LONDON: Britain’s anti-EU UKIP party has made its strongest ever gains in local elections, harnessing discontent with immigration and established politicians to grab support from Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives and the opposition Labour party.
The gains by the UK Independence Party, which wants Britain to leave the EU, will pile pressure on Cameron to toughen his stance on Europe and alarm some Conservatives who worry UKIP could scupper their hopes of winning the 2015 national election.
If the trend indicated by partial results is mirrored in elections to the European Parliament, also held on Thursday in Britain, the votes mark the biggest electoral triumph to date for UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage.
A former commodities trader who often poses with a pint of beer in his hand and a cigarette in his mouth, Farage styles himself as the antidote to Britain’s established politicians whom he accuses of ignoring voter concerns about everything from immigration and the EU to the price of alcohol and crime.
Farage said the results felt as if the “UKIP fox was in the Westminster hen house” and promised to go all out to try to win seats in the British parliament in next year’s national election, a target polls have so far indicated is unlikely.
“Really good solid performance from UKIP and right across the country. That’s the really interesting thing: in big Tory areas, in big Labour areas we are scoring consistently up in the high 20 percents,” Farage said on national television.
On a walkaround in Essex, a traditional Conservative heartland in southeast England where late Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher was once popular, Farage was greeted as a hero before heading for a pub where he pulled his own pint of beer.
“The whole country has had enough of the political elite running it and it is a much needed change,” John Allen, a 41-year-old taxi driver who voted UKIP, told Reuters in Thurrock in Essex. “I have just had enough (of the main parties). They all sing from the same hymn sheet.”
Partial results from over a third of English councils showed UKIP won 91 new seats. Labour won 132 new seats, the Conservatives lost 118 and the Liberal Democrats lost 116. Cameron once called UKIP a party of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” and some of the party’s members have been scolded for a series of racist, sexist and homophobic statements.
Reuters
