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New Statesman
27-05-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
Nigel Farage's political personality disorder
Photo byThe National Liberal Club is a mausoleum. I refer not to the age or appearance of its patrons, but to an expired purpose. The Liberal Party was not only the most successful political movement of the 19th century, but defined an entire period of British politics, one which came to an end in the 1920s, when the current Labour-Conservative stranglehold established itself. Since then, the party's name has lived on as part of the Liberal Democrats. But the 'Liberal England' it represented has strangely died. So when Reform UK selected the Club as the venue for its agenda-seizing press conference today, the symbolism was clear. Nigel Farage was making the sarcophagus of a fallen political movement into the rostrum for his new one, dancing on a grave. Today he promised a political 'revolution' on the scale of that which buried the Liberals, led by an increasingly professional Reform vanguard (in a great show of media coordination, almost the entire contents of Farage's speech were briefed to the media over the last two days). But this project goes beyond even that which destroyed the Liberals: Farage is promising to destroy not only the Conservative party, but Labour as well. Beneath the chandeliers of a colonnaded library, Farage had summoned the nation's media to witness the closest he's come to a programme for government. Indeed, as Farage claimed, Reform are already in government. Behind the podium, he was backed by a seated tableau of his newly elected local mayors and council leaders, the latter of which he boasted now control a combined budget of £10 billion. But Farage promised the prize of central government is now his for the taking. Whether led by Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick (whose Ozempic-enabled health kick, tailored suits and dental work Farage speculated upon sneeringly), the Conservative party is finished. 'It's over. It is done.' And even should he shrug off his 'heavy domestic duties', Boris Johnson isn't coming to save it. Its connection to the nation is severed, Farage told us, the culmination of a terminal rot between leadership and base. Farage has spent his political career stealing the Tories' lunch. But now, like an enterprising school bully, he has spied a new victim. He had much the same to say about the Labour party, which has 'no connection with working people' or 'with what we used to call working-class communities'. And despite appearances – the public-school bark and impeccably shiny shoes – Farage is keen to display his own credentials on this score. His is the party of people whose alarms go off at five in the morning, he told us, the grafters and entrepreneurs. These people are the opposite of the present Cabinet, he said, none of whom have run successful businesses, despite their combined experience in the realm of 'international law'. He invited Keir Starmer to debate him head-to-head at a working men's club, though doubted the Prime Minister could stomach an afternoon of 'beers with the lads' and 'Channel 4 racing'. This easy demotic, this dialect of 'fluent human', is classic Farage. We also had the standard reel of 'King and country', 'Britain has nothing to be ashamed of,' patriotism. What was new is his fighting this battle at a policy level, well beyond the broad gestures of his usual rhetorical style. Today, in a direct attack upon the Labour government, Farage promised to reverse the winter fuel cuts and to remove the two-child benefit cap, not because he tolerated a 'benefits culture', but to promote the growth of traditional families. (Farage pre-empted any criticism of his own record on family values, joking about his 'track record' in divorce and adultery.) And this wasn't all. He went on to introduce a slew of other economic policies: raising the personal income tax allowance to £20,000 and introducing a transferrable tax allowance for married couples. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe It's clear that he isn't really enjoying all this, all these sums. Nigel Farage doesn't like being bored, and perhaps no press conference he's ever given has involved so much arithmetic. Pressed on funding these promises, he snapped on a pair of reading glasses and scanned down a ledger of savings. Net zero – which he amorphously claimed was costing us £45 billion – would be scrapped, as would migrant hotels (the migrants in question would not be rehoused in tents as Andrea Jenkyns has suggested – they would be 'gone', Farage promised). DEI policies are also out (they were said to cost government £7 billion). There is a distinctly American attempt here to merge fiscal policy with the culture wars, which is striking but distinctly unserious. And, of course, none of it adds up. Speaking on the Today programme this morning, Reform hype-man and ConservativeHome founder Tim Montgomerie admitted as much, and the IFS have since said Reform's income tax plan would cost up to £80 billion. But Farage can skate over the accusations about 'costings' that felled lesser politicians in the 2010s (when one questioner brought up the 'magic money tree', Farage simply grinned through the spotlight). Because, as ever with Farage, this conference was far more about projection than substance. 'Small-state, low tax, up-by-your-bootstraps' might serve as the motto not only of Reform UK, but its constituency, the provincial English petit-bourgeoisie. And for all his talk of 'workers' and 'working people', this is an appeal to a slightly more specific class, the same one first courted on the right by Margaret Thatcher. I was sat next to one of its exemplary members. Joseph Boam, who at 22 years old is the deputy leader of the Reform administration of Leicestershire county council, has a 'working-class' background, and this press conference represented only his second ever visit to London. But this wasn't incompatible with his various business dealings: he has his own ice cream company and property portfolio, despite not yet owning his own home. In a perfect encapsulation of Thatcherite exile, his branch of Reform have been holding their meetings in an old Conservative club house. It might sound strange to say, but no other British politician is as fashion-conscious as Nigel Farage. And so far his conversion to working-class champion has formed a strenuous theatrical exercise. Like a political Action Man, so far this year he has launched a variety of new outfits. We've had steelworker Nige (hard hat and protective glasses included). We've had farmer Farage, all Harris tweed and heavy Barbour. And we've had the working men's club compere (the purple trousers say it all). But for all his talk of circling the political horseshoe, this agenda of patriotic small-statism, of what Stuart Hall in 1979 called 'authoritarian populism', is not unfamiliar. So far he has moved too fast for these inconsistencies to clarify, hiding from proper scrutiny behind a blur of costume changes. But even he cannot combine book-keeper and sans-culotte forever. [See also: Reform UK's taproom revolutionaries] Related
