Nigel Farage and the political power of English grievance

Ailsa Henderson, Professor of Political Science, University of Edinburgh

Richard Wyn Jones, Professor of Politics, Cardiff University

One apparent constant in contemporary UK politics is Nigel Farage’s ability to mobilise a sense of grievance among those who regard themselves as English.

By doing so, Farage has, on successive occasions, managed to shift the terms of political debate so that the issues he cares about become the key issues of the day. His ability to drag the other parties onto his terrain is a classic success story of what political scientists call issue salience.

He identifies a problem, proclaims loudly that it will be our collective undoing and proposes a tantalisingly straightforward solution.

Brexit

The Brexit narrative was, of course, that the loss of British wealth and influence, as well the crisis of post-austerity public services, could best be explained by the undue influence of and resources willed away to “Europe”.

In England, this frustration correlated not with British but with English national identity. It also correlated with discontent at the internal union of the UK and a sense that Britain’s political class were distributing resources and influence to other foreigners – in this case Scots.

A decade on from the referendum, English-identifying electors are now being successfully mobilised on the basis of a new bogeyman. Social and economic problems in the UK are still being attributed to the way influence and resources are being ceded to foreigners, but this time it’s not bureaucrats in Brussels who are to blame for these ills, or Scots – it’s the people arriving on small boats.

However, even if Farage’s ability to mobilise grievance to political advantage remains unmatched, our 15 years of research into English national identity underlines that the proffered solutions to those grievances – the seemingly simple, quick fixes – simply don’t work. Exiting the EU has not stemmed English grievance. Rather, erstwhile Leavers are not happy at the outcome even while preferring not to have to talk about it. There is precious little reason to believe that five deportation flights a day to Kabul airport will make them any less nostalgic for the past, less aggrieved about the present or more hopeful for the future.

Unworkable

The proposed solutions to English grievances haven’t worked because those solutions were, from their inception, poorly thought-through and unworkable. A hard, “clean break” Brexit was never compatible with the existence of a land border on the island of Ireland. It was never going to be possible to construct a dedicated democratic political space for England through minor tweaks to the legislative procedures of the House of Commons, as was attempted in the introduction of English votes for English laws. Similarly, we’re not going save the NHS or universities by making the UK inhospitable to the skilled migrants it needs.

Moreover, the impact of adopting Farage’s framing of problems and associated bogeymen and simply promising to deal with them more effectively has proved disastrous, first, for the Conservative party, and now Labour.

Anyone doubting the impact of issue ownership on electoral success need look no further than Scotland, where years of high constitutional salience rewarded the respective “owners” of the “indy” and pro-union positions at the expense of electoral support for the political centre ground.

The dip in SNP and Conservative support in Scotland in the 2024 UK general election can be attributed in part to the weakened salience of constitutional politics. The issues we talk about matter.

None of the solutions offered to assuage English grievances have ever sought to address the real problems. Take, for example, the now longstanding evidence that the English feel aggrieved at the treatment of England following the devolution of power to Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh. Despite this, there has yet to be a serious discussion of post-devolution arrangements in a way that affords English voters the same opportunity to shape a government that seeks to be theirs as enjoyed by voters in the rest of the UK.

No doubt that reluctance to do so in part reflects the dual role of a UK government. It serves as both the government for the whole of the state and for England alone on issues that are devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The distorting impact of this distinctly odd arrangement is compounded by the steadfast refusal of the UK government to explicitly state when it is acting as the UK’s government or when it is responding to English concerns over English policy to make English lives better. Indeed, in the past two decades, no single English MP has referred in the Commons to the “government of England” as something that actually exists.

Invisible England

One of the stranger consequences of the UK’s asymmetrical governance arrangements is that England is rendered invisible, even though it is by far the largest part of the state. If UK governments of various hues are unwilling ever to name England and, indeed, behave as if the very existence of its English electorate is something to be ashamed of, it’s perhaps little wonder that English identifiers don’t feel they matter or have a voice. There is, in short, an English efficacy problem.

Rather than engage seriously with the reality of English sentiment and, yes, resentment, both Conservative and Labour governments have engaged in the serial ad hocery of constitutional change. They’ve played a never-ending game of constitutional Tetris in which plans for so-called English devolution are constantly made and remade. This process has, in turn, become a substitute for serious thinking about political voice and democratic influence within the state.

Least disruptive

Successive UK governments have preferred to give England the structures that are least disruptive to the central institutions of the state. Thus, England is carved into a series of Scotland-sized pieces under regional devolution. What is never spoken of is the fact that this is precisely the least popular solution among England’s electorate. They instead doggedly favour an outcome that dare not speak its name – a political space for England as England.

Perhaps, then, the English are aggrieved and angry, not because foreigners have undermined their influence and stolen their resources but, in part at least, because they and their views are a perpetual afterthought in the UK’s governance arrangements. And maybe that’s another constant in UK politics – UK governments find it easier to address Farage’s successive foreigner problems than to look at their own role in stoking English grievance.

This article was first published on The Conversation