Here’s a question for you, the reader. Can you name UKIP’s transport policy? How about education? Justice? Energy? Thought not.
So the next question is – does that matter? Does Farage bluster, a ‘Brexit’ from the EU, and a clampdown on immigration represent a sufficient policy platform for the party? If so, then surely UKIP will remain little more than an exceptionally successful and entertaining pressure group. If on the other hand, you believe that UKIP needs to develop sensible policies across a whole spectrum of issues, they run the significant risk of being ‘just another Westminster party’. That in turn may neutralise their ‘outsider’ brand and confounding the right-wing vote into a messy purple-blue splodge across the political map.
This was demonstrated this week by two conversations on national radio station LBC. Godfrey Bloom– he of the erstwhile ‘sluts’ comment– gave an indignant interview to Iain Dale bemoaning the recent ‘professionalisation’ of UKIP, which has led to him quitting the party. On the same day, James O’Brien harangued one unlucky caller to identify a single positive policy position taken by UKIP. (Both interviews can be found here). UKIP, at some point, will need to address these issues, and decide which party it wants to be – a protest movement or a serious political party. The LBC interviews show that this period of growing up is likely to be painful.
But Mr Farage’s difficulties run deeper than growing pains. Paradoxically, the worst thing that could happen for UKIP is a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. Just as Gordon Brown didn’t know what to do once he’d won the highest office in the land, UKIP will be bewildered and directionless if the UK leaves the EU. A Brexit will leave them with no platform to campaign on, no target to hit and nobody to berate about their ideas for an EU-less future. And even if they cobble together some sort of post-referendum policy platform, the immediate and deleterious impact on business and jobs from a Brexit will be such that their brand will be inevitably tarnished. Of course, they will also be fatally damaged if the result of that referendum is an (albeit unlikely) thumping ‘no’ from the public, conclusively showing that they are out of touch with ‘everyday’ people.
In fact, recent events in Scotland show that the best thing for UKIP could be a narrow ‘no’ vote. The SNP, far from withering as a result of the independence referendum, is reporting burgeoning membership numbers, adding pressure to Westminster policymakers on devolution and setting the scene for another 15-year struggle for independence. But unlike UKIP, the SNP is a party of government, with a costed policy platform covering the whole spectrum of policy issues. That is something UKIP looks upon with envy – but to get there, it will need the focus groups, the media handlers, the pre-scripted speeches and the policymaking apparatus it currently seems to scorn.
So UKIP’s long-term position is a good deal more precarious than Mr Farage cares to admit. They are rightly in celebration mode, having just won their first elected MP and only narrowly missed out on a second. But now comes the trickier test – how to hold Government’s feet to the fire through tested and thoughtful policy ideas of their own, without ending up sounding like they are from the ‘old’ politics or tearing themselves apart. Meanwhile, the more successful they become, the more scrutiny they will attract. Having graduated from being an annoying distraction to a direct threat to the other parties, so Labour and the Tories will be devoting more significant resources to picking holes in their arguments. Mr Farage may still be smiling, but he faces tough tests ahead.