Tocqueville, in his classic text “Democracy in America,” makes an important distinction between political parties. Great parties, he tells us, “are those which cling to principles more than to consequences; to general, and not to especial cases; to ideas, and not to men.” Minor parties, on the other hand, “glow with factitious zeal”, are “generally deficient in political faith” and “their language is vehement”; this because “they are not sustained or dignified by a lofty purpose,” so they “display the egotism of their character in their actions.” (Vol. 1, ch. X).
Tocqueville, of course, was writing about the young United States in 1835, but he may as well have been talking about Britain 180 years later. For his timeless analysis offers some clue to understanding one of the most perplexing general elections in recent British history.
The great parties of Labour and Conservative, their battle of ideas broadly defined as one between equality and opportunity, remain locked in a dead heat. The fact that Labour continues to do well even with a leader that most voters think is not up to the job makes Tocqueville’s point for him that it is “ideas” rather than “men” that sustain parties over the long term.
One or other leaders of these parties–Ed Miliband or David Cameron–will be the next prime minister. But swarming around them are the minor parties, including the Scottish National Party–now rampant in Scotland–the Greens, Plaid Cymru the Party of Wales, and the Liberal Democrats (the latter being a minor party that still has the characteristics of a great one, having dominated British politics throughout the Victorian era).
In terms of raw popular support, the most significant of the minor parties is the right wing UK Independence Party (UKIP). Currently the third biggest party, they topped the UK poll in last year’s European elections. They’ve enjoyed notable by-election victories in Clacton and Rochester–both constituencies where the sitting MPs defected to UKIP from the Conservatives. Their core message is simple: Britain should leave the European Union and let fewer immigrants into the country.
UKIP’s “purple revolution” has obvious Tocquevillian aspects to it. The party is all about the “consequences” and “especial cases” of immigration and the “Brexit”. Its leader, Nigel Farage, has no interest in ideas (“I don’t read,” he told one profiler.) The party’s coherence comes directly from the personality of Farage himself, whose “blokish” manner has wrong footed the professional political class while appealing to those who feel alienated by the system. Without him, the party can often look like a home for cranks and surreptitious racists.
At their manifesto launch this week, reporters who asked difficult questions were barracked and physically intimidated by activists–Tocqueville’s “vehemence of language” and “factious zeal.” Farage has said that he will resign as party leader if he fails to get elected as a member of parliament. Without him, it’s not hard to imagine the party imploding.
Under Britain’s “first past the post” electoral system, UKIP will gain just a handful of seats at Westminster. But their influence in this election may be profound, particularly if Farage wins his seat in South Thanet. In strictly electoral terms, any figure over 11 per cent of the vote will see UKIP, currently polling around 14 per cent, eating into Conservative support in key marginals, resulting in the latter losing seats. Put simply, Farage looks set to stop David Cameron achieving an overall majority.
UKIP’s longer term influence is more profound. The party has already changed the British “political weather” in ways that promise more storms than sunshine ahead. The potentially incendiary issue of immigration has moved closer to the center ground of the political debate. Even the Labour party, which allowed free movement of peoples from ten new EU member states when it was in government in 2004, now has “Controls on Immigration” as one of its campaign slogans.
Perhaps most significantly of all, UKIP has made Britain’s exit from the European Union not simply a debating point, but a real possibility. David Cameron is committed to giving Britain a straight “In-Out” referendum on membership if re-elected. Few doubt this move was an electoral strategy to buy off the Euroskeptic wing of his own party and to shoot the UKIP fox. Instead he has fed it red meat. Either way, Britain in 2017 may vote to leave the EU, turning its back on a free market of 500m consumers for its goods and services, and, as Tony Blair pointed out last week, leaving leaders incredulous in capitals such as Washington D.C. and Beijing.
A lasting legacy for a minor party may not always come through the holding of power, but by how successfully it forces a major party to alter course. The Irish Home Rule party did it to the Liberal party at the end of the nineteenth century; the Social Democratic Party did it to Labour at the end of the twentieth.
If David Cameron gets a second term as prime minister, Britain’s relationship with Europe will consume his time and define his legacy. The nation and the Conservative party will be convulsed by the debate. That’s the real UKIP effect. Cameron believes the Purple Revolution is run by “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.” Whatever, the prime minister and his successors may in time come unhappily to concur with Tocqueville’s warning that minor parties “invariably disturb society for no good end.”
