If opinion polls are to be believed, UKIP has more than a fighting chance of winning next May’s European elections. And their prospects have certainly been done no harm by multi-millionaire Paul Sykes’ promise that he would “do whatever it takes” to give UKIP the most MEPs in Brussels.
With David Cameron becoming increasingly less popular with his own party members for not being eurosceptic enough, Nigel Farage’s party would anyway have expected to take a big chunk of Tory votes. The Liberal Democrats will probably suffer from same sort of coalition party squeeze that has just wiped out their German sister-party, the Free Democrats, from the Bundestag.
Meanwhile, although Labour currently tops the opinion polls, their support is soft. Labour voters also tend to be less likely to vote in local or European elections than their rivals.
In other words, this election was already there for the taking and it was no surprise to learn that bookmakers have made UKIP favourites ahead of Labour, with the Conservatives a distant third. For his part, Farage has been promising that next May’s elections will see a ‘political earthquake’.
Sykes bankrolled UKIP’s breakthrough campaign in 2004, where the party went from three to twelve seats, with £1.5 million and his riches will allow the party to compete with the big boys. In fact, with Labour still a few million in the red and the Conservatives keen to stash campaign funds for the following year’s general election, UKIP could end up being the biggest spender.
So, how much difference will the Yorkshireman’s money make?
Well, in terms of national profile, not very much. British political parties don’t spend very much on elections and so a relatively small sum goes a long way. The BBC is required by law to give the main parties equal coverage. Besides, UKIP now has the name recognition that it did not have pre-2004 and Nigel Farage is one of the country’s most recognisable and popular politicians.
But what it will pay for is the ‘ground game’ that has always separated the three major parties from UKIP. Although its membership has gone up dramatically in the past two years, UKIP still has around 30,000 members, far fewer than Labour and the Conservatives, although they are rapidly catching the Liberal Democrats. It is the network of local councillors and activists that develop the voter identification records and ‘pavement politics’ that helps win elections and UKIP has never had this resource.
The real challenge for UKIP will be to carry their performance in European elections into the next general election in 2015. The party has not come close to winning a Westminster seat, though it has finished second in several by-elections over the past eighteen months. Perhaps that will be the real challenge for Sykes – whether he can use his money to get Farage and others into the House of Commons. Now that would be a political earthquake.