New European
02-05-2025
- Politics
- New European
Both Labour and the Tories should be terrified
Reform are, of course, the night's big winers. By the end of today, it looks likely that gains by the Liberal Democrats and Greens in their target areas will show that it is not just Reform that is benefitting from the decline in the old two-party duopoly – last year's collapse in Conservative support, compounded by this year's haemorrhage of Labour votes. Last week, previewing yesterday's Runcorn & Helsby by-election, I suggested a political version of the Micawber principle: victory by 50 votes, the result happiness; defeat by 50 votes, result misery. OK, Reform's Sarah Pochin won by just six votes. But the principle holds; and by the same token Labour can celebrate three narrow mayoral victories overnight. However, Labour's vote fell alarmingly in each of the mayoral contests; and early indications from county council contests confirm the pattern. Labour should not seek to comfort itself by claiming 'it could have been worse'. The table below summarises the main overnight results. It compares the share of votes won by each party yesterday with the results from last year's general election, applying the figures from the relevant constituencies are added together. As the figures show, Labour suffered double-digit declines everywhere. Their three victories, in North Tyneside, the West of England and Doncaster, were achieved with alarmingly low support: 30, 25 and 33 per cent respectively. These are not kinds of figures that have normally led to victories in the past. Coming from nowhere, Reform won Greater Lincolnshire as well as the Runcorn by-election, and ran Labour close in the other three mayoral contests. It is an astonishing performance, likely to be confirmed by the county council results later today. What now? In the past, third-party eruptions between general elections have subsided. In the end, for more than a century, the Labour-Conservative domination has returned whenever voters have decided who they want to govern Britain. Maybe the same will happen again. But as well as the long-term social and economic trends chipping away at the old class-based party loyalties, there is a technical reason why we may be witnessing a transformation in our politics. It's to do with the way our First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) voting system works. It rewards a) large national parties (traditionally Labour and Conservative), b) parties with specific geographical roots (notably the SNP in their good years) and c) minority parties that successfully target particular seats (as the Liberal Democrats did last year). It punishes medium-sized parties with the kind of broad support that amasses millions of votes nationally, but not enough in particular seats to have many MPs. This used to be the curse that afflicted the old Liberal party and more recently the Lib Dems. Last year it was Reform that suffered, winning half a million more votes than the Lib Dems but 67 fewer seats. When it was just the Lib Dems trying to break the Labour-Tory duopoly, a rough rule of thumb was that they, and their predecessor parties, needed at least 30 per cent to overcome the biases inherent in FPTP. In 1983, the Liberal/SDP Alliance won just 23 seats with 26 per cent of the vote. Labour was narrowly ahead in the national vote, with 28 per cent, but because its support was more concentrated in winnable areas, ended up with 209 seats. The arithmetic has changed. With the Greens, Lib Dems and Reform all seeking to undermine the old duopoly – and the nationalists in Scotland and Wales – local candidates need fewer votes to be elected. This, indeed, is the common feature of all the overnight results. What is true locally is true nationally. The tipping point for a party such Reform is no longer 30 per cent. It's probably around 25 per cent. That is where they stand in the polls. Later today the BBC will publish its estimate of the national vote share from the country council elections. I would not be surprised if Reform ends up with at least 25 per cent and possibly more. The scattering of overnight council results shows Reform winning half the seats that have declared. We have yet to hear from southern counties where Reform is weaker and the Greens and Lib Dems stronger. But, for the moment, Reform no longer suffers from an FPTP penalty. It looks as if their share of county councillors will end up broadly in line with their overall share of votes. And that transformation of the way votes translate into seats really should terrify both Labour and the Conservatives. Peter Kellner is the founder of YouGov. You can find his Substack here
Bloomberg
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Nigel Farage's Rise Drives Cracks in Britain's Two-Party System
Nigel Farage's Reform UK Party is poised to emerge as the biggest winner in England's local elections on Thursday, potentially laying the ground for a wider fracturing of British politics and the end of the country's traditional Labour-Conservative duopoly. Less than a year after sweeping to power on a landslide, Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour has tanked in the polls, with Kemi Badenoch's Tories also going backward. The waning popularity of the two parties that have governed Britain for the past century creates an opening for Farage's right-wing outfit, the centrist Lib Dems and the left-wing Greens in hundreds of council seats up for grabs on May 1.
