Take Nigel Farage seriously, because British voters will
With Labour flailing and the Tories in the wilderness, the electorate may feel there’s nothing to lose taking a punt on Reform.
We are as much as four years away from an election, he has only three other members of parliament on his side and a week is a long time in politics. So how seriously, really, should we take the idea that Nigel Farage might end up as prime minister?
This is how seriously. His party is ahead in the polls now and I don’t think there is a single argument that his mainstream party opponents either have or will make against him that will make the slightest difference to his position. This absolutely doesn’t mean he is heading for a victory that can’t be stopped. As I have said before, it is much too early to call the result of the next election. But it absolutely does mean we have to take the prospect of Farage in No 10 very seriously indeed.
On July 15, 2024 the US president Joe Biden gave an interview to NBC and sounded aggrieved. The interviewer wanted to ask him about the disastrous presidential debate in which he had recently participated. The debate appearance had shaken his candidacy by revealing a stumbling, confused Biden unable to complete his sentences or follow his own train of thought. It was an obviously legitimate subject for NBC to raise. But the president was irritated.
Why, he wanted to know, didn’t broadcasters talk about the “28 lies” Donald Trump had told in the same debate. “Why doesn’t the press ever talk about that?”
The problem with Biden’s question was not merely that it was wrong. The press never stopped talking about Trump’s relaxed approach to the truth. The problem was that Biden could only see Trump and couldn’t see himself.
In their startling book Original Sin, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson demonstrate that while Democrats were busy accusing Trump of lying, Biden and the entire Democratic campaign were engaged themselves in a huge and also glaringly obvious lie. They were advancing the candidacy for president of a man who was plainly in failing health. Someone who was patently incapable of serving four more years in the Oval Office. They knew this but denied it to voters. And the voters could see painfully clearly that the denials were false.
So the Democrats were trying to run a campaign against electing a liar as president. And, understandably, they were seized with the urgency of this. They reeled with bewilderment and dismay at the idea that voters would choose the mendacious Trump. They could talk of little else. Yet at the same time voters could see right in front of them that the entire Democratic presidential campaign was a great big whopper. Unsurprisingly, the whole Trump is a liar thing didn’t land as liberals hoped it would.
The lesson of this episode is that politicians (indeed people in general) are able to see the flaws in their opponents much more easily than they can see flaws in themselves. They can’t see themselves as others see them. And this is the fate that awaits almost every argument that the mainstream will make against Nigel Farage over the next four years.
The most popular argument - Kemi Badenoch used it this week, Keir Starmer has used it too - is that Farage doesn’t have any real policies. He raises problems but he can’t solve them. Yet this exact criticism is the one being made every day about the government, and Badenoch has made her refusal to commit to policy a feature of her leadership.
Starmer may feel that his own approach is practical and pragmatic, while Farage is a populist who merely postures. But Labour won a landslide and then turned up in Downing Street completely unsure what to do next. And everyone saw this. As sympathetic as I am to the critique of Farage, I don’t think voters are going to buy this from the government.
Then there is the suggestion that, far from having no policies, Farage supports alarming ones, such as privatising the NHS. It is vanishingly unlikely he will advance this at the election. But more important, it is blind to the fact that voters think the government’s policies (even ones I support, such as on the winter fuel allowance) are alarming.
Another attack line is that Reform is Farage and no one else. There’s a lot to it. Even inside his party this is seen as a worry, and no one is more prone to the thought that he is surrounded by idiots than Farage himself. But the chances of this political critique working electorally are slim.
It’s not simply that public awareness of political personalities is slight. It is also that voters don’t think much of the politicians they know about. It simply won’t wash to say to voters: “Don’t vote Reform, as Farage doesn’t have anyone as good alongside him as Rachel Reeves”.
There are other smaller arguments that will fail too. When Rupert Lowe left Reform, it may have appeared chaotic and humiliating to political observers. But most people aren’t political observers. They had never heard of Lowe and didn’t follow the stories about him. And even those who did noted that both the Tories and Labour have suffered similar moments.
Between now and the next election it is true that Reform may have periods of internal dissent; people calling for Farage to go, people flouncing out. But to put it mildly, it would be hypocritical of the Tories to complain. And it is very likely that the leadership of both main parties will encounter at least as much turbulence.
What about the fact that Farage is often missing from parliamentary votes? Few people know, not that many care and even if you are a parliamentary vote nerd, you will note that Starmer isn’t present for votes much either.
In other words, you can’t make a negative campaign work against someone else if voters feel the same or worse about you. This was the lesson for opponents of Trump, and it is the lesson for opponents of Farage.
It is possible that Reform will implode. And if it does, it will not matter how nimble Farage’s opponents are. But while I think this is definitely possible, I wouldn’t bank on it. It is a party with a lot of enthusiasm, a clear story and a solid demographic behind it. So that leaves only one solution.
If the mainstream (a shorthand word, by the way, since it isn’t clear the mainstream actually is the mainstream) wants to win, the mainstream has to deliver. People will vote for Reform if the mainstream parties can’t make the system work. If the government, in particular, can’t grow the economy, improve public services, act on crime and stop illegal migration.
To make any argument against Farage work, voters have to believe that they have something to lose when voting Reform. Otherwise they will take the view that, sure, it is a bit of a gamble, but why not?
The Times
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