In an election first, the general secretary of Ukip drew on the bubonic plague to explain the near-total collapse in its vote in last week’s local elections. “Think of the Black Death,” Paul Oakley said. “It causes disruption and then it goes dormant. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Our time isn’t finished.”
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It’s easy to laugh at the inelegant metaphor. Oakley’s prognosis, however, cannot be so jovially dismissed. It’s true that Ukip’s electoral implosion was one of the few clear stories to emerge from a set of local elections that produced a stalemate for the two main parties. However, it would be premature to celebrate the demise of rightwing populism in Britain.
Ukip has undoubtedly had a profound impact on our politics. Without its resurgence five years ago, it is unlikely that David Cameron, worried about leaching votes to his right, would have committed to a European referendum. Even as the party descended into chaos in its wake, farcically cycling through five leaders in just 18 months, it has continued to exert a pull.
It should not be a surprise that the Conservatives have gained the most from Ukip’s collapse. Populism has not withered after the referendum, it has simply migrated. As Ukip has declined, Theresa May’s strategy to ape its populist rhetoric has come into sharper focus. It was not a Conservative party winning over swing voters from Labour that acted as a firewall against Labour success outside London last week – it was one mopping up on its right flank.
On Europe, it has become clear that there is nothing May fears more than cries of betrayal from the right of her party, which could resonate with those who voted to leave, tempting some over to a successor to Ukip. And so she continues to carve out a Brexit policy, such that it is, in the interests of her party rather than the country. The government maintains the pretence that there are no tough choices to make between maintaining access to the single market and having the freedom to diverge from its rules; between taking more control over our borders and avoiding an economic hit. We can have our cake and eat it; May remains wedded to a hard Brexit outside the single market and customs union, regardless of the costs.
On immigration, May has embraced rightwing populism. She has shunned the pragmatism of the public – more than 90% believe immigration is essential but that levels should be determined by economic need – and has clung to an arbitrary target to reduce net immigration that is imposing abject misery on countless lives, from young people raised in Britain, for whom it has become hugely expensive to become settled here, to NHS patients and staff in hospitals where staffing is at dangerously low levels due to visa limits on overseas doctors. Her “hostile environment” has resulted in people legally resident in Britain for decades being denied access to housing, jobs and the NHS.
This is straight out of the populist playbook. A government devoid of vision, with no solutions to the long-term economic shifts that helped sow the seeds for Brexit, is instead laying the blame at the feet of immigrants and people living in poverty. And it is misleading the public about the risks of Brexit. If it is accompanied by significant medium-term economic pain – with forecasts suggesting that areas most affected by deindustrialisation will suffer the most – this risks creating the fertile territory for a far-right nationalist party to capitalise on the justified anger of those living in places where austerity and Brexit have combined to make things worse since the financial crisis.
Dog-whistle populism hasn’t died with Ukip – it has made itself comfortable in the Tory party. In choosing to fuel a “them and us” division, rather than uniting the country, May is jeopardising more than the long-term fortunes of her party – she is putting at stake the tolerant country Britain is today.
