According to public opinion polls in Britain, the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) could win the upcoming elections to the European Parliament. A survey conducted by the YouGov institute for the daily paper The Times said 31 % of Britons would vote for the party if elections were held today.
The survey found the party would defeat Labour by 3 % despite having suffered numerous scandals recently, including charges of racism. The governing Conservative Party would end up in third place with 19 % of the vote if the EP elections were held today.
The Guardian has written that if the UKIP wins the elections in Britain on 22 May, the result would be perceived as a collapse of faith in the political establishment. Of the 16 polls conducted prior to the EP elections in May, this is the second in which the UKIP has come in first place.
Former Conservative leader Norman Tebbit anticipates the UKIP will rewrite history by becoming the first party other than the Conservatives or Labour to win a British election since the end of WWI. Lord Tebbit says the Conservatives are still paying the price for the fact that David Cameron called the UKIP "nuts, tantrum-throwers and closet racists" eight years ago.
The most recent racist scandal around the UKIP took place last weekend. William Henwood, a UKIP candidate in local elections in Enfield, said that Lenny Henry, a dark-skinned British television comedian, should "emigrate back to a black country" after Henry said ethnic minorities are poorly represented on British television.
Another local election candidate for the UKIP, Andre Lampitt, also faces charges of racism. MEP Nigel Farage, the party head, is suspected of misusing EU funds to run his office in Britain.
