The United Kingdom Independence Party (commonly known as UKIP, pronounced "yoo-kip") is a right-wing political party that aims at British withdrawal from the European Union.
The current party leader is Roger Knapman, MEP for South West England. In the 1990s, Knapman was a Conservative MP and Whip, who lost his seat in the 1997 elections. In the most recent European Parliament elections, the party's profile was raised substantially in April and May 2004 by the surprise candidacy of former Labour Party MP and chat show host Robert Kilroy-Silk, who has brought support from across the political spectrum.
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UKIP has about thirty five local councillors, many of whom are defectors from other parties, two members of the London Assembly (Damian Hockney and Peter Hulme-Cross), and 11 Members of the European Parliament. Their MEPs are:
| East Midlands |
Derek Clark, Robert Kilroy-Silk |
| East of England |
Jeffrey Titford, Tom Wise |
| London |
Gerard Batten |
| North West England |
John Whittaker |
| South East England |
Nigel Farage |
| South West England |
Graham Booth, Roger Knapman |
| West Midlands |
Mike Natrass |
| Yorkshire and the Humber |
Godfrey Bloom |
Ashley Mote was elected as a UKIP member for South East England but has had the whip withdrawn.
UKIP was founded in 1993 from the Anti-Federalist League by Alan Sked. Sked was later to lose the leadership and leave the party. UKIP attracted many from the anti-European right wing of the Tory party, which was deeply split on the European question after the pound was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992. In the 1997 election, UKIP made a fairly poor showing, overshadowed by James Goldsmith's Referendum Party. However after the 1997 election there was an influx of new supporters both from the Referendum Party and from members of the Conservative Party who were impatient at the perceived compromises of the party's position on Europe. This culminated in the 1999 elections to the European Parliament where UKIP picked up three seats and 7% of the vote. In that election, Nigel Farage (South West England) and Jeffrey Titford (East of England), and Michael Holmes (South East England) were elected.
There was a subsequent power struggle with the then leader of the party, Michael Holmes, making a speech which was perceived to call for greater powers for the European Parliament against the European Commission. He resigned first the leadership of the party and then resigned from the party itself in March 2000. There was a legal battle when he tried to continue as an independent MEP until resigning from the Parliament in December 2002, when he was replaced by Graham Booth, the second candidate on the UKIP list in South East England.
The party won no seats in the 2001 general election, nor in the Regional elections in Wales and Scotland despite the latter elections being held under Proportional Representation. This may be partly because the "National Question" is less focussed on European participation and more focussed on the continued link with the United Kingdom.
Although the UKIP's main raison d'être is, without a doubt, the EU, it rejects the notion that it is a single-issue party. Its economic stance is largely similar to that of the opposition Conservative Party and that implemented by the ruling Labour Party since 1997, though it notes that it could offer both increased public spending and reduced taxation through ceasing to pay levies of £2.5bn per annum to the EU. It might then support Free Trade Agreements with the EU, NAFTA and the Commonwealth.
Although a large section of the British public are sceptical of the EU, the party has fared comparatively poorly at the polls until recently. This can be at least partially explained by the ostensibly Eurosceptic positioning of the Conservatives, who have retained support of potential UKIP voters. In any case, small political parties tend to fare badly under the first past the post electoral system.
UKIP tends to portray the EU as an undemocratic gravy train for faceless bureaucrats, a largely French and German-controlled statist conspiracy threatening British sovereignty and the Anglo-Saxon model of free enterprise. One of UKIP's political goals is to break the pro-European consensus among the three established parties, and prevent the introduction of the euro and the adoption of a European constitution. Opponents see UKIP as a hardline Thatcherite party which derives a popular base from the widespread Euroscepticism in Britain, as other characteristic Thatcherite policies (dismantlement of the welfare state, elimination of legal restrictions on big business, unquestioning alliance with the US) have become deeply unpopular among all but a few supporters of the three main parties.[1] (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/ukip-j23.shtml)
UKIP's expectations were high before the European Parliament election, 2004, with a number of opinion polls – starting with one from yougov - showed them on course to beat the Liberal Democrats and pick up a dozen MEPs. These predictions proved accurate with UKIP winning 16.8% of the vote. There was a controversy over internet polls overestimating the UKIP vote, although many traditional face to face polls had underestimated the UKIP vote in the opposite direction. UKIP won seats in eight regions, and came second, ahead of both Labour and the Liberal Democrats, in four regions: South West, South East, Eastern and East Midlands.
