoral success before the 2016 Brexit referendum but lose most of its support afterward? Where did its constituency go? This paper constructs an analytical framework to explain the electoral fate of UKIP across three dimensions: party ability, voter preferences and institutional constraints. Based on individual level data and case analysis, we summarize the supporting and inhibiting factors that influence the rise and fall of UKIP. The core point is that UKIP used the Eurozone and refugee crises to criticize the policy framework of mainstream parties and governments, and to propose radical responses to successfully attract or mobilize voters. However, the victory achieved through the referendum also weakened the dissatisfaction of voters, thereby reducing the electoral competitiveness of UKIP in taking advantage of new issues that might attract the support of constituencies aroused by Brexit. This rise and meteoric descent for UKIP shows that its base is unstable and its voters are mostly protesters rather than loyalists. The majority of voters who abandoned UKIP turned to the Conservative Party. This can be interpreted in two ways. One is that the mainstream party has been shifting rightward from a nationalistic standpoint; the other is that the right-wing populist movement may affect the mainstream party system to varying degrees.

Populism: Drivers, measurements and protectors

Populism is a fairly young concept. It does not have a single definition, neither does it have a single ideology. Populists can operate in a wide spectrum — from the extreme left to the extreme right. They gain popularity by focusing on issues important to large groups of the population that are avoided by the political elite. In Europe it is immigration issue, in the USA it is the loss of jobs in industry; in Ukraine it is low income, unequal opportunities, unfair distribution of wealth, and corruption. Recently, there has been growing support for populist parties and politicians. Populists, in particular, support traditional social values, nationalism, and oppose immigration. Populists can influence politics, for example, the populist United Kingdom Independence Party initiated a referendum in June 2016 on the UK's membership in the European Union, which resulted in the victory of the supporters of Brexit - the exit of the UK. As Professor Inglehart notes, populism is spreading as a response to the transformation of values, populism expresses a "rollback" from post-materialist values. Populist politicians are unsuccessfully trying to find a solution to the new challenges that have arisen as a result of globalization and the formation of an artificial intelligence society. Thus, Donald Trump's proposals are predominantly xenophobic and authoritarian in nature. Another American politician, Bernard Sanders, notes the solution to the acute problem of economic inequality, but the reforms he proposes are ineffective. In this article, the author try to understand what this phenomenon is, what forms and drivers it has, and most importantly, how populism is measured in Europe and what examples of measurement there are in Ukraine. The results of a study in Ukraine presented in the article make it possible to identify trends of populism growth and find ways to oppose it.

David Cameron’s catastrophic miscalculation : The EU Referendum, Brexit and the UK’s ‘culture war’

The United Kingdom had never been an enthusiastic member of the European Union, with membership mostly based on pragmatism rather than principle, and assumptions about the economic advantages to be accrued, rather than any commitment to political union or supranational governance. However, this lukewarm commitment to UK membership of the EU cooled between 2010 and 2016, both reflected and reinforced by internal developments inside the Conservative Party under David Cameron’s leadership, the electoral threat posed to the Conservatives by the increasing popularity of Nigel Farage’s United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), and a growing perception in many towns and communities that had been ‘left behind’ due to de-industrialisation, Globalisation, and an apparently out-of-touch London-centric liberal elite. These feelings of anxiety and anomie were further fueled by the austerity program imposed by Cameron’s coalition government, which exacerbated the economic and social problems of many citizens and communities in already impoverished parts of Britain.

Constructing the Ideology of the Right-Wing Radical Party in Modern United Kingdom: The Case of the United Kingdom Independence Party

This article examines the update of ideological foundations of the largest right-wing radical party in Britain (and in the whole of Europe) - the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). The subject of the research is the partys programmatic text, Manifesto for Brexit and Beyond, a document that is not limited to the discussion of Brexit alone. This document appeared at the end of 2019 and, despite the frequent change of leadership in the party during 2020, remained the ideological foundation of the organization after Brexit. The aim of the article is to analyze how the ideological base of the right-wing British radical party was formed in the socio-political realities of the initial period after the states exit from the European Union. The paper presents a discursive analysis of the main ideological document of one of UKIP, as well as identifies the ideological positions of British right-wing radicals at the present stage. Since the research is mainly practice-oriented, the main results are presented the data obtained through discourse analysis using to the method of R. Wodak. The data testify the changes that have been taking place in the discourse of the extreme right in Britain in recent years, as well as the prospects for its evolution in the coming years after Brexit. Studying UKIPs discourse, the author concludes that it forms depending on the political, social and cultural conditions that prevail in modern British society, as well as on the general European context. The article also shows how a modern right-wing radical party constructs its discourse using the most painful issues for the society within the framework of political struggle.

