Shooting the fox? UKIP’s populism in the post-Brexit era

Abstract

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) has moved from being a single-issue party par excellence to a broader party of protest, taking advantage of wider feelings of discontent and disconnection. However, the 2016 referendum on UK membership of the EU fundamentally challenged its development and operation, by removing a core part of the party’s rationale and identity, and radically shifting the overall political landscape. This paper considers the re-positioning through the referendum period, both rhetorically and organisationally. Drawing on party press releases and media coverage, the paper argues that UKIP has become caught in a set of multiple transformations, pushing it in the longer term towards a more conventionally populist position in a way that carries important resonances for other Eurosceptic parties across the continent.

Keywords:

• UK Independence Party
• Brexit
• populism
• single-issue politics
• leadership

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Simon Usherwood

Simon Usherwood is Reader in Politics at the University of Surrey. He studies Euroscepticism and UK‒EU relations and is Deputy Director of the ESRC’s ‘UK in a Changing Europe’ programme. [[email protected]]