Headless army lets Cameron roam free

WHEN David Cameron is accused of alienating traditional Conservative voters with his tree-planting, hoodie-hugging and Israel-bashing, he has an easy riposte. Where are all these frustrated souls going to go? Defect to the high-taxing Liberal Democrats? Sign up to Gordon Brown's progressive consensus? Mr Cameron can reach out to the left as much as he likes if he has his party membership cornered. And this is why the UK Independence Party leadership contest is so potentially important.

Britain seldom does well at producing political parties outside the mainstream. The Westminster voting system discourages it, and the Scottish National Party had to spend decades in the wilderness before it took off (its prospects directly linked to North Sea exploration). Normally, both Conservative and Labour can afford to be complacent because they are both protected from competition.

UKIP has had a pretty miserable life since it was set up as the Anti-Federalist League in 1991. But two years ago, it delivered a shock to the Westminster consensus when it claimed 16% of the vote in the European Parliament elections - forcing the Lib Dems into fourth place. The question for the Tories is whether UKIP could, with the right leadership and message, manage this again.

It is not psephologically impossible. The British electorate is increasingly fed up with its three major parties, who are considering turning to state funding because the public is unwilling to supply the cash they need. Voters have shown themselves capable of defecting en masse to upstart parties - or, in the Dunfermline and West Fife by-election, switching from one party to another just to be awkward. The protest vote is there for the taking.

But it needs leadership. UKIP's surge came when Robert Kilroy-Silk, a former BBC chat-show host, became its figurehead (if not its leader) and proved himself a skilled populist - the type of which is common on the continent, but seldom in Britain. He portrayed UKIP as a rebel army, and started something which caused the Conservatives deep panic. When he left, the party's profile sank as quickly as it had risen and in the last general election its voting share returned to a derisory 2.2%.

Last April, Mr Cameron betrayed more concern than he perhaps intended when he denounced UKIP as "a bunch of... fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists" - which does not say much for the judgment of the 2.65 million who voted UKIP in 2004. Importantly, he expressed disdain for the UKIP message on immigration - which was as much of its message as Euroscepticism during that campaign. For the Cameronians, this is beyond the pale.

This marks out political terrain which mainstream parties see as too downmarket to cultivate. Polls show that the "C2DE" voters - the ones who tend to live in housing estates where immigration has made the sharpest impact - are deeply concerned. A full 50% of them say they "strongly agree" that "Britain is losing its own culture" and 76% consider Britain "already overcrowded". The pro-immigration camp (including this columnist) may argue such people are wrong. But they have several million votes. And no party in Westminster seems to want them.

When UKIP was strongest, in that 2004 election, it managed to speak to these people in a way that Westminster finds distasteful. It also had a figure, Mr Kilroy-Silk, who was a populist cutting across political divides. It is a small blessing that no genuinely racist party has done well here, especially as research shows anti-immigrant sentiment being every bit as strong as on the continent. But for as long as this gap exists, there is the capacity for a party willing to discuss people's fears on immigration, crime, drug abuse and the other issues which blight the lives of so many.

The good news for the Conservatives is that UKIP shows little sign of revival. Its contest is into its final few weeks, yet the candidates have attacked each other - raising few ideas. Take, for example, David Noakes, one of the four contenders. His motto is that the "EU is a police state" and that UKIP should say so in blunt terms. He boasts his family tree can be traced back to the 1066 Norman invasion. "Apparently before that we were Vikings," he says on his website. "Well, no-one's perfect."

It's a fair bet that this comment is designed to strike a contrast from the Welsh-born Richard Suchorzewski, another contender, whose pitch is to take UKIP "from an anti-EU party into a full pro-British party". His supporters emphasise he is a Christian, and imply that his family life stands up to scrutiny more than the favourite, Nigel Farage, who recently denied newspaper claims of extra-marital adventure.

Then comes David Campbell-Bannerman, a former chairman of the Bow Group, a Eurosceptic think tank, and great-great-great-grandson of Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, former Prime Minister. His pitch, however, seems to be little more than a plea for deputy leadership under Mr Farage, who he expects to win. Insofar as it is possible to gauge opinion among the 16,000 UKIP members, Mr Farage, a founding UKIP member and former Tory MP, is likely to pull through when the vote is decided on September 12. But he will be leading from Brussels, by remote control.

For the Tories, it's a huge relief. Political loyalty in Britain has never been thinner, and a UKIP which had a populist leader and strong centre-right message may have struck a strong contrast to Mr Cameron. The next UK general election may well be decided by just 250,000 votes - so it matters hugely if the Tories are about to face a right-wing rival party which could make a serious dent in its support.

Mr Blair was able to move so far away from Labour's roots because he faced no real contest from a socialist rival and his frustrated party members had nowhere else to go. If UKIP remain in obscurity, Mr Cameron will have the same licence to roam.

But a wild card will still hang over British politics. There are 17 million who did not vote in last year's election - showing a dealignment, rather than a realignment. They could turn to anyone who manages to strike a message which resonates. The risk is that this leaves space for a genuinely racist party, as exists in Austria and the Netherlands.

The space could be filled by a new party, or scores of local, single-issue parties, a "carnival of the animals" as one Downing Street strategist calls it. But the Conservatives can relax for now: the UK Independence Party are showing little sign of threatening anyone other than themselves.

• Fraser Nelson is political editor of The Spectator