The 1 thing I agree with Nigel Farage on

The National

3 days ago

NIGEL Farage gets one big thing right.
No, it isn't his pledge to reintroduce the Winter Fuel Payment or to scrap the two-child cap; just look at how he'd exclude immigrants in the latter instance to see how opportunistic his announcement was this week.
It's something more fundamental and something that many of his opponents struggle to comprehend. It is his belief, or his professed belief, in politics.
Keir Starmer doesn't believe in politics; he believes in opinion polls, focus groups and, most of all, he believes whatever Morgan McSweeney tells him to believe.
A particularly embarrassing moment for the Prime Minister came this week when he was challenged on his lack of appeal compared with Farage and asked whether had anything to do with his propensity to reach for talking points and avoid questions. Starmer responded by reaching for a talking point and avoiding the question.
A few years ago, Starmer believed that a woman could have a penis, now he doesn't. He once believed that Labour should spend £28 billion a year on renewables, then he didn't. He once held up Jeremy Corbyn as a 'friend', then they were simply 'colleagues'. I could go on.
Keir Starmer's press conference was a masterclass in disastrous hubris. He repeatedly tried to attack Nigel Farage, but ended up being rounded on by many of the journalists present. He wants everyone to take him seriously but he's become a national laughing stock. pic.twitter.com/5MbMehaMhl — James Melville 🚜 (@JamesMelville) May 30, 2025
When I say that Farage believes in politics, I don't mean that he is even all that consistent. Are we really meant to believe that a Thatcherite former City boy cares all that deeply about families on benefits, or has he identified yet another stick with which to beat the Government?
But there are certain topics on which the public knows beyond any doubt that Farage has a stance and has held the same stance for decades. He didn't like immigration when we were in the EU, he still doesn't like it five years on.
He is, almost always for the worse, willing to bang the same drum, even if he gets torn apart for it by his opponents.
READ MORE: Nigel Farage sees route to power in squeezing Labour from the left
At a press conference in Westminster on Tuesday the Reform UK leader batted away suggestions he was a 'populist'. He said: 'I've nearly always spent my career pushing arguments for minority positions and trying to make them into majority positions.'
Farage, never modest, thinks he's rather good at this. I do, too, if the last decade of UK politics is anything to go by. What's more, if that had come out of the mouth of just about anyone else, I'd have found it mighty refreshing.
That doesn't mean that I want Farage's 'minority positions' to successfully be turned into 'majority positions' but that I wish there were more politicians willing to counter him on those terms.
Starmer (below), like a child cheating on their homework, prefers to find out what everyone else has said and follow that.
The SNP have started down this road, too. Their insistence that a referendum should only be sought when support for independence reaches 60% is not making an argument; it is not politics, but policy by opinion polling in the most straight-forward way.
We need fewer politicians fretting over what plays well with focus groups or trying to spin narratives. They must decide what they are actually all about. They need to reflect on why they're in this game at all.
Until they do, people will turn to Farage not just for what he is saying but because they can see, most of the time, that he actually believes it.
Compare with the Prime Minister, who would take a straw poll if he was asked whether it was raining out.
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