UKIP’s recent conference was hailed as a great success. Over 2,000 members were said to be there, out of a growing party membership approaching 40,000. We are told we are “on a roll”, that we are “the voice of the people”, even “The People’s Army”. Recent opinion polls have us between the high teens and mid-twenties in terms of national support and revealed that around 30% of the electorate would be prepared to consider voting UKIP. That approximates to around 8 to 14 million people respectively.
And yet we regard having a mere 40,000 members as a success.
In other words, we regard it as successful when only one in two hundred of the people who are prepared to vote UKIP have joined the party, and out of those 5% attended the national conference in Doncaster this year.
Something is very wrong with this picture. Yes, we are doing much better than any of the other main parties, but given these have been at best flat-lining or declining precipitously in recent years that is not much a yardstick to use. A better one is to put it into context of voluntary activity generally, and here our achievements are decidedly less impressive. Unlike the party political scene, there is no general collapse in British voluntarism, with many voluntary organisations retaining memberships in the millions that political parties used to have.
It’s not hard to see the reasons why British political parties are mere shadows of their former selves. True, back in the day being a member of a political party was often a social activity in a time when there were far fewer outlets for socialising than there are now. However, at the same time as social trends pulled people away from party membership, internal decisions made by party elites actively pushed them away. Party policy and opportunity became ever more jealously guarded by a closed, careerist political class, with the poor activist being expected to do the unglamorous heavy lifting of local campaigning as well as being constantly tapped for funds. To add insult to injury, activists in recent years have not only been used and ignored but also increasingly insulted by their leaderships.
Despite our recent growth, UKIP is in some senses little better and in fact the increases in party membership hide a great underlying structural weakness: let us be honest, we have a very traditional party structure with a “Sun King” leader. A brilliant Sun King, certainly, but a Sun King nonetheless. Maybe such a model was necessary when the party was small and vulnerable to infiltration and takeover by fanatics or extreme elements. However, it is not, in the long term, a model of organisation suitable to the 21st Century generally or for a party that has become a potentially uneasy amalgam of Libertarians, ex-Tories and the new breed of “Red-Kippers” storming Labour’s bastions in the North. Given its internal contradictions, UKIP would be highly vulnerable once Nigel Farage’s charismatic leadership comes to an end. Moreover, UKIP needs to become a truly mass movement if it wishes to continue to play in the big leagues. Lacking funding from powerful vested interests like the Tories or Labour, we are absurdly and very dangerously reliant on individual big donors and European funding via the Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group, as recent events have painfully shown.
Instead, we should look to how most organisations model themselves in the Internet age, and here our newest star recruit and first MP should prove absolutely invaluable. It is one of Douglas Carswell’s greatest insights that political parties should be organised – and democratised – on the modern diffuse social network model, or in his words ‘spotified’. Not only should party membership should confer the ability to participate fully in the party’s functions and direction, but some kind of associate membership should allow people to “dip in and out” of party activism on the basis of policy questions that interest them. Email, Skype and internet discussion forums should be utilised to allow a medium of exchange between voters, activists, policy groups and the party office holders, essentially flattening hierarchies and creating fluid, self-organising, diffuse networks within or beyond the boundaries of the party, just as they do in so many areas of human activity today.
I should now declare an interest and state that, enthusiastic about Douglas’s ideas and greatly fearing they would be taken up by the Tory party hierarchy, I tried to shamelessly steal them and put them into practise for UKIP. (You can read some of my previous proposals here,) I even managed to start to put them into practise: with the help and encouragement of Carol Lovatt, Brian Otridge, Jonathan Arnott and Robert McWhirter, I attempted to ‘crowd source” policy formation and published snippets of draft policies for the Children’s and Families Policy Group on the party’s internal forum. We started to get considerable momentum, with some great and insightful comments on policy proposals as well as new ideas being put forward by the membership. However, within the space of a few weeks the forum was then all but shut down following a national media furore based on the odd inflammatory post elsewhere. Although the policy board was retained, the forum lost critical mass and what looked like turning into a very exciting project was tragically still-born.
However, to our great good fortune, we now have the chief proponent of what he calls ‘iDemocracy’ as a member and our first MP. Carswell’s record of course speaks for itself – he used social media in Clacton exceptionally effectively to build up not only a huge personal following but also a much bigger local Conservative activist base against the trend of rapid decline elsewhere. Let us now give Douglas his head and put him in charge of restructuring the party on the social network model, one that is both fit for the 21st century and that can confidently survive and prosper after Nigel finally retires to the saloon bar. With Carswell’s vision and intellect, there is no reason why we can’t build a UKIP with a networked membership in the hundreds of thousands. Then, the sky really would be the limit on what we could all achieve together.
