THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION

who find any and all discussion of immigration toxic.
The authors believe, and have consistently argued (3), it is both unfair and
unhelpful to label UKIP as a ‘racist’ party, in a way that would be accurate
for a pariah party like the BNP. Unlike the BNP and the French National
Front, whom UKIP have sensibly shunned, the party does not have
extremist roots. It was founded to get Britain out of Europe, a legitimate
cause. An anti-EU party that campaigns to end EU free movement will
attract both legitimate voices for that cause, and some with more virulent
and toxic motives. The party’s reputation has been damaged by the
frequency with which a minority of parliamentary and council candidates
have made extreme statements. It has acted to expel such voices from the
party, but there is a broad public consensus that UKIP needs to be more
proactive in rooting out those who damage its reputation.
Party leader Nigel Farage spoke of his pride in the number of black
and Asian candidates standing for UKIP as a ‘clause four moment’ for
the party. However, Farage showed questionable judgment in suggesting,
in the spring of 2015, that Britain’s anti-discrimination legislation should
be scrapped. Though Farage’s argument was that Britain had moved on
so much that anti-discrimination legislation was no longer necessary, this
clumsy mis-step, though retracted overnight, is the type of intervention
that risks exacerbating UKIP’s problem in securing trust.
Several other UKIP spokespeople have a strong and consistent
record of speaking out strongly against racial prejudice, including
immigration spokesman Steven Woolfe and the party’s first MP Douglas
Carswell, who made a major speech at a British Future event setting out
why the party rejected the legacy of Enoch Powell. These significant voices
shaping the party’s future identity may be less well known to voters who
don’t follow politics closely
The party should heed their advice that UKIP has much to gain
by demonstrating its desire to be inclusive. UKIP should believe it can
gain much more than 2% of the ethnic minority vote that it gained
in 2015. There is a plausible argument that a significant proportion of
Britain’s ethnic minorities could be natural Eurosceptics, attracted by a
patriotic democratic appeal which values Britain’s Commonwealth links
more strongly than those with Brussels – but they may not vote ‘out’ in a
referendum if UKIP and the broader Eurosceptic movement does not kill
off the perception that its aim is to bring back the Britain of the 1950s,
rather than to forge a confident future outside the EU.
The Survation poll also captures an important nuance: that there
exists a significant middle group of voters who are ambivalent about UKIP.
Several ‘anxious middle’ voters saw positive features in UKIP’s
populist challenge to the mainstream parties, yet they remain
uncomfortable about how UKIP does this, because it risks crossing the line
and failing to keep prejudice out of debates about immigration.
What should concern UKIP supporters about these findings is
that this criticism, that it is bringing prejudice into the debate, is held by
most voters and is clearly not confined to the one in four who are broadly
content with current levels of immigration. Large sections of the electorate,
who would like to see controlled and reduced immigration but without
political debates crossing the line into anti-migrant prejudice, think UKIP
need to do more to observe the boundaries of acceptability. While UKIP’s
own supporters strongly reject negative characterisations of the party, most
20 British Future / The Politics of Immigration