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Rivalry on the right: The Conservatives, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the EU issue

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British Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

Multi-party politics alters the dynamics of party competition in Westminster elections. In a case study of the Conservative Party and the UK Independence Party (UKIP), theories of niche versus mainstream party competition are used to examine the strategies adopted by a soft Eurosceptic mainstream party and hard Eurosceptic niche party as they compete on the issue of European integration. These theories are also extended to look at how niche parties react to their mainstream competitors’ strategies. In competition with UKIP, the Conservatives have both developed a distinctive soft Eurosceptic position and defused the EU issue. With Conservative policies diluted in coalition government, UKIP has targeted disillusioned Conservative voters. It has sought to raise the salience of the EU issue and highlight its radical position while also developing a broader narrative. The findings suggest that mainstream parties may adopt more than one strategy simultaneously and that niche parties may react to mainstream parties’ adversarial strategies by emphasising differences and attempting to widen their appeal.

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Notes

  1. Chi-squared tests of the representativeness of the samples compared with the population of the party's general election candidates confirmed that the UKIP survey is representative in terms of gender and region, and that the Conservative survey is representative in terms of gender. Support for the null hypothesis of no difference between the sample and population in terms of region was less strong (p=0.05) for the Conservatives and the sample under-represented incumbent MPs, who made up 15 per cent of respondents but 25 per cent of candidates.

  2. UKIP is not included in the CMP data set for 2005 or 2010, http://manifestoproject.wzb.eu/.

  3. See www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/projekte/manifestos.

  4. The BNP's mean score, close to the centre of the left-right spectrum, arises because some experts place them on the left and others on the far right.

  5. The difference between Conservative candidates’ self-placement and party placement is statistically significant at the p<0.05 level; that between self-placement and party's voters and between party placement and party's voters are significant at the p<0.01 level.

  6. The difference between candidates’ self-placement and party placement is statistically significant at the p<0.05 level; that between self-placement and party's voters and between party placement and party's voters are significant at the p<0.01 level.

  7. www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/2435/European-Union-membership-trends.aspx?view=wide.

  8. The data are available at www.bes2009-10.org/.

  9. In the 1999 survey, salience was measured on a 1–5 scale. The figure quoted here has been converted to a 1–4 scale to allow comparability with the 2010 data.

  10. Data are available at www.essex.ac.uk/bes/BES2001.html.

  11. Data are available at www.essex.ac.uk/bes/.

  12. Some of the decline in salience when comparing the 2001 and 2005 BES data may be due to differences in the question asked. In 2001 voters were asked which was the most important issue ‘in the general election’ while in 2005 the question asked about the ‘most important issue facing the country’.

  13. The difference in means for Conservative compared with UKIP voters is statistically significant at the p<0.001 level.

  14. Only voters who identified Europe/the euro as the most important issue were asked which party they thought could best deal with the issue.

  15. We found a similar trend of increasing leakage from the Conservatives to UKIP by aggregating Ipsos-MORI's monthly political surveys from June 2010 to December 2011 into six month groupings. We are grateful to Roger Mortimore of Ipsos-MORI for providing these data.

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Acknowledgements

Research for this article was supported by the Leverhulme Trust (grant number F/00 212/AD). Philip Lynch would like to thank the University of Leicester for granting him a period of study leave. We are grateful to Gemma Loomes for invaluable research assistance.

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  1. Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK

    Philip Lynch & Richard Whitaker

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  1. Philip Lynch
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Correspondence to Philip Lynch.

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Lynch, P., Whitaker, R. Rivalry on the right: The Conservatives, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the EU issue. Br Polit 8, 285–312 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2012.29

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