The most influential politician in the last 25 years has announced he will stand for a seat in the General Election and lead the Reform UK party. Nigel Farage, hated by some, loved by others, announced yesterday that he would no longer campaign on behalf of the Reform Party but indeed for it. He dominated the news agenda from 4pm until the close of play and even today the various TV stations are talking about it. Nigel will now head the Reform campaign as the previous leader, Richard Tice, becomes chairman. The election just got interesting!
On the ‘Day 2’ edition we published the article about the ‘Farage Factor’. The man who has spend more than 2 decades in frontline politics scrapping it out in some of the harshest political environments, finding himself outnumbered and in so many ways outspent, is back to do it all again. We noted how influential he was outside of Parliament and had scared the Tory party into offering a referendum on EU membership, had removed Theresa May in 2019 off the back of a European Election in which Farage’s 6 month old Brexit Party obliterated the Tories, and catapulted Boris Johnson into power promising to ‘Get Brexit Done’. Farage is the tail that wags the Tory dog when he is on form and he believes that he can do it all again, but better and much more fundamental.
The political journalists are spinning this however they like, with supporters pointing to his grassroots success with both Tory and red-wall voters, and detractors pointing out his divisive style of politics. We will let them argue about all of that as we attempt to shine a light on the true significance of what Farage returning to front line politics actually means, where the decision came from and trying to predict some kind of future of Farage and conservatism in this country. Safe to say this is a decision that has a short term and long term effect that many politicians and journalists are overlooking save some of the more competent commentators like professor Matthew Goodwin and Isobel Oakshott. They correctly pointed out that Nigel standing for a seat in this General Election is much more than simply a man announcing his candidacy and taking charge of a party. This is not a move that affects the next few weeks, it affects the next 6 years, and the very future of the Tory party.
In order to understand what is going on and what will happen you first have to survey the political environment. The Tory party will not win this election. After 14 years of the Tories in power they have persistently let down their core voting base, the red wall voters who leant their vote in 2019 and the ideology of conservatism. Buying into the global liberal consensus movement of Global Capitalism, corporatism, mass immigration and the erosion of national institutions like the armed forces, the Tory party have basically rooted themselves to the political centre. At the same time millions of people have left the political centre all over the country and have mostly moved to the cultural right and the economic centre-right. Aside from London, the rest of the country is moving in the same direction as most of Europe and America; to the right as people look for culutral security as well as economic security. The Tory party hierarchy have stayed steadfast to their centrist principles, symbolised by Rishi Sunak who has done his best to maintain a splintered coalition within the party, but the coalition is broken in the country; the Tory party broad church applies now only to the MPs, NOT the wider party. The Tories are essentially kept afloat by being the only realistic opposition to Labour. Without that the Tories would be wiped out as a party in July, no doubt about it.
It is often the case that in UK General Elections opposition parties don’t win elections, governments lose them. The Labour Party will win this election because they are not the Tories and they are the only other executive option with our electoral system. If this was not the case the Labour Party would probably be able to achieve no more than around 25% of the vote. In a proportional voting system their high benchmark would be a quarter of seats because there is no desire for socialism, no desire for an ex-lawyer to be Prime Minister and no desire for identitarian politics to go into overdrive. Labour will win be default. “The UK is about to vote in a government that nobody asked for” so said the great historian David Starkey. Labour simply have to pin a rosette on a kestrel and it would probably win a constituency election in an inner city. Labour has won the election, so the Tory claim that ‘Reform hands the keys to Labour’ is giving them too much credit; the Tories have done that. Labour are going to win the election whether Reform is standing or not. However, the real winning movement right now is the “none of the above” non-voter movement. There are predictions that this will be one of the worst in terms of voter turnout and a low voter turnout produces some of the most fractious politics as people rightly question the legitimacy of a party in power when they are there due to around a third of the nation voting for them. Labour are on course to win something like 440 out of 650 seats at this general election simply because they are not the Tories. People are rightly writing off this election and they are right to. With an outdated and democratically terribly election system this is what happens. Both Labour and the Tories love the system because it keeps them going. It is the scandal we will look back on years from now with a huge degree of shame.
The political environment is therefore in a state of huge flux. In reality politics has been in a state of flux ever since Boris Johnson was booted out by his own party only 2 years after winning an 80 seat majority in 2019. When an election occurs the flux starts to elaborate and things start happening. The Tory party have monopolised politics on the right, until now. The Tory success has been largely down to nailing the right-side of politics with one hand and drawing in centrists with fiscal responsibility and approving slow societal change with the other. Their monopoly on the right is now gone. They are really a one-armed party, and it should be noted it is by their own making. Nigel Farage is stepping into the vacuum created by the Tories but instead of stepping in and demanding a referendum, he is stepping in and demanding a complete re-do of the entirety of right-of-centre politics in this country. He has decided to attempt to be the next father of the new 21st century conservatism that is being demanded by a majority of the United Kingdom voters according to the 2019 General Election, the 2016 Brexit referendum and the non-voter group; they are around 70-75% of the British public. Those are great numbers for Farage.
