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Upstart British Party Gains in Local Elections
By STEPHEN CASTLE and ALAN COWELL
LONDON — Britain’s populist United Kingdom Independence Party made sweeping gains in local elections and finished second in a parliamentary by-election, according to results announced Friday, shaking mainstream political parties, consolidating its position as an emerging political force and claiming a “sea change” in national life.
Once scorned by Prime Minister David Cameron as “a bunch of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists,” the party, which wants Britain to leave the European Union and strictly control immigration, gained about a quarter of the vote in a series of votes in different areas of the country on Thursday, according to an initial count. The outcome represented the party’s fourth electoral advance in six months.
“We have been abused by everybody, the entire establishment,” Nigel Farage, the Independence Party leader, told the BBC, “and now they are shocked and stunned that we are getting over 25 percent of the vote everywhere we stand across the country. This is a real sea change in British politics.”
A government minister, Kenneth Clarke, had also dismissed party members as “clowns,” prompting Mr. Farage, in a string of TV and radio interviews, to parry with, “Send in the clowns.”
The results were particularly alarming for Mr. Cameron’s Conservatives, who were pushed into third place in a by-election in South Shields, in northeastern Britain, after the resignation of Foreign Secretary David Miliband. The opposition Labour Party retained the seat, but with a reduced majority.
The Independence Party also won seats in all six county councils that had declared their results Friday morning, giving them a growing platform for elections next year to the European Parliament, in which they could finish first among Britain’s parties. Grant Shapps, a leading Conservative, said the election “has not been a great night for any of the mainstream parties.”
Mr. Farage warned his rivals that his supporters were not going away. “The people that vote for us are rejecting the establishment,” he said, castigating the “metropolitan elite” for failing to respond to what he depicted as Britons’ desire to retrieve British sovereignty from the European Union. “It’s about getting our country back.”
The results, he said, were a vote against the established political parties, which “look the same and sound the same and are made up of people who basically have never had a job in the real world.”
Partly to head off the growing threat from Mr. Farage’s party, Mr. Cameron has already promised to renegotiate Britain’s relations with the European Union, then hold a referendum on whether to stay in the bloc.
He is now likely to face more pressure from euro skeptic lawmakers to introduce legislation promising the referendum after the next general election, scheduled for 2015. That would send a strong signal that the Conservatives are really committed to holding the vote, these skeptics argue.
The elections also marked another setback for the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in Britain’s coalition government. Until the party joined the government, it had been a traditional repository of protest votes, many of which now seem to be switching to the Independence Party.
The party appears to be exploiting a mood of discontent with the political establishment as the economy remains in the doldrums.
The results could also have economic repercussions, analysts said. “The surge in support for the U.K. Independence Party, which campaigns to take the United Kingdom out of the E.U., will work against the efforts of Chancellor George Osborne to attract investment to the U.K.,” Rob Wood, chief economist for Britain at Berenberg Bank in London, wrote in an analysis.
“In last night’s elections for about 2,300 local council seats and one parliamentary seat, U.K. Independence Party popularity seems to have surged,” he added. “The strength of the anti-E.U. vote slightly raises the uncertainty about the U.K.'s prospects of remaining in the E.U. after 2017, which can’t be a good thing for companies thinking about investing in the Britain.”
A leading political analyst, John Curtice of Strathclyde University in Scotland, said the Independence Party had far exceeded pollsters’ expectations, and its message — particularly its call for tighter immigration controls — seemed to have resonated with voters at a time when the British economy was “still in the sick bay.”
“This is frankly a phenomenal performance,” he told the BBC. “We are going to mark this as a historic set of election results.”
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