Joe Miles Week 3: Why do Oxford students hate UKIP?

Expressing support for UKIP in Oxford is a risky proposition. Recently it was revealed that the Head Porter of Oriel, Dickie Bird, is running as a UKIP council candidate in the upcoming elections- cue furore and outrage. There are many students running for the council in Oxfordshire, and they have merited little more than a brief notice somewhere towards the back of the news section.

However, Bird’s decision to run UKIP has somehow been deemed by certain sections of the student press to be a major story of great concern.

Consider also the UKIP electoral billboard in Cowley that was recently vandalised- sadly, not wittily, which I would count as a wasted opportunity. If you identify as being on the Left, the Conservatives are more of a threat to your interests.

Most UKIP voters surveyed have indicated that they would vote for a different party come a general election. And yet it’s UKIP billboards that are getting vandalised to the extent that there is a whole tumblr dedicated to pictures of them.

Residents of Cowley didn’t take well to the UKIP billboard on Temple Street

What does this all add up to? Frankly, I think we in the student body have a real problem with our attitude to UKIP. The attempt to draw a cordon sanitaire around a party which is currently leading the polls in the European elections at 30%, a little ahead of Labour and a lot more ahead of the Lib Dems and Green Party, risks playing into their hands. The UKIP narrative is that there is an out of touch, Oxbridge educated liberal elite that is “enforcing” political correctness on normal people.

And on reflection, I think they’re right.

The fact is that Oxford students are far more socially liberal than the population at large. We are thrown into a world where we encounter people from all different walks of life, and as a result are more likely to be opposed to UKIP’s more socially conservative elements. It’s a sad truth that a lot of us are deeply out of touch, even if rightly, with a lot of the opinions of the people of this country. When we vote to condemn UKIP, once again we look like pompous students telling “normal people” what to do.

Ultimately, I think pronouncements such as Tom Rutland’s about the perils of UKIP, whilst well intentioned, are misguided. We need to avoid condemning UKIP as a student body because this inevitably results in giving the unfortunately accurate impression that we think that we know better than most of the electorate.

The best we can hope for is that UKIP will collapse upon serious inspection by the population at large, just like the BNP did in 2009. It’s not ideal, but sometimes the best thing to do is nothing at all.