Political Reactionism as Affective Practice: UKIP Supporters and Non-Voters in Pre-Brexit England

United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) supporters and non-voters in England participate respectively in forms of engaged and disengaged anti-political activity, but the role of individual, group-based, and collective emotions is still unclear. Drawing upon recent analyses of the complex emotional dynamics (e.g., <em>ressentiment</em>) underpinning the growth of right-wing populist political movements and support for parties such as UKIP, this analysis explores the affective features of reactionary political stances. The framework of affective practices is used to show how resentful affects are created, facilitated, and transformed in sharing or suppressing populist political views and practices; that is, populism is evident not only in the prevalence and influence of illiberal and anti-elite discourses but also should be explored as it is embodied and enacted in “past focused” and “change resistant” everyday actions and in relation to opportunities that “sediment” affect-laden political positions and identities. Reflexive thematic analysis of data from qualitative interviews with UKIP voters and non-voters (who both supported leaving the EU) in 2015 after the UK election but before the EU referendum vote showed that many participants: 1) shared “condensed” complaints about politics and enacted resentment towards politicians who did not listen to them, 2) oriented towards shameful and purportedly shameless racism about migrants, and 3) appeared to struggle with shame and humiliation attributed to the EU in a complex combination of transvaluation of the UK and freedom of movement, a nostalgic need for restoration of national pride, and endorsement of leaving the EU as a form of “change backwards.”

Who Stays and Who Goes: Understanding the Immigration Vote in the 2015 UK General Election

Abstract How do voters choose between a mainstream party and a populist radical right party (PRRP)? Existing research says that PRRP voters share specific attitudinal characteristics, but many mainstream party voters also have these attitudes. Drawing on spatial theories of party competition, voters make their decision to vote for a mainstream party or a PRRP based on their perceived placement of the mainstream party on immigration. Looking at the case of the 2015 United Kingdom (UK) General Election with the British Election Study Panel Survey, I analyse voters that think immigration is the most important issue facing the UK. These are the voters that prioritise the same issue as UK Independence Party (UKIP). The findings show that those who perceive the Conservative Party will reduce immigration are less likely to vote UKIP than those who perceive the Conservative Party will not reduce immigration. This relationship holds even when the respondent is highly Eurosceptic and anti-immigration.

UKİP’İN AVRUPA-ŞÜPHECİSİ TUTUMU VE BİRLEŞİK KRALLIĞIN AYRILIK REFERANDUMUNDAKİ ROLÜ

The United Kingdom continued to question some aspects of the European Union even after becoming a member state in 1973. The country’s uneasiness with the European Union increased significantly in the 1990s, when the European Union member states took significant steps to deepen the level of integration in response to the changing dynamics of the international politics. Never-ending unrest in the country eventually led to the withdrawal from the EU, commonly known as the Brexit, after a decision basing upon a referendum in 2016. This paper analyses the role of the United Kingdom Independence Party in the Brexit process till the end of the referendum of 23 June 2016. The study argues that concomitant operation of the current and historical dynamics produced the result of the Brexit.

Популизм в Великобритании в контексте современного политического процесса

The article analyzes the development of populism in the UK. It is found that, in general, the European Union has experienced three «trust crisis» in the EU institutions over the past ten years, which have also had an impact on the emergence of populism in the United Kingdom. The British vote in the brexit referendum in favor of leaving the European Union was an important manifestation of established populist forces in Europe. Using the methods of comparison and case study, the essence and dynamics of the development of populism in the UK are determined, and the degree of influence of populism on modern British domestic policy is determined. The author concludes that the main support for populist politicians comes from people who are «losers from globalization», who are the key electorate of the Conservative party of Great Britain. The current state of development of populist forces in the United Kingdom is based on the appeal of the Conservative party to the key problems of British society: health, climate change, etc. The conclusion about the continuing triumph of populist forces in the UK is based on the victory of the Conservative party in the parliamentary elections in 2019, when the party's leader B. Johnson actively used the populist narrative in the election campaign. The author also concludes that the electorate is shifting away from the populist forces represented by the United Kingdom Independence Party in favor of the Conservative party. This research adds to the previous knowledge about the development of legal populism in the European Union and, in particular, in the UK, and also allows you to form an idea of the role and place of legal populism in modern domestic politics in the UK.

