Defeat for UKIP In Working Class Stronghold Deals Blow to Brexit and Ultra-Nationalists

Stoke-on-Trent, an industrial, working class town to the north of England’s Midlands known for its pottery industry, oatcakes and vivacious footballing spirit, has been in the public spotlight of late. For 67 years, Stoke has been a Labour stronghold, with the party relentlessly clinging to its seat through successive governments regardless of who was in power.

But last month, Labour’s heartland seat was called into question when the party went head-to-head with the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in a bitterly fought by-election. Despite Labour cynics claiming their steadfast seat was to finally be renounced, the widely-anticipated by-election saw UKIP’s new leader, Paul Nuttall, heavily defeated by Labour’s Gareth Snell, who won 7,854 votes to UKIP’s 5,154.

Hailed as the "Brexit capital of Britain" — the region recorded the highest proportion of "Leave" votes in the historic June referendum – UKIP had been optimistic it was going to gain control of Stoke’s seat and capitalize on its 2016 breakthrough to Britain's working class.

Instead, Labour's resounding win sent a message that quashes the buoyancy relished by many Brexiteers who saw a more nationalistic Britain gaining momentum. UKIP’s defeat in Stoke suggests the tides may be turning and the populist wave that threatened to smash the traditional order of British politics and continue to lever the rightward shift, is starting to be broken.

In his victory speech, Snell said the citizens of Stoke had “chosen the politics of hope over the politics of fear.”

“This city will not allow itself to be defined by last year’s referendum, and we will not allow ourselves to be divided by the result. Nor will we be divided by face, faith or creed. We will move forward together to tackle the problems we face to secure a brighter, more prosperous future for everyone,” Snell said.

UKIP’s former leader, Nigel Farage, who successfully headed the Brexit campaign, previously described Stoke as a “crucial” seat for the future of UKIP. As Labour List writes, Farage is likely to have meant that losing this by-election would be “to lose momentum.”

So, what has led UKIP and its staunch anti-immigrant rhetoric to "lose momentum" in a city that just eight months ago saw 70 percent of its voters opt to leave the E.U.?

Dicey Leadership

Since Farage stood down as UKIP’s leader in the wake of the Brexit vote, the party’s leadership has been shaky to say the least. Back in autumn, UKIP’s newly-elected leader Diane James unexpectedly quit after just 18 days in the job. The UKIP "archangel" Farage temporarily stood back in as leader before Paul Nuttall, who served as UKIP’s deputy leader for six years, was elected leader in November on promises to fulfill “a real Brexit” and put the “great back into Britain.”

“I want to replace the Labour Party and make UKIP the patriotic voice of working people,” Nuttall said in his leader’s acceptance speech. But Nuttall and the party clearly didn’t succeed in making UKIP the “patriotic voice” of the working people of Stoke.

One factor that didn’t help UKIP’s race to win the Stoke by-election was a controversy that emerged during the campaign, which involved Nuttall making false claims on his website that he lost a “close friend” in the Hillsborough football disaster of 1989, in which 96 Liverpool fans lost their lives. Nuttall was forced to apologize for the false information and admit he didn’t lose a close friend at Hillsborough.

Further outrage was ignited when UKIP’s billionaire backer, Arron Banks, said he was “sick to death” of hearing about Hillsborough. The controversy led to two resignations of UKIP members, Stuart Monkcom, chairman of UKIP’s Liverpool branch, and Adam Heatherington, chairman of the Merseyside branch. The resignations were made just days before the Stoke-on-Trent by-election.

While the scandal may or may not have led directly to UKIP’s defeat in Stoke, it cast a slur over the Party’s new leader’s integrity and compassion. Dr. Andy Pickard, a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, a lifelong Stoke City football supporter and a former resident of Stoke, said Nuttall had many shortfalls.

“Clearly, the most important factor in Labour’s victory was the poor quality of the UKIP campaign. The inadequacies of Nuttall were exposed, but also it is increasingly difficult to see UKIP as a party fit for public office," Pickard told Occupy.com. "Secondly, the Labour Party fought a very hard local campaign in which they tried to talk to every single voter in Stoke.”

But UKIP’s recent defeat and Labour’s win marks something deeper than a scandal involving several individuals, and even its leader. It’s no secret that Gareth Snell, the new MP of Stoke-on-Trent, is a passionate pro-E.U. Remainer. As the Washington Post writes about the Stoke by-election, the results showed “there may be limits to Brexit’s powers to remake Britain’s political landscape.”

Referring to the broader narratives of the U.K.’s political crosscurrents since the Brexit result, the Post continued: “Potential limits of UKIP’s anti-immigrant, nativist message at a time when populist movement across the West are energized by Donald Trump’s unexpected run to the White House.”

Though, as Pickard continued, it would be a mistake to assume that a Brexit voter is automatically an anti-Labour voter.

“People know that they will be choosing their parliamentary representative for all kinds of reasons as well as their views on Europe or even immigration. I did predict the night before the election in a conversation with friends in a pub that the good people of Stoke would vote Labour, and they did,” Pickard said.

Jane Ayres, Chair of the Hayfield and New Mills Local Labour branch in the North West of England, told Occupy.com why she thought UKIP may have missed out on the Stoke seat: “Having not put any spanner in the works of Brexit to this point, both Labour and the Tories have made UKIP pretty pointless. On top of that, for the candidate to be so unappealing meant there was no strong reasons to vote for him.”

In managing to cling onto a seat it has represented for nearly 70 years, Labour’s win in the Stoke by-election not only marks a crucial victory for the Labour Party as still being the natural home for Britain’s working class voters, but also marks the preservation of Britain’s traditional political order and, perhaps, even the beginning of a collapse of right-wing populism.