UKIP hopes to rekindle support

With fewer than three months before the vote is due to take place, polls suggest that support for the United Kingdom Independence Party, better known as UKIP, has fallen below 15 percent. It remains a powerful force in the UK, after the Conservatives and Labour.

The peak of its popularity had seen support reach nearly 20 percent for the Euroskeptics, prompting predictions that they might win as many as 100 seats in the 2015 vote.

UKIP also swept the polls for Britain's 2014 European Parliament election, the first time a party other than the two main groups has won the popular vote in more than a century. Since that vote in May, UKIP has also managed to get two party members into parliament at Westminster.

But support has fallen recently, with several embarrassing gaffes helping to dampen voters' enthusiasm. The most recent came from councilor Rozanne Duncan, who was expelled after making racist remarks in a BBC documentary.

A few months earlier European parliament member Janice Atkinson sparked outrage after describing a party member from Thailand as a "ting tong from somewhere."

And another councilor was suspended in 2014 after linking flooding in Britain to the government legalizing gay marriage.

Fringe parties marginalized when UK votes

The UK's first-past-the-post electoral system means success will be difficult to come by for the 22-year-old party. Groups must win individual constituencies outright in order to also gain seats; unlike in Germany, there's no back door into parliament via a share of the popular vote.

Poll observer Electionforecast says that UKIP could win up to three seats - or even none.

Party leader Nigel Farage appeared unfazed by such predictions, walking on stage on at the conference to the "I'm a Believer" soundtrack.

"The experts tell us four or five seats but let me tell you, we are serious challengers to win four or five seats in this county alone," he said.

Farage, who spoke at a conservative conference in the United States on Thursday, has turned his attention to winning the southeast constituency of South Thanet, which he hopes to wrest away from the Conservative party.

UKIP has drawn comparisons to the US' ultra-conservative Tea Party movement, and has helped spawn several similar parties around Europe, such as Germany's AfD (Alternative for Germany).

Same message

Arriving at the conference, UKIP candidate for South London Winston McKenzie, one of around six black candidates, told DW that the party stood for those who felt they didn't have a voice in everyday society, especially the working class.

"UKIP represents people that feel disparaged, disenfranchised by society, left behind. Many people feel uncomfortable about how their lives are being run."

When asked if he felt welcomed by a party with such a controversial past, he said yes "by the majority," and that he was "making great strides."

McKenzie also echoed the party's call for a clampdown on "uncontrolled immigration," which he blamed on Labour.

Immigration was a similar theme among other attendees. Chris, who didn't want to give his full name, told DW he wanted his country back.

"The Germans have a great German culture, the French have a great French culture, but our country is overrun," he said.

The EU as 'faceless monster'

UKIP's other main campaign promise, leaving the European Union, was another recurring theme on the English coast on Friday. Another participant, who only gave his first name, David, said it was time to stop the UK being controlled by "stupid laws from Europe."

"We should never have been browbeaten into getting into it [the EU] - we have to get out," he told DW TV in Margate.

Herbert Crossman, UKIP's parliamentary candidate for Maidenhead, near London, went even further: calling the bloc a "faceless monster."

The UK has always done things differently to the rest of the member states, he maintained, saying Britain would be better off without Brussels.

"We are an island, we've never been part of Europe, our way of life is just completely different to the rest of the EU," he told DW.

Analysts broadly concur that it was UKIP's political rise which prompted Prime Minister David Cameron to promise a referendum on the country's EU membership by 2017, if he wins re-election this year. Many, but by no means all, UKIP supporters have defected from the Conservative camp, just like UKIP's two MPs - both ex-Tories - currently sitting in Westminster.

an/msh (AFP, dpa, Reuters)