With this in mind, I traveled to Clacton-on-Sea, the unofficial seat of UKIP’s success. It was in this town on the North Sea, in October of last year, that Conservative member of parliament Douglas Carswell did something previously unfathomable: He defected to UKIP and won a race, securing the party its first ever seat in the U.K. parliament. A month later, another Conservative MP, Mark Reckless, switched to UKIP as well. Farage has since predicted that his party will win at least 10 of Westminster’s 650 seats in next month’s election. UKIP may still be a pint-sized political player, but it’s having outsized influence on the political conversation in Britain at the moment.

Clacton is run-down, with many of its Victorian-era townhouses in decay. In the wider district, unemployment is high, one in five children lives in poverty, and one in three residents is a pensioner. The city center is dotted by charity shops and the walk to the seafront is flanked by garishly lit arcades; inside, unemployed young people pass the time. “I’ve got no choice but to vote UKIP,” Ivy Levi, an 86-year-old former shop assistant, told me. She leaned in so I could hear her above the clamor of seagulls scouring the area for discarded fish and chips. “Even the immigrants don’t want more coming in. The Poles and Romanians do work hard, but they’ve got to go.”

Ahead of Carswell’s win, the satirical British artist Banksy graffitied a mural on a Clacton building by the sea. Five dark gray pigeons were depicted on one side of the painting, with a little green bird on the other. The pigeons hoisted signs with messages such as “Migrants not welcome.” The work, estimated to be worth around $600,000, was whitewashed by the local council shortly after it appeared, ironically on the grounds that the mural itself incited racism. Today, in its stead, several layers of white paint face a brownish North Sea.

Carswell disputes the notion that the debate over immigration to the United Kingdom has played a key role in UKIP’s election campaign and success. “The fundamental issue is not Europe or migration. It’s a political disconnect, and this is common across the Western world,” he told me. “It’s about being left behind economically and politically. The smug politician on the television is out of touch with the rest of us.”

Regarding migration, Carswell called for Britain to model its immigration system on that of Australia, where a small number of skilled migrants who pass a test of their English-language ability and education level receive visas—and where the United Nations alleges that torture and human-rights violations are taking place at offshore processing centers for immigrants. UKIP officials are incensed that workers from new EU countries like Bulgaria can come to the United Kingdom and use its free and overburdened National Health Service. “It’s a slightly daft world where an Indian doctor cannot come into this country but a Bulgarian with a criminal record can,” Carswell said. He is silver-tongued, in sharp contrast to the gaffe-prone Farage (the UKIP leader hasn’t just come under fire for his comments on race; he recently theorized that women who have children are “worth less” to employers, and suggested that businesses ask women to “sit in a corner” when breastfeeding).