UKIP Party Leader Nigel Farage enjoys a brew following smashing success in the local elections (source: BBC).
It is the definition of irony: Britain’s Tea Party.
No, this isn’t a Monty Python skit where the characters suddenly become aware of the utter absurdity of what they’re presenting and walk out halfway through it.
Quite the contrary, the libertarian-conservative UK Independence Party (UKIP), led by the charismatic Nigel Farage, has rocketed from relative obscurity and the political fringe to national prestige and electoral success, defying past attempts to crush this movement which seeks to upset the isles’ political status quo.
Though UKIP has yet to marshal any members to the UK Parliament, in the 2013 local elections the party received 23 percent of the national vote and won over 140 seats, up from 3.1 percent in the 2010 national election and seven seats in 2009, trouncing the Liberal Democrat’s 14 percent share and falling just short of the Conservatives’ 25 percent and Labour’s 29 percent.
If circumstances seemed like they couldn’t be better for UKIP, they are. In a poll conducted this week, the party ranked as Britain’s most favored political organization, with 27 percent ahead of Labour’s 26 percent and Conservatives’ 25 percent. These numbers forebode well for UKIP’s performance in European Parliamentary elections in May.
Alluded to as Britain’s Tea Party by The Economist, UKIP originated in 1993 for the exclusive purpose of opposing the Maastricht Treaty, which established the European Union. When then-Conservative Prime Minister John Major signed the treaty, thereby making the UK subject to numerous regulations associated with being a part of the European Union, many Conservative party members like Nigel Farage renounced their former party and joined UKIP.
Today, UKIP’s central message still revolves around Euro-skepticism, an ideological force gaining traction elsewhere in the continent. Many of its economic, political, and domestic policy proposals are rooted in bringing legislative control of the country back to the people of Britain from European Parliament. These policies range from bringing 800,000 jobs back to the isle from Europe, ending all green taxes, adopting nuclear power, and securing Britain’s porous borders.
Much like how the mischaracterized, media-rebuked Tea Party grew out of fed-up conservative and libertarians refusing to play ball with the false Republican-Democrat dichotomy, so has UKIP stood against the tri-party grain in Britain. The Conservative party and the two left-wing parties have largely succumbed to the socialist agenda of Europe.
“The sense of frustration the Tea Party feels about the remoteness about the bureaucratic class of the Washington beltway is similar to our frustration with being dealt with by Brussels,” Farage was quoted as saying in a Fox News article.
UKIP’s libertarian political platform has siphoned support from Conservative Prime Minster David Cameron. Farage argues that Cameron’s embracing of nationalized healthcare and changing of the party’s symbol from the flame of liberty to an eco-friendly tree have made him no different from Labour and Liberal Democrat left-wingers.
Party leader Nigel Farage, in a separate question from the opinion poll asking about party leader popularity, trailed Cameron by only five points and was himself five points above Labour Party head Ed Miliband, who as opposition party head should be favored equally to or better than incumbent Cameron.
After nearly being electorally eclipsed by Farage and UKIP, Cameron had this statement to offer for the BBC: “I know that everyone would like to say that it’s just a little short-term, stamp your feet protest – it isn’t. There’s something really fundamental that has happened here.”
This conciliatory sentiment contrasts highly with Cameron’s 2006 castigation of the libertarian challengers as “fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists”. Looks like Cameron and 23 percent of the UK have since wised up and begun to dump the Kool-Aid for some tea instead.
