JAMES DENNISON AND MATTHEW GOODWIN* Immigration, Issue Ownership and the Rise of UKIP On 2 April 2015, in the televised leaders’ debate, the UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, used a question to argue that HIV patients from outside of the UK should be excluded from accessing NHS treatment. ‘What we need to do’, said Farage, ‘is to put the NHS there for British people and families, who in many cases have paid into the system for years’. 1 Farage’s comments were the most tweeted about moment of the debate and attracted widespread coverage throughout the campaign. The inter- vention underlined UKIP’s decision to target its core supporters at the election— older, white and working-class voters, who mainly reside in England, and were united by anxiety over immigration, opposition to Britain’s EU membership and dissatisfaction with the established parties. 2 Farage’s comments were quickly con- demned by the leader of Plaid Cymru, Leanne Wood, as ‘scaremongering’, ‘danger- ous’ and ‘divisive’. These were echoed by the leader of the Scottish National Party, Nicola Sturgeon, although the Labour leader Ed Miliband said nothing at the time. Yet there was evidence to suggest that some voters took a different view. According to one opinion poll by YouGov, which gave respondents Farage’s quotation and asked whether or not they agreed with ‘people coming to live in the UK being banned from receiving treatment on the NHS for a period of five years’, 50% agreed while 34% disagreed with Farage. 3 *James Dennison, European University Institute, james.dennison@eui.eu; Matthew Goodwin, University of Kent, m.j.goodwin@kent.ac.uk 1 BBC News, ‘Nigel Farage Defends HIV Comments’, accessed at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ election-2015-32176826 on 3 April 2015. 2 Ford, R. and Goodwin, M. J. (2014) Revolt on the Right: Explaining Support for the Radical Right in Britain, London, Routledge; Goodwin, M. J. and Milazzo, C. (2015) UKIP: Inside the Campaign to Redraw the Map of British Politics, Oxford, Oxford University Press. 3 YouGov/Sunday Times Survey Results. Fieldwork: 3–4 April 2015, accessed at http: //cdn.yougov.com/ cumulus_uploads/document/6f4p5p7re7/SundayTimesResults_150404_FINAL_amend.pdf on 3 July 2015. # The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com doi:10.1093/pa/gsv034 Britain Votes (2015) 168–187 at Kensington Central Library on September 4, 2015 http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from