Labour should do anything but take UKIP seriously

There is a small industry developing in articles about why Labour should take UKIP seriously. Here is one, and now, here is another! I do not think Labour should take UKIP seriously.

Why should they? UKIP voters are basically very like Tories. Nottingham University’s politics blog makes an important point here and here, which is that there is a great deal of overlap between BNP voters, UKIP voters, and Conservative voters. In all, 80% of BNP voters were essentially deciding between the BNP and either UKIP or the Tories. Also, the BNP and UKIP were more like each other than they were like any other party.

Eric Forth MP remarked that there were millions of white, middle-class, bigoted people in Britain and they deserved representation, which he endeavoured to provide. Less excitingly, there is a pool of bigots in the UK that sloshes around between the Conservatives, the BNP, and UKIP. A couple of years ago it had sloshed into the BNP. Now it has sloshed into UKIP.

As a result, I am not at all convinced that there is a substantial Labour-UKIP swing-group, but even if there were, would it actually be worth pursuing? People who think UKIP should be taken seriously think that hypothetical Labour-UKIP swing voters should be offered political goods of some sort or another. The problem here is that the social group most opposed to bigotry is basically the Labour activist base. Swapping activists for a few low-engagement voters, at the expense of real political concessions, seems…unwise.

Further, the notional Labour-UKIP voter is someone who is presumably worried about core Labour issues, like wages and public services and unemployment, but who is also a bigot. For some reason, the answer to this is apparently either to appeal to bigotry, or else try to reason him out of the bigotry. The first is undesirable and costly, and how likely is the second?

Apparently the problem is that this (still very hypothetical) chap is expressing inchoate protest, and it’s a pity he’s doing it via UKIP. But if some of the bigots are protesting about basically Labour things like wages, there is a simple answer to this: ignore the bigotry and address the Labour stuff, which is what we ought to do anyway, and which might actually appeal to a majority of the public. This also avoids arguing in conflict with the party’s message elsewhere.

My advice would be “filter the noise, and concentrate on line and length”. This here is sense.

Now, if there is a party which needs to take UKIP seriously, it’s the Tories. UKIP voters are, as previously noted, very much like Conservative ones, the local elections were predominately held in Conservative country, and so were UKIP’s successors. UKIP and Labour are enemies, but UKIP and Tories are competitors. It’s always possible that the bigot pool will slosh away from UKIP again, but assuming it lasts, the Tories have to choose between trying to out-compete UKIP and trying to co-opt it.

They could compete in two ways – directly and indirectly. Direct competition would be to crank up the bigotry, attack the flaky element, and generally engage the enemy more closely. This would basically mean a core-vote strategy, probably losing people off the left edge of the party as much as it gained on the right.

Indirect competition would be to write off the bigot pool and replace it with centrists, perhaps trying to keep the coalition permanently in being or absorb the Lib Dems. In a sense, I wonder if this has already happened.

Co-opting UKIP would be something like the arrangement between the German CDU and the CSU. The CSU is distinctly more rightwing, differently so, and more bigoted. It doesn’t operate outside Bavaria, and the CDU doesn’t operate in Bavaria, and the two function as a permanent coalition in federal politics. UKIP doesn’t represent a defined region, but perhaps it could represent a defined period in time. Rather than representing people living in Bavaria, it could represent people who are living in the past. There are those who would say the CSU also provides this service. This would permit the Tories to hive off some of the embarrassing ones to UKIP, while keeping their votes on confidence and supply.

That said, CSU pols get to run Bavaria, no trivial job, and also to pick up some reasonably important (but usually not first rate) federal ministries. There is no Bavaria for ‘kippers, so presumably they would need to be offered more meat in government. Otherwise, they might end up being more like the National Party in Australia, not much more than a historical oddity and a glorified farm lobby. Perhaps what they really want is devolution, something they usually rail against?