Responses of European Mainstream to Right-Wing Populism Challenges from the Perspective of the Resilience Concept: Case of the United Kingdom

The article explores how European political mainstream responds to the challenges of right-wing populism and how it effects the resilience of the political system. The British case serves as the empirical material for the article. Focusing on the concept of resilience as a quality of a political system to respond and adapt itself to internal challenges, we use the classification of mainstream strategic responses developed by W. Downs and the analytical tools of historical insti- tutionalism. The article investigates mainstream (Conservative and Labor) strategic responses to the challenges of right-wing populism (United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP) in the UK. The research concludes that the political mainstream is moving from ignoring strategies to mixed strategies, such as cooptation of the UKIP’s program with elements of political and institutional isolation. Such strategies are effective from the electoral point of view, however, they may be fraught with “unintended consequences” affecting the resilience of the whole political system.

The status stratification of radical right support: Reconsidering the occupational profile of UKIP’s electorate

Drawing on Weber’s conceptualisation of class and status as distinct principles of social order, this article argues that support for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) is better understood as a status-based phenomenon than a class-based one. Operationalising status as a function of social distance between occupational groups, we show that whilst class was a poor predictor of UKIP support in 2015, status scores were strongly and negatively correlated to the likelihood of supporting UKIP. The opposite is true for the Conservatives’ and the Labour Party’s electorates, which were still much more strongly aligned on class lines. The effect of status on UKIP preference remains strong after controlling for educational qualifications, suggesting that the status scale taps into a deeper divide than simply an educational cleavage. Moreover, we find that status plays a similar role in predicting the likelihood of voting for right-wing populist parties (RPPs) in other Western European countries as well.

Blurred Boundaries: Some Historical Precedents for Radical Right‐Wing Populism in Contemporary Britain

The last decade has seen a surge of academic interest in radical right‐wing populism, a movement that has drastically altered the political landscape of twenty‐first‐century Britain. Prior to 2016, the clearest sign of the populist radical right's ascendency was the rise of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), the political party which led the charge for Britain's departure from the European Union. In the wake of Brexit and the 2019 General Election, however, the future of the populist radical right in Britain is uncertain, owing to the resurgence of the Conservative Party and the emergence of a “big tent” populist challenger overseen by UKIP's former leader Nigel Farage. This article explores some of the historical precedents for radical right‐wing populism in contemporary Britain, arguing that the ideological roots of UKIP and its ilk are to be found in the radical traditions of English conservatism, rather than the fascistic heritage of the extreme right. It contends, however, that the ideological interests of conservative populists and right‐wing extremists in the United Kingdom have frequently intersected — and that this blurring of the boundaries is likely to continue in future manifestations of the country's populist radical right.

“Ruled Britannia”: Metaphorical Construction of the EU as Enemy in UKIP Campaign Posters

The sweeping tide of populism across the globe has given rise to isolationist sentiments that call for the closing of national borders and a return to nativist roots. This has been most evident in Britain in terms of the controversial vote to exit the European Union (EU) during the 2016 referendum (to Leave or Remain) and more recently with the lead up to a general election and mounting pressure on the government to implement an exit strategy. The most vocal proponent of the “leave” movement was the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), reframing the debate on EU membership in terms of invasion and oppression. This paper focuses on precisely this discursive construction of the EU by analyzing UKIP campaign posters through application of Bhatia’s Discourse of Illusion framework on three levels: historicity (use of the past to justify the present or predict the future), linguistic and semiotic action (subjective conceptualizations of reality made apparent through metaphorical rhetoric), and degree of social impact (emergence of delineating categories through ideological narrative).

'This country is OURS': The exclusionary potential of collective psychological ownership.

