Dominic Grieve and Caroline Lucas: 'We need to fight Farage – and Faragism'

New European

30-01-2025

The prime minister's reluctance to engage on the question of Europe predates his arrival in Number 10. Last year Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, broke ranks by questioning Starmer's 'code of silence' over rejoining the EU and, in July, less than 24 hours before polls opened for the General Election, Starmer told reporters that Britain would not rejoin the bloc in his lifetime. At Davos last week, the trade chief Maros Sefcovic referred to the idea of Britain joining the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Convention (PEM). For Lucas this is, finally, 'a step in the right direction'.
'During the referendum, I'd come from 10 years in the European parliament, so I was under no illusion about some of the downsides of the way the EU worked,' says Lucas, the former MP for Brighton and leader of the Green Party. But five years down the line, she feels that Britain's post-Brexit settlement needs to change. 'It would show that the status quo isn't resolved. That we can still fix things, but to do that we have to move in a closer direction,' she says.
But Grieve believes the government is stuck in limbo. 'We have a Labour government, who I'm quite sure is well-intentioned and wants to get the economy going. But then they will not face up to the elephant in the room, which is that it's going to be very hard to do those things as long as the trade barriers with our closest neighbours continue,' he says.
The former attorney general for England and Wales gets the impression that Labour are scared to focus political debate back on Brexit after watching multiple Conservative governments tear themselves to shreds over the issue.
'I said in 2020 that Boris Johnson would destroy the Conservative Party as an effective force and it has been 100% correct. I said that Brexit would deliver no benefits and I haven't seen one,' says Grieve. For Grieve, it was hardly a surprise that Labour won the election, as it was the only obvious alternative to a Conservative government that had 'run out of steam'. 'They had run out of any ideas or, frankly, any reason for governing at all,' he says.
Grieve and Lucas want to use the movement they now lead as a means to rebuild relations with the EU and to rejoin. This aim, they feel, is a vote-winner for Labour. 'It would give a bit of hope to people too, which is in short supply right now. But the more cross-party voices we have, then the more likely it is we'll see a bit of leadership on this and move in that direction,' says Lucas.
Grieve believes that some of these voices also exist within his former party, 'despite its current condition'.
'There are Conservative backbenchers – and even frontbenchers – who know that leaving has done a lot of damage,' Grieve says. When I ask who those MPs are, he is reluctant to name them. 'Ah, I might do them terrible harm and that's the difficulty. After all, Robert Jenrick campaigned for me in 2016, although I may not be a very good guide as to current points of view,' he adds.
According to Grieve, his former party is 'absolutely obsessed' with Euroscepticism, but warns that if they continue down that road, the Conservatives will 'become indistinguishable from Reform'. For Grieve and Lucas, there is, at the moment, one major difference between the two parties; the former have policies while the latter do not.
'Farage has, in policy terms, nothing to offer. Absolutely nothing. It's actually very difficult, currently, to identify a Reform policy,' says Grieve. He adds: 'Farage's difficulty, in a nutshell, is that while even he realises that Tommy Robinson is unacceptable as a member of his party, the unpleasant reality is that Tommy Robinson's supporters are the very people who voted for him.' It's in this respect, Lucas explains, that it's not only Farage that must be tackled, but Faragism. Photo: European Movement UK
In a recent interview with The Sunday Times , Grieve and Lucas's predecessor, Michael Heseltine, expressed equal distaste for the Reform leader. 'Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It's the worst stirring of the racial pot. You have to have answers,' said Heseltine. When it came to what to do about the MP for Clacton-On-Sea, he was just as unrelenting: 'Destroy him'. Grieve feels the same, only with a caveat. 'I agree with Michael,' he says. But by 'destroyed', he thinks Heseltine meant 'challenged'. That way, Farage would essentially become ineffective.
British politics is, currently, beset by anger. 'There's a willingness to stir the pot,' says Grieve and the one clutching the spoon is Farage, who is only content when he is 'identifying enemies' and 'pitching them against each other'.
Heseltine identified Farage's 'mischief' but for Grieve and Lucas, the underlying fears Farage plays on – migration and the sense that ordinary Britons are losing out – must be addressed by the government. Once Labour satisfies voters in this area, Farage's standing will suffer. His tactics must also be challenged for what they are and at the same time, adds Lucas, the media must also act.
'You can't just sit back and hope it's going to go away. But the media's got a bit of a role here because it frustrates me over and over again. The BBC, on this particular issue, is one of the worst. It just allows interviews with Farage to be entirely on his terms, whether that's on his relationship with Donald Trump or his relationship with Elon Musk.' In doing so, Farage is being given a free pass to dominate stories, while his party evades any real scrutiny, especially on points of policy. 'The media have got to be a hell of a lot more savvy than they are,' says Lucas.
So, for the co-presidents of the European Movement, Farage has got to go. But where? Is it possible that Farage and the Conservatives will strike a deal? 'It depends on what happens to the party. There are some people who would never accept going in with Reform which would mean, I'm afraid, that the party is split,' says Grieve, but still, he can see it happening.
In this eventuality, the Conservative party would become a 'new' Reform, losing their roots and securing a 'win' for Farage while the more centre-right dissenting voices are pushed out. Yet, for Grieve and Lucas – a common misconception must be corrected.
'I don't think you should lump Leavers of 2016 with being Farage supporters in 2025,' says Grieve. 'That's a mistake.' Similarly, Lucas's project, Dear Leavers, focused on having an honest discussion with those who voted for Brexit, rather than isolating them in a separate political camp.
There has to be a distinction between a contemporary Farage and those who endorsed his views during the Brexit campaign. 'After all,' says Grieve, 'this is somebody who ranted about how he was prevented in Parliament from asking questions about the Southport murders when there were sound reasons why the Speaker prevented him from doing so. The government doesn't control the prosecutorial process. These are the basic building blocks of what makes the UK a free country with the rule of law and he has a total disregard for that.'
Interestingly, Lucas also featured in a radio interview on LBC with Jake Berry around the same time. The former Conservative party chairman was trying to make the case that the government had deliberately arranged the date of the Southport trial to coincide with Trump's inauguration.
'That's not how it works. It's just bonkers. Ministers have no power or ability to regulate court process, absolutely none. But he wouldn't back down on it and well, that's what worries me,' she says. When I ask Lucas whether she thinks Berry really believed that, she's not sure what's worse; that or the alternative that he was trying to stir up controversy.
In the same Sunday Times interview, Heseltine is asked whether he believes he'll live to see Britain rejoining the EU and he answers curtly: 'At my 90th birthday I invited all those present to join me for the 100th. Yes, of course I believe that.' I ask Grieve and Lucas if they have the same sense of faith as their predecessor and their responses are similar, albeit framed differently.
'I have a sort of quiet confidence,' says Grieve. 'The idea some of my former parliamentary colleagues had, that somehow Britain leaving was going to destroy the EU, is not going to happen.' He's uncertain whether the move will take 10, 15 or more years, but knows it must start, progressively, with building links with the continent, including the single market and, as Lucas points out, the European Environment Agency.
' Faith that rejoining will happen is a strange word to use in this context,' she smiles. 'But, I do have every expectation that it will happen.'