Losing 30 seats and counting – Thursday night and most of Friday have been a nightmare so far for the UK Independence Party. It was not until 12:47 p.m. that the party could claim a single seat in the local elections. “We are victims of our own success but a bright future still lays ahead”, said UKIP Leader Paul Nuttal in a statement as the devastating losses for the party became clear.
The right-wing, eurosceptic party, that was one of the driving forces behind Brexit, has struggled since it got its will. Its prominent former party leader Nigel Farage resigned in July after the referendum. At the end of last year, reports surged that the party likely misused EU funds. The results for the local election are now the next blow for the party.
One reasons for the poor outcome seems to be that UKIP indeed lost its unique selling point. “Its major aim has been achieved and now the party is in an identity crisis”, says Michael Parsons from the University of South Wales, who looked in the past at how other parties responded to UKIP’s campaigning. “It is hard to sell to people that UKIP is still necessary.”
Jonathan Mellon from Oxford University, who has studied the overlap between Leave and UKIP voters as a postdoc, agrees with this view. While in the EU, the possibilities of a reigning conservative party regarding changing immigration laws were restricted to what was allowed within the union. This has changed since Brexit, he says.
“As we are going out of the EU, the Tories can all of sudden make the same promises as UKIP and appeal to their voters. Before Brexit, UKIP was seen as the only credible option for tighter immigration laws”, says Mr. Mellon.
According to Mr. Mellon, the effect of this loss of seats and power in the local election could actually double down in the general elections. He argues that voters might perceive the party not as a true option anymore. An interesting number in this context is that in 2015 UKIP ended up second in 120 constituencies. Labour currently holds 48 of them. If UKIP loses most of its voters to the conservatives, this could mean that Theresa May’s party could win those 48 and increase its lead in the other 72 constituencies.
