What can account for UKIP’s remarkable surge in support in these elections? The conventional wisdom is that UKIP is now the ‘go to’ party for protest voters. Angry over Europe and immigration? Vote UKIP. Fear for your job and the future of the economy? Vote UKIP. Feel the main parties are ‘all the same’, run by metropolitan elites who don’t know how ordinary people live? Vote UKIP.
There is doubtless something in all of the above, but there is perhaps another explanation – overlooked until now – for UKIP’s rise: the growing tide of English patriotism.
Earlier in the year, figures from the 2011 census showed there had been a dramatic strengthening of English national identity in the last decade. Fully 70 per cent of the English population identified themselves as either solely English or English in combination with some other national identity.
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