The meteoric rise of UKIP, along with the rapid increase in the politics of blame and fear, might have met their match at the worst possible time.
A couple of months ago, it seemed like Nigel Farage was unstoppable. He'd taken part in his first televised debate, on which opinion polls ranked him as at least a close competitor to the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition. Not bad for a party with just two MPs (both Tory defectors). Remember in 2010, when the Lib Dems were heralded as the second coming, the force that would shatter the two-party paradigm? The Lib Dems are a century old. UKIP were polling lower than the BNP five years ago.
It seemed like nothing could stand in UKIP's way. They have taken advantage of the perfect storm that's been brewing for fifteen years: economic uncertainty, disastrous foreign policy and growing divisions between class, race, and cultures. The media gave UKIP every available platform, sensing an opportunity to proliferate fear and danger. These concepts keep the public buying newspapers daily much more effectively than sunshine and happiness, after all. There must have been some intense conversations in the boardrooms of Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem offices, hushed whispers of the threat this new kid on the block was posing to the cosy way of life these three parties (especially the first two) had enjoyed.
Return to the present day, however, and it seems as though UKIP are flagging at the crucial late stage of the election campaign. Outside of the Daily Express, whose owner recently donated £1.3m to the party, the media has deserted UKIP. Paper talk now surrounds the SNP, who the media have realised pose a realer threat to the establishment than Nigel Farage ever did. Farage has gone from ever-present to barely-there, blaming his own health for a drop in personal appearances.
I live in a Conservative semi-marginal seat that's one of UKIP's biggest election targets. In my five minute commute from home to work, I counted over 20 purple signs and billboards. Leaflets and lettering from the party come through my letterbox in an amount greater than all other parties combined. Farage has paid multiple, personal visits to my hometown for photo ops and publicity appearances. The amount of money and effort they have put into winning this seat must be staggering.
And yet, as someone who sees snapshots of local opinion day in, day out on Facebook posts and pages, popular opinion in this most heavily-targeted of constituencies seems to be on the wane.
Support for them hasn't vanished, by all means. There are still the loyal band of followers that have changed their profile pictures to purple propaganda and never fail to "like" each others' comments. While the hardcore support is valuable to parties, helping them maintain a presence by trumpeting propaganda without any money or effort on their part, they alone do not win elections. UKIP need to convince more undecided voters to pledge allegiance, and on the evidence I've seen in my constituency, they have some way to go.
Political debates on a local Facebook group once swayed between rampant nationalism and a feeling that UKIP should at least stand for something new in Parliament. There was a near-unanimous hatred of asylum seekers, immigrants and the EU. It peaked at about April 23rd; St George's Day, the patron saint of England (as well as agricultural workers, Greece, sheep, skin diseases and the Brazilian football team Corinthians). My timeline filled with nationalist "pride" that manifested itself not through a proud love of the English spirit and heritage, but through a nasty disgust for every other culture that had the guts to enjoy a different way of life. Pictures of bacon butties, a beautifully English snack, were given a sinister subtext with the caption "SHARE THIS IF YOU DON'T CARE WHO IT OFFENDS". In true English fashion, the nation celebrated it's own culture by making a wanking gesture two inches from the face of every other.
It makes me profoundly sad, because there's no reason why April 23rd shouldn't be a cause for celebration. England (and the rest of the United Kingdom) is a nation of resilient, world-leading people. We've been through world domination and world wars, and punched light years above our weight in terms of contribution to world culture, sport and economics from the middle ages to present day. There's plenty to love about Britain, yet people insisted on telling foreigners to fuck off instead.
The point where the popular politics of fear and blame began to stumble, in my opinion, came after the two massive humanitarian disasters that have occurred recently. Sorry, one isn't a "humanitarian disaster". It's a "migrant crisis": the catchy name the media coined to turn 30,000 desperate individuals drowning off the shores of Africa in the last year into a palatable political stick with which to beat the population. These poor souls are fleeing for their lives from Syria, Libya and neighbouring countries - countries we, the West, turned to a destabilised wreck through our catastrophic foreign policy. Women and children perished in their thousands in the stormy Med waters, and continue to do so.
The initial reaction was predictable given the incendiary name the media gave the disaster. Comments on Facebook ranged from half-hearted empathy to a few die-hards who seemed actively pleased all of these people were dead. Politicians of all parties used it as a vile attempt to score points. Ed Milliband provided the biggest hypocrisy of the campaign, pinning blame for the deaths on David Cameron's foreign policy when his potential cabinet contains members of the despicable Blair administration whose own foreign policy wreaked havoc on half the globe and started the fire of destabilisation that brought about this mess.
It was as the initial reaction simmered down that rational viewpoints began to emerge, those concerned more with the human cost than the economic and political one. An EU resolution passed in an attempt to save some of the fleeing migrants, and news of this was shared frantically by those few fanatics with the purple profile pictures. "Look at this!" they screamed into their keyboards, "I for one would like to know where they're going to stay!?" another asked rhetorically. They were in for an unpleasant surprise. Comments slowed to a crawl, with the majority expressing solemnity rather than righteous anger, an understanding that sometimes the politics no longer matters.
UKIP got it's platform and support by convincing us all that the immigrant threat was loud, co-ordinated and intent on taking advantage of our prosperous nation. The pictures of dead children being dragged from Italian beaches that played on our TV screens proved otherwise. The immigrant threat is desperate, panicked and doing whatever they can to cling onto an existence that was already more miserable than anyone able to read this will understand.
Maybe I'm wrong about UKIP in this constituency. Maybe their supporters have just adopted collective radio silence until their political views will be seen as less disrespectful, although that seems unlikely, given how opposed many of them are to the politically correct ideal of being nice to people. By Friday, UKIP could've taken this Parliamentary seat by a landslide (although the latest polls suggest a moderate challenge to the Tory incumbent is about as good as they're going to get).
On the face of it, though, UKIP have been thwarted by the wrath of God himself. Natural disasters have brought concepts such as immigration and asylum - things the English public are told are bad for us daily, but precious few of us have any experience with - a new, humane face. And maybe, if we're lucky, the politics of blame and fear will no longer drive us all.
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