The party's profile was raised substantially in April and May 2004 by the surprise candidacy of former Labour Party MP and chat show host Robert Kilroy-Silk. Kilroy-Silk was sacked by the BBC in 2003 for a controversial anti-Arab article [2] (http://www.emjournal.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/aj0021.html) in a national newspaper that third party commentators claimed to be racist and ignorant. [3] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,1121218,00.html)) A number of other celebrities also pledged support to UKIP in this election, adding momentum to its bandwagon. These included the actress Joan Collins, actor Edward Fox, cricketer Geoff Boycott and former racing champion Stirling Moss.
UKIP received assistance in coordinating its 2004 election campaign from Dick Morris, formerly Bill Clinton’s top advisor who has since emerged as an advocate of aggressive US unilateralism and a bitter opponent of the EU.[4] (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1154061/posts)
In the local elections on June 10, 2004, UKIP won its first ever City council seats in Kingston-upon-Hull and Derby, where it now holds the balance of power between the potential control of Labour and Liberal Democrats/Conservatives. In London, an area where UKIP traditionally does badly, two UKIP candidates won seats in the London Assembly via the London-wide list. In the election for Mayor of London which was held on the same day, UKIP's candidate, the boxing promoter Frank Maloney, came fourth with 6.2% of the total vote. In the East Midlands region for elections to the European Parliament, UKIP came within a percentage point of being top of the poll.
The UKIP removed the whip from one of its new MEPs, Ashley Mote on 15 July, 2004 due to a court case involving housing benefit fraud.
The UKIP did not contest either the Birmingham Hodge Hill or Leicester South by-elections in 2004, but it will be contesting Hartlepool.
UKIP's constitution contains an entrenched clause guaranteeing the party's support for a multicultural society, and party rules require all candidates to declare that they have no past or present links with far right organisations.
Despite its stated policies, some critics of the UKIP claim links between it and far-right groups. Aidan Rankin, co-author of the party's manifesto, was once a member of the Third Way, a "moderate" breakaway from the National Front (though he has since repudiated these views). Alistair McConnachie, a former UKIP candidate and National Executive member, was a Holocaust denier, although he was eventually expelled from the party for these views [5] (http://politics.guardian.co.uk/election2001/comment/0,9407,472826,00.html). Other candidates were formerly members of the anti-immigration New Britain Party.
It has been a stated policy of the far-right British National Party (BNP) to "eliminate" UKIP as they perceive that too many potential BNP voters are attracted by UKIP addressing the issue of EU membership. The BNP has attempted to infiltrate UKIP in the past, notably in the cases of Mark Deavin, a UKIP national executive committee member who was exposed as a BNP agent in 1997 [6] (http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/stories/nickgriffin.htm) and John Brayshaw in 2004 [7] (http://www.thisisyork.co.uk/york/archive/2004/02/06/york_news_local20ZM.html). The aim appears simply to have been to damage UKIP [8] (http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=114033).
New electoral support from across the political spectrum seems set to reduce further the importance of these historical links to the extreme right. Reports in the mainstream UK press speculate on when former Labour Party MP and chat show host Robert Kilroy-Silk will take control of the party.
In 2004, 37 MEPs from the UK, Poland, Denmark and Sweden founded a new European Parliament group called Independence and Democracy from the old EDD group. The main goals of this group are to reject the Treaty establishing a constitution for Europe and to oppose further European integration. Some delegations within the group, including UKIP, advocate the complete withdrawal of their country from the EU.
The group's leaders are Nigel Farage of UKIP (11 MEPs), Jens Peter Bonde of Denmark, and Maciej Giertych of the League of Polish Families (Liga Polskich Rodzin, LPR) (10 MEPs).