This week I voted for my first time, and I hope that I will
be afforded the chance next time to once again participate in the democratic
process of this country. Although the candidate that I voted for did not win,
we must recognise the wishes of the majority, no matter what the result, and no
matter what the consequences. Yet I feel that it is necessary to point out the
performance of the UK Independence Party this weekend, which saw it win 25% of
the vote, stinging the Conservatives where it hurt in, proving that their
centrist, slightly Heathite policies aren’t very popular, and thus led to a fractioning
of the right-wing share in the Tory heartlands, where the majority of seats up
for election were situated.
The UK Independence Party, for all you hermits out there, is
that party which campaigns for a British exit from the European Union, which,
they say, would allow the United Kingdom to be more flexible in terms of
European relations, advocating a trade partnership and restrictions on EU
migrants. Of course, I could write about why all their policies are built on
rhetoric and populist diatribes, why the economy wasn’t wrecked by immigrants
but by bad lending, why we need the EU as a trading partner, how loutish
British expats in Spain are as guilty or more so as Polish migrants here, why
Polish workers would not want to leave Poland which one of the only European countries in economic growth, why a British exit would leave us completely isolated on
the world stage, and how the EU would make sure that our economy was truly
buggered if Britain were to leave. But I have no time for such waffle. Instead,
UKIP is in fact nothing new, both in the practice of voting for a foreign
party, but also how UKIP is merely part of a characteristic that happens when
homogenisation and globalisation itself takes place.
Firstly, we are in a deep recession, people are angry
because immigrants do the jobs that the rest of us wouldn’t dream of doing
nowadays - such as working in Starbucks on minimum wage, in London, where
renting a bedsit for less than £500 per month is a dream too good to be true –
and the British people feel they are entitled to slave away in the same way as
those poor migrants looking to improve their English and have a better life,
whilst serving you a crappy cappuccino. People always like to vent their anger
against the ‘establishment’ when times are tough. Having looked at the election
figures in West Sussex, UKIP did well in the poorest areas of the South East,
just in the same way that the British National Party earned seats in similar
circumstances in the North in 2009. Indeed, we can be a bit more precise: in
tough economic climates, when a government on a particular side of the spectrum
is not being as radical as people expect, people vote for any party that seems
more radical, either to protest against the system or in a genuine sign of
desperation. The correlation between UKIP and the Conservatives, and between
the BNP and Labour, is unmistakeable. And this was especially the case in the
heartlands.
Secondly, what has happened with UKIP is actually a reaction
to something that is inevitable: globalisation and its inevitable
homogenisation. Here is a comparable situation: in Scotland, there is also a
slight correlation between the tradition and nationalism; the middle-class
areas of Edinburgh and the eastern coast of Scotland are fiercely SNP,
especially since the Scottish Conservatives lost all but one of their seats in
the 1997 general election, not to have been won back since. And this has been
when the culture of the United Kingdom has been more and more homogenous; we
shop at the same places, we eat a similar array of food, we drive similar cars,
our jobs are concentrated more and more in one sector of industry. Edinburgh
has been known to be called ‘England in tartan’, while the GDP per capita of
Scotland is 99% of the average GDP capita of the United Kingdom. But the loss
of individual culture within the country this cannot, and will not, be stopped
any time soon. But the story is similar in regards of the popularity of UKIP,
as the United Kingdom is becoming more and more culturally European among many
factors such as the ones comparing Scotland to the United Kingdom. What seems
to be the case is a reversal of the motto of the European Union: ‘United in
Diversity.’ Instead we are being, at least in the short-term, ‘Divided in
Uniformity.’ Even the growth of radical parties is not unique to this country;
France has the Front National and the Front du Gauche; the Netherlands has the
Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders; some Greeks even support the neo-Nazi
Golden Dawn party. The growth of fringe parties, and the resulting coalitions,
is European in itself as those other European nations lack the bipartisan
system that traditionally dominated Westminster politics. Such is the paradox
of politics these days.
What the results of this election today mean is that there
is a change going on in the West that is being strongly felt in this country.
We may feel that this is unique to the United Kingdom as we embrace the 19th
century nation-state complex, and this is perhaps the plan of UKIP. However, the
on-going shift to create at least equilibrium with the Far East means that this
country, if it means maintaining any sort of voice, will have to become part of
Europe, not just politically and commercially, but culturally. The election of
UKIP, in the European social context, is just that.
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