The Guardian view on Nigel Farage: it’s all about Europe

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/18/guardian-view-on-nigel-farage-all-about-europe

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In the wasteland of electoral defeat, it is the voice that can most authoritatively account for the failings of the immediate past that shapes the debate about the future. That struggle is under way at the moment in all the defeated parties, headed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats. In their cases there is everything to be said for taking this process slowly in the hope of getting it right in a way that will last. For them, the election campaign of 2020 is likely to be fought in a very different context from the last.

For one party, time is not a luxury so readily available. Ukip emerged from 7 May massively stronger in terms of voter support, with almost 4 million votes, but with only one MP, Douglas Carswell in Clacton. The loss of Mark Reckless’s seat and the failure of Nigel Farage to win one meant the Ukip performance was not nearly as strong as seemed possible when it took 27% of the votes in the EU elections a year previously. With a European referendum perhaps only a year away, the party is suddenly facing some hard questions in a hurry.

Leaving the EU is Ukip’s founding principle. But Mr Farage bundled up leaving the EU with a campaign focused on migrant workers from eastern Europe and wider anxieties about the level of immigration to construct a populist anti-establishment movement that at the election probably damaged Labour as much as the Conservatives. Ukip came second in 120 seats on 7 May, perhaps setting it up to break through next time. Of the 20 where Ukip was closest, half were Labour held, a prospect which, after Ed Balls’s defeat, has produced something close to panic in Labour circles.

Yet Ukip is itself in turmoil amid its advances. Part of this is about Mr Farage’s personality. But it is also about priorities and strategies and about the tensions between the inevitable focus on the EU in the referendum and longer-term party prospects. Some in the Ukip leadership think the party could develop in the same way that Marine Le Pen has developed and broadened the appeal of the Front National. That is partly what sparked the spat at the end of last week which saw the exit of Raheem Kassam, one of Mr Farage’s closest advisers, who wanted Ukip to grow into something like a British version of the American Tea Party. Mr Kassam’s departure will help those like Suzanne Evans, the deputy chair and author of the manifesto, who told the BBC that the party should diversify and become more inclusive. On the same programme, Mr Carswell suggested millions of voters who might have backed the party were put off by the Farage rhetoric.

Such critics plainly think Mr Farage is too divisive and unreliable to deliver a majority to get the UK out of Europe in a referendum. Yet he is also a powerful campaigner against the EU when he puts his mind to it. Anti-EU campaigners in the Tory party must also tread a fine line between making common cause with Mr Farage and not letting him hijack the whole thing. It would be easy to be cheered by the fragility of the no campaign. That would be a mistake. It is Ukip that is fragile, not the lobby to get Britain out of Europe.