Motherland: how Farage is winning over women

Spectator

2 days ago

On the campaign trail in the Midlands ahead of May's local elections, a journalist asked Nigel Farage: 'Do you have a woman problem?' The twice-married, twice-separated father of four laughed and said: 'God, yes. I've had 40 years of it.'
His response was characteristic of Reform UK's leader – a determination not to take things too seriously and a tacit acknowledgement that every political cause he has espoused has been more popular with men than women. 'Around me there's always been a perception of a laddish culture,' he says. 'Ukip was the rugby club on tour.' In last year's general election, 58 per cent of Reform
voters were men.
Since May, when Reform seized 700 seats and ten councils, that has begun to change. It may now be Keir Starmer with the woman problem while Farage is leading a march of the mums. Polling from More in Common shows that, since the general election, Reform has gained 14 percentage points among women, while Labour has lost 12, but with every cohort over the age of 45 the swing is even bigger. It is most pronounced in the Generation X group, aged 45 to 60, where Reform tops the polls. They also lead among Boomer women, aged 61 to 75. Among the over-75s, where the Tories still win, more women support Reform than the Lib Dems, Labour and the Greens combined.
Farage's party also wins the support of one in five women in the younger age groups, putting them second to Labour on 22 per cent among millennials aged 29 to 44 and on 19 per cent among the 18- to 28-year-olds of Generation Z (just four points behind Labour). Luke Tryl of More in Common says: 'Among all other age groups, women have been moving towards Reform more than any other party.'
So what has been happening? These are not votes Reform has chased. There has been no policy announcement on childcare, designed to appeal to female voters. 'We haven't forced this,' says Farage. 'It's something which has evolved.'
One explanation is that women in general are more likely than men to have a downbeat view of Britain's future, to worry that the country is broken. Only 17 per cent of Gen X women, one in six, think Britain is on the 'right track', compared with 23 per cent of Gen X men. Sixty-four per cent of Gen X women think the country is on the wrong track. Across all age groups, women are far more likely than men to report feeling sad, angry, lonely or stressed. Sixty-two per cent of Baby Boomer women say the world is getting more dangerous, compared with 48 per cent of the general population.
'Our conversations with Gen X women find them among the most disillusioned with the status quo,' says Tryl. 'Some are struggling to make ends meet at a time when they thought they would be winding down. 'Not living but surviving,' as one put it, and often dealing with double care challenges – looking after elderly relatives, but with adult kids still at home who can't get a foot on the housing ladder. As this group have become dis-appointed in Starmer's ability to bring about the 'change' they voted for, the appeal of Reform is starting to grow.'
Another explanation is that Reform has begun to attract high-profile women to its ranks, which is helping to change the old perception that Farage leads a red-trousered gammon brigade. Andrea Jenkyns, the mayor of Lincolnshire, and Sarah Pochin, the MP for Runcorn, have been joined in recent weeks by the former Tories Laura Anne Jones, Reform's first member of the Welsh Senedd, and the London councillor and prosecutor Laila Cunningham, a mother of seven.
Cunningham and Pochin flanked Farage at the launch of his party's summer campaign on crime. This week he was joined by Vanessa Frake, a former prison governor. Senior figures in the party believe that Cunningham would be a formidable candidate for mayor of London in May 2028. 'A moderate Muslim mother who can communicate very effectively and talks sense,' one says. 'She could win.'
The issue on which Labour is most conspicuously losing support to Reform is migration, where the government's policy of housing asylum seekers in local communities has led to widespread protests. Farage began to notice the difference during the run-up to the Runcorn by-election in May. There, women voiced concerns about migrants in HMOs, Houses in Multiple Occupation. 'Runcorn was an awakening for me,' he says. 'We started getting women, not just mums, much older women too, saying, 'Have you heard what's happening in that street? There's 15 of them in there.' In Runcorn I began to get this sense that HMOs are worse than hotels because they're just plonked in communities. And it led to great fear.'
Since then, women have led the protests across the country. In Epping, they protested outside the Bell hotel after a 14-year-old girl was allegedly assaulted by an Ethiopian asylum seeker. Another group of women and girls gathered outside the four-star Britannia International hotel in Canary Wharf, London, wearing pink clothing, held up England flags and chanted 'stop the boats'.