Political campaign slogans, such as ‘Take back control of our country’ (United Kingdom Independence Party) and ‘The Netherlands ours again’ (Dutch Party for Freedom), indicate that right‐wing populism appeals to the belief that the country is ‘ours’, and therefore, ‘we’ have the exclusive right to determine what happens. We examined this sense of ownership of the country (i.e. collective psychological ownership [CPO]) with the related determination right in relation to exclusionary attitudes and voting behaviour. Among Dutch (Study 1, N = 572) and British (Study 2, N = 495) participants, we found that CPO explained anti‐immigrant and anti‐EU attitudes, and these attitudes in turn accounted for voting ‘leave’ in the 2016 Brexit referendum in the British sample (Study 2). Additionally, CPO was more strongly related to negative immigrant attitudes among right‐wing Dutch participants, whereas it was more strongly related to negative EU attitudes and voting ‘leave’ among left‐wing British participants. CPO contributes to the understanding of critical contemporary social attitudes and political behaviour.

UKIP Support in Local Elections: Which Factors Play a Role in Determining Electoral Fortunes?

In recent years, a growing body of research has been produced concerning factors driving electoral support for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). In this article, I seek to provide novel insights into factors that drive UKIP support in elections at the local level. Drawing on electoral, economic, migratory, demographic, and crime data from 2004-2016 for all London boroughs, a series of fixed effect panel models are constructed to assess longitudinal effects on UKIP support. Results display rising crime, falling turnout, and falling Conservative party vote share lead to rises in UKIP vote share, while changes in migration rates, economic well-being, size of British population, and Labour party vote share have no meaningful effect on UKIP vote share. These findings show that while perceptions of immigration and the economy may affect voter choice for Eurosceptic, nationalist, and populist parties, actual change in migration and economic conditions have no effect on voter support. Additionally, there is substantial evidence that rising rates of local crime lead voters to seek out parties with a policy platform supporting strengthened criminal justice measures. Finally, UKIP support in local elections is shown to be drawn heavily from former Conservative voters, as opposed to disenchanted Labour supporters.

Austerity Talk and Crisis Narratives: Memory Politics, Xenophobia, and Citizenship in the European Union.

The focus in this paper is on understanding the complex intersections between crises and memory politics in shaping conversations about citizenship through an examination of the two defining crises of our time: the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008 and the migrant crisis in the European Union (starting in 2011 and continuing). The paper looks at these crises as narrative devices that intersect with memory politics in ways that heighten and intensify xenophobic and nationalist anxieties. The paper's discussion is primarily theoretical, complemented with evidence drawn from public statements and policy platforms of three key right-wing Eurosceptic parties in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany (the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), the Rassemblement National (RN), and the Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD).

Роль консерватизма в развитии правового популизма в Европе

The main aim of this article is to analyze the role of conservatism in the political development of the right-wing populism following the UK case. The ideational approach to the right-wing populism, emphasizing the ideological closeness of the Conservative Party and the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) as the British version of the European right-wing populism, allows us to focus on their interactions. On the one hand, conservatism has emerged as an ideological and programmatic resource for the UKIP through the use of the Eurosceptic and anti-immigrant rhetoric, populism, and “playing the referendum card” on the “European issue” in the parties’ competition process. This combination is reflected during the UKIP’s evolution from the Eurosceptic “single-issue” to the right-populist party, while conservatism, trying to move to the center of the political spectrum, has lost its monopolistic position on the right flank of British politics. On the other hand, the reaction of conservatism in response to the establishment of the UKIP as a third force in British politics was expressed in the implementation of the UKIP’s main programmatic element – a referendum on the membership in the EU, which led to the party’s disorientation and the loss of its conceptual basis. The main findings are: (1) dominance of the traditionalist or modernizing line in the Conservative Party determines the limits of possibilities of the right-wing populism; (2) the role of conservatism in the political development of right-wing populism is dual. On the one hand, right-wing populism uses the ideological and programmatic practices of conservatives, on the other hand, it loses its conceptual basis and electoral support when conservatism implements the main elements of its program.

The Swedish dystopia: violent imaginaries of the radical right

ABSTRACTThorleifsson examines the ways in which violent imaginaries of Sweden have been discursively constructed and used by populist radical-right (PRR) parties and actors in contemporary Europe. Based on multisited fieldwork among politicians and supporters of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the Hungarian Jobbik party, this article demonstrates how individual acts of violence are ‘transvaluated’ into violent imaginaries of migrants from Muslim-majority lands. What Thorleifsson terms ‘the Swedish dystopia’ not only entails a message of alarm and warning. PRR actors also use the trope of the Swedish dystopia in their call for action against Muslim migrants and minorities who, they claim, pose an ethnoreligious threat to national identity, security and even (Judaeo)-Christian civilization as a whole.