‘To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy’ - A discourse analysis of mainstream political party response to UKIP

This paper considers the rise of UKIP and the mainstream parties’ reaction to its stance on immigration. The aim is to provide guidance to political parties on their political marketing communications. A brief review of the literature in the areas of: reactions of mainstream political parties to populist parties; political communications and political marketing communications is carried out. The question is then posed - To what extent have the mainstream political parties adopted UKIP policy in terms of immigration as part of their marketing communications? To answer this question discourse analysis is used to analyse the speeches of the three main parties in the UK and UKIP. The results of the analysis suggest that the mainstream parties are more measured in their response to immigration – engaging in more detailed policy. UKIP, on the other hand, rely more on vivid anecdotes rather than detailed policy. These results have implications for political parties with regard to the way in which they need to craft their political marketing communications.