We hypothesize that New Radical parties [NRPs] highlight what we refer to as “legitimate” enemies (LE) to penetrate the political arena and achieve electoral success. According to Carl Schmitt, leaders utilize an enemy to enhance their political agenda. We add the notion that such an enemy becomes “legitimate” when it is held responsible for public concerns. We use Riker’s theory that to upset an existing balance, new parties must introduce new dimensions to the political sphere to complete our analytical framework. We argue that the UKIP introduced a new dimension – the EU – where it held a relative advantage, to enter in force the sphere of the U.K. politics and then to change the entire configuration of this political sphere.
We use the Uncovered Set to assess and demonstrate the changes that then redefined the substantive landscape of British politics as a result of the introduction of this new dimension and the realignment it caused in the relative positioning of the relevant parties on this and the more traditional dimensions over the period of three general elections in the UK – 2005, 2010 and 2015.