The Epping protest was partly coordinated by Orla Minihane, a Reform candidate and mother of three. 'I know a few of these women. They're Reform members and they frighten the life out of me,' jokes Farage, channelling the Duke of Wellington's observation about his own troops. 'I think there is grave concern, particularly among mothers about their teenagers, whether they can let them out. This issue has changed the perception of how people view Reform.'
Again the numbers back this up. Just 18 per cent of women now support temporary accommodation for asylum seekers in their local communities, down 36 per cent since 2003. Among men it is 22 per cent, down 30 per cent. Two thirds of Baby Boomer women and those over 75 say they think Britain cares more about immigrants than its citizens (compared with just half of the overall population). 'Support for housing asylum seekers locally in temporary accommodation has fallen most with women,' says Tryl. 'And our polling finds a great willingness to say protests against the hotels are appropriate.'
New polling has found that voters back the Epping protests by 41 per cent to 32 per cent. More than seven out of ten voters say they expect rioting over asylum issues, a stunning normalisation of political violence. The proportion who think violent protests are accept-able has risen from 7.7 per cent to 12.2 per cent – the equivalent of two million adults since August last year, when More in Common last conducted the poll. The number of women who think violent protest is justified has doubled from 5 to 10 per cent; among men it has risen from 11 per cent to 15 per cent. Mothers are two points more likely to say that violence is justified than other women. Mothers of children under 16 are more likely to cite concerns about sexual violence as a reason for opposing asylum hotels.
There is a global tradition of protests by women having great potency. Mothers of soldiers killed in Russia's war in Chechnya caused trouble for Vladimir Putin in the early 2000s. The Mothers of the Disappeared were key in eroding the authority of the Argentinian junta in the 1970s.
But it also seems to be the case that women feel able to say things that men don't. It was striking that when the Lionesses won the Euros last month, Chloe Kelly, who scored the winning penalty, said: 'I'm so proud to be English.' Hannah Hampton, the England goalie, added: 'We've got that grit, that English blood in us.' Contrast that with the men's team, which has leapt on every woke bandwagon. Farage watched with glee: 'It was a Mo Farah moment, like where an interviewer talked about his culture and he said: 'Listen, mate, I'm British.' I loved it.'
It is not all plain sailing for Farage. Tryl explains: 'There are a couple of significant Achilles heels when it comes to support among women – firstly they are most likely to cite Nigel Farage's closeness to Donald Trump as the top barrier to voting Reform. They are also nervous about Reform's stance on Ukraine, and sceptical of plans to make renewables more expensive.'
But the march of the mums has the other parties worried. It explains why Kemi Badenoch rushed to make an attack video this week when Farage ducked a question about Vanessa Frake refusing to rule out trans women in women's jails, forcing him to clarify his position. 'Only Conservatives will protect women-only spaces,' Badenoch said.
It explains why Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, is working on a new childcare offering for voters, expected to be unveiled in the autumn. In Downing Street, Starmer's team believes the only way to win back voters of all sexes is to 'lift the sense of doom and decline' by dealing with the country's deep structural problems. He has been heard to say: 'I will not just be another PM who left this for someone else to sort.'
The Prime Minister has been at Chequers this week summoning aides for crunch discussions. Senior figures say Starmer has been warned he has just six months to turn things around or be 'timed out'. Speechwriter Alan Lockey and head of strategy Paul Ovenden are working on a party conference speech which will warn voters there has to be 'profound change to the way we do things', but also spell out a more optimistic vision of what Britain looks like if Labour gets it right. He will pitch the government as the friend of those who work hard and earn their money.
Insiders say Starmer is 'furious' about the lack of progress on deregulation and building. Expect a new planning bill to combat that. The PM also wants the autumn Budget to be bold rather than simply plug gaps in the government's spending plans. He met Rachel Reeves last week. His argument against Reform will be that he is plotting a revolution for the quiet majority, while a vote for Farage means 'decline and grievance'.
For his part, Farage says that while he is 'not going to pander to anyone', his new audience of women supporters 'will demand' policies of their own. But ultimately his pitch is that the main parties have failed. At Goodwood last Friday he was approached in the betting ring by punters. 'They're not supporting us because they want to stick two fingers up. They agree with our analysis that it's really bad, but they actually have great faith in us to sort it out.'
If we get to 2029 and the public believes Farage is more likely to solve Britain's ills than Starmer or Badenoch, the other parties will have both a man and woman problem.