THE EUROSCEPTIC UK INDEPENDENCE PARTY (UKIP)

Founded in 1993, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) has largely been a one-issue party; working to get Britain out of the EU. UKIP believes that the EU is not only bad for Britain’s economy and prosperity, but it is a system of government that will ultimately prove to be totally unacceptable to the British people. UKIP would replace Britain’s membership of the European Union with a kind of agreement on free trade and co-operation.

The extent to which UKIP are going to take seats in the European elections is undoubted with an estimated 27.3% of voters share which would equate to 18 seats in the EP out of 73 for the UK  (1 out of 4 MEP).

This is because of a general disaffection with the European Parliament and the notion that Europe is somehow restraining British freedom. There is wide-spread anti-EU sentiment both within the British electorate and in parts of Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party. UKIP's success is seen by many as one of the reasons Cameron has promised a referendum on EU membership should he win next year's general elections.

UKIP is making the mainstream parties [sit up and] think about some of the key issues around immigration, around Europe, and around particularly the idea of what British society constitutes.

UKIP surges forward on a wave of anti-EU and anti-immigration sentiment. It claims to be the only patriotic party arguing that other parties aren't patriotic because they've been selling UK  sovereignty out to the European Union.

There has long been a ground-swell of public opposition in the UK to freedom of movement within the EU. Even though the country's economy is showing signs of healthy growth after the recession and unemployment is falling, many still see new labor migrants from Romania and Bulgaria as a threat to jobs at home. This fear, combined with a fear of a loss of “British identity," is fast becoming UKIP's main focus along with its anti-EU stance.

UKIP Manifesto

• Restore British sovereignty, which has been consistently reduced by successive Conservative and Labour governments as they sign up to an increasing number of European treaties and policies.

• Take control of our national borders and impose our own immigration rules.

• Repatriate the many thousands of illegal immigrants who represent a significant risk to our national security and who create a drain on our already over-burdened resources.

• Save £45 million per day currently paid into EU coffers, which can be better spent to benefit our country and protect its people.

• Rebuild our national fishing industry, which has been reduced to almost nothing, with the introduction of a strong fisheries protection fleet to protect our fish stocks. We also need to assist UK Customs & Excise in their fight against the illicit smuggling of drugs.

• Restore our national agriculture and protect the custodians of our precious countryside.

• Develop British democracy by encouraging the electorate to vote on contentious issues through referendums. Government by the people for the people!

• Reduce the oppressive regulation imposed on British businesses and exempt small businesses with less than 25 employees from the present damaging regulations imposed on them.

• Eradicate political correctness and replace it with free speech and common sense.

• Introduce a zero tolerance approach to assist in fighting crime, with effective practical deterrents.

• UKIP is committed to the highest standards of animal welfare in the treatment of animals and for food production

Remarks

One of the most long-standing predictions about the May elections has been that Eurosceptics will do well. From the UK to Greece, Finland to Italy, voices that are critical of the EU and of European integration in general have been on the advance. While that is likely to translate into success in seats, it will be important to remember that such groups will operate under some severe constraints.

Taken together, there is every reason to suspect that Euroscepticism is about to enjoy at least a moment in the limelight, from which it can potentially develop further. However, it is also important to take all of this with a large pinch of salt, since a number of constraints are going to come into play.

The first key limitation will be the European Parliament itself. Over the past couple of decades, it has tightened up its rules of procedure on the thresholds needed to form a group, primarily because it wanted to ring-fence more marginal voices in the hemicycle. The consequence of this will be that Eurosceptics will find it hard to organise themselves.

The key problem will be that the parties likely to have most MEPs, that is UKIP, the FN and the Conservatives, have mutually excluded themselves from working together, which either means three separate groups, or two groups and a party – most likely the Conservatives – sitting as independents.

This matters because an institutionally fragmented set of sceptics will wield less power in the EP’s system of allocating key roles and duties, as well as having less access to institutional support. This latter point has been vital for a series of parties over the years in securing a funding stream to develop their activities in their home country.

All this points to a second area where the impact of sceptics will be weaker. UKIP recognises that it would be political suicide for the 2015 general election to be aligned with a far-right grouping in the European Parliament. So while part of the antipathy between the FN and UKIP is policy-driven, it is also about personalities. A large number of the sceptical parties have strong, charismatic leaders – Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Timo Soini,  etc. – who have built up parties around themselves and who have either implicit or explicit modes of operation that reject working with others.

In many cases, this is about marking their parties out as being different from the rest and offering a genuine place for protest and alternative politics. But whatever the reasoning, it has the result that the culture of building common cause with others will be that much more difficult.

Finally, even if there is more cooperation than in previous cycles, Eurosceptics remain a very diverse bunch. Indeed, it is important to note that it is precisely this diversity that has bolstered the rise of critical voices across Europe. Sceptics are drawn from across the political spectrum, with myriad critiques of the EU and its operation, so to see them as all of a piece would be to miss their differences. In particular, the focus on populism and far-right variants of Euroscepticism – while understandable – is to conflate different things: the green critique of integration lies far from that of a radical right party, for instance.

Eurosceptics are divided by more than what they share in their scepticism. Beyond noting their dislike of the EU, they struggle to agree on why they dislike it and – even more so – what should be done about it.

The upshot is that while sceptics are likely to do well in May, their impact on either the Parliament or the Union more generally will be relatively small, for the reasons outlined above. The real danger will lie in pro-integration elements assuming that this will solve the underlying problems. In that case, 2014 risks looking like a gentle preparation for what is to come in 2019.