Nigel decided to do this after a week of campaigning in the country. He was met with supporters who were asking why he wasn’t standing. He gave his reason; the election was called too early for him to mount a national as well as constituency campaign at the same time in 6 weeks. They shrugged, said “yeah, i get it” and they walked off dejected. To be clear, there is sense in what he had decided to do; the Reform Party needed national exposure and he was the man to do that as the leader of the party stood and campaigned in Boston and Skegness. The change of mind is reflective on Nigel’s priorities. He wanted to be a national campaigner assisting all over the country, but he felt “guilty” and ended up choosing duty as his motivation; duty to the movement of conservatism NOT the movement of euroskepticism (that ship has sailed, Micheal Hesseltine…). Nigel would have done much better personally as someone who campaigns without standing for a seat or being head of the party because if he failed he could simply cut his losses and go and campaign in America for Donald Trump, thereby protecting his legacy which has been forged in the last 20-odd years as a pressure group belligerent that strong-armed the Tory party for the best part of 5 years from 2015-2020. In choosing to do this he has nailed his personal colours to the Reform and conservative mast for the 4th July. He has not made a personal PR stunt in doing this, he is taking a big risk and you can see it in his face. He is risking it.
As we indicated in the ‘Day 2’ article, Nigel was due to unveil his campaign for a 4 month run for a November election to return to front-line politics anyway. The chances of success would be high. He is choosing to do this now because of a sense of duty to him AND he thinks he can genuinely win. He indicated that the Reform plan is a 6 year plan, not a 6 week plan. He planned to see the Reform party overtake the Tories as the second party in British politics by the 2028 General Election. Perhaps he was being pessimistic. Could he achieve all of this in only 3 years rather than 6? With a Tory party brand so badly damaged and a politically homeless majority in the UK as a whole, the slow approach might be underachieving what could actually be done on the right of politics in the next few years. We must understand Farage’s plan. He wants to replace the Tories (any article suggesting he’d join or do a deal with the Tories is idiotic and should be thrown out immediately) in a way reminiscent of the Reform Party in Canada replacing the Conservatives in the 1990s. He wants a complete fracturing of the ‘broad church of conservatism’ that has done nothing for cultural conservatives in the last 14 years and a kind of politics that is more popular than elitist; replacing ‘experts’ with popular support. This is the biggest move that has happened in this country since the replacing of the Liberal Party with the Labour Party; but this was achieved with a piece of legislation: ‘the representation of the peoples act; 1918’ which allowed working class people and women over 30 to vote. Nigel is planning to do this himself though with a huge wave of support behind him. If he pulls it off he will be the most influential politician in UK political history, eclipsing Attlee, Thatcher and Gladstone. Only Churchill will be able to outpace Farage in terms of legacy, then again these are uncertain international times.
Farage is on to a winner here. If he wins a seat in Parliament and sits next to a rump Tory Party of around 80-100 angry MPs, we could see a defection that can only be described as cataclysmic to Farage’s side. The Tories would destroy whatever is left after 4th July. Farage will have achieved what he wanted to do in record time. Right now in day 13 there are stirrings from Tory figures about defecting already. If Farage does not win a seat in Parliament, and at the moment he is polling 10 points ahead of the Tory incumbent Giles Watling, the Reform Party still wins millions of votes (currently polling at around 12% of the vote) because of the Farage factor and the Tories limp to the 5th July losing around 30 seats more they otherwise would have probably won had it not been for Reform standing in the constituency. The reform of the right of British politics would take longer, and the Tory party would fight on, but momentum would be with the Reform Party on the right and how the Tories would reform themselves would be very interesting. In all, the Tories are about to change as a party anyway. One scenario has them changing to reflect actual conservatism in the country, the other sees them gone. Farage will have won even if the Tories decide to reform to become even more centrist, as the Tory party eats itself up, just much more slowly.
Nigel Farage is, whether you like him or hate him, a huge figure in British politics. The personality rivals were Boris Johnson, Stella Braverman or even Jeremy Corbyn. They ar all out of the picture or horrendously sidelined by the party they once served. All that stands in Nigel’s way are boring people in boring suits saying boring things and being as inspiring as a soggy Victoria sponge cake left out in the rain for a few days. People will listen to him and if he is able to do what he does best; by cutting through class, geography and poltiical tribalism, he can deliver a message not about leaving the European Union, but a message about a fundamental change to British politics that has not been seen in a century, perhaps even more. The numbers show he can succeed. If the Tory party were worried about him before in 2016…they are absolutely petrified by him now. Will the voters help him do this? If he can push through the mass outspending of the other parties (£30m from the Tories and Labour each compared to the barely £1m for Reform) and break through in the electoral system that stung him before (2015: UKIP won 12% of the vote and won 1 seat) then he can swing a gigantic hammer in the Tory party glass parlour room and leave with the heart of British conservatism in his grasp.
This article first appeared on the TDL Times. For more articles, information and more please visit www.theTDLTimes.com.
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