Couldn’t hurt. This issue is really not about this party or that but about the changing face of politics in our time. I’m reading Carswell’s book now and it is about just that, that a revolution is starting in the way many things will be approached, including politics and democracy; which we don’t really have. The first step in all this is to leave the undemocratic, soviet bloc of the EU; a dinosaur which is dying on its feet.
UKIP is still struggling to be recognised as one of the main parties – most polls and surveys continue to hide it under the category ‘Other Parties’, and Nigel’s inclusion in the General Election debates continues to cause controversy. It seems to me that Nigel Farage works 24 x 7 x 365 to maintain UKIP’s profile and increase its popularity. I say 24 x7 because I am sure that even during sleep he must dream about UKIP! This dedication deserves the utmost respect and gratitude, because without Nigel the Party would not be in the position it occupies in the public mind today. UKIP has to walk before it can run; we are presently gearing up for the most crucial General Election in half a century. We want to see more UKIP MPs in the House of Commons, UKIP lords in the House of Lords, Nigel as PM. He has much more to offer before a well-deserved retirement; in the meantime he is keen to promote future spokesmen/women and potential leaders. I am sure there is a future for iDemocracy, but let us avoid running ahead of ourselves and imagining a time when Nigel is no longer leader. We have him in the here and now and he is crucial to our success.
The modern diffuse social network model in politics probably needs a period of testing and perfection before it can be used effectively. Meanwhile, we should value our tried and tested best asset. Such a leader comes along only once in a lifetime.
Andrew is absolutely correct to say that Ukip needs to become more membership based. A good start would be an annual conference which involved real decision-making rather than just rallying speeches. I don’t know anything about idemocracy but if it is to be real democracy it must involve all of the members and not just those who are good at shouting the loudest. Otherwise it would be more like an iaristocracy rather than an idemocracy. My local MP sends out surveys to local residents and then, on the basis of these surveys, announces what local people think about an issue. The problem is that the surveys only involve about 500 people and these are not necessarily representative of local people. A good example was the survey that showed that local people were in favour of the Alternative Vote!
A good article. UKIP certainly needs strength in depth and that should include the grass roots.
One of the most important, perhaps the most important factor in politics, is leadership. Your comment about Nigel retiring to the saloon bar is inappropriate. Ukip is what Nigel has made it. Ukip’s increasing support in the country is more than anything else a vote for Nigel. The electorate votes Ukip not because it supports the idea of leaving the EU (the latest IPSOS-MORI poll shows a movement in the opposite direction) because it increasingly (despite initial misgivings) trusts Nigel more than it trusts any other political figure. Other leading Ukip figures are starting to make an impression too, and Nigel, unlike most political leaders, has given these “potential competitors” every encouragement. But it remains his party. He must sometimes feel discouraged and long for retirement, but he knows (I suspect) that his retirement at this stage would have a catastrophic effect on Ukip’s fortunes.
Of course, Nigel’s personal importance is not the main issue. Leaders come and go. But leadership will always be important. Grass roots opinion is important too, of course it is. But in the end, policy has to be made by those who will bear the responsibility for its effects in practice.
It is the way to go forward ,has i am retired that every day i check all the papers blog pages and i have never seen so many saying they are going to vote UkIP but the trolls are sharpening their knives,but you will be surprised they say to them carry on we will not change our minds it is tricky has i have wooky doll face for protection+backed up protection is a good idea for all.has i had 4 un known friends requests and deleted them they where spam. I have also got a true story from my Grand dad told mom has he died before i was born.about ht boare war ,He was mad Queen Victoria’ seargent, then after coming back from South Africa he trained soldiers for world war 1.then the other day a blogger bought up a certain group that my grand farther said over 90 years ago is coming true now it ,fascinated me has it is the first time 66 years ,that they mentioned the same people my Grand dad said they wanted world domination over 90 years ago so true Ithink it will get more votes for us
Go with it – sounds good !
I was fascinated by this article and all the jargon it puts forth. Wholeheartedly endorse what you say about being lucky to have Douglas Carswell, but then I think we all knew that from the outset and hope that we can further pick his brains to go forward with iDemocracy
This is absolutely the way forward. Douglas is a visionary and that’s why he could never get anywhere in the Conservatives. He thought outside the box and challenged the orthodoxies of the elite at the top of the party. They were jealous of his talent and tried to keep him down, because they knew in their hearts he was a better politician than them and they felt threatened by him. We’re so lucky to have him. Follow his lead with this idemocracy. It’s the future and will truly engage people with politics again.