Farage and European populism’s looming Trump problem
While the Reform leader is on the verge of a breakthrough there is a dilemma ahead on trade and the economy.
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The cover of the Economist this week features a close-up of the face of Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain’s populist Reform party. He is, the cover line declares, the man Britain cannot ignore. As the Economist puts it, Farage’s arrival in the House of Commons at last year’s general election and the rise of his insurgent party means a new, more volatile era in British politics is coming.
What, again? The last eleven years, from the bitter Scottish independence referendum, through Brexit, Boris and the pandemic have hardly been sedate. The Economist is right, though. What is happening with Reform suggests we are moving into an even more volatile era.
Farage and his colleagues are seeking to turn their insurgent movement into a proper party with organisational heft and the machinery to win elections and make him Prime Minister. Get this right and they could emerge as the largest party at the next general election, likely only three years away in 2028, given the need for incumbent large majority governments in the UK to go early lest they be accused of clinging on.
On Thursday, Reform faces the next big test of its organisational abilities both with the local elections and the Runcorn and Helsby by-election in the north of west of England where it hopes to overturn a Labour majority of 14,696.
If Reform cannot win this by-election it has a problem. The by-election is only taking place because the now former Labour MP punched a constituent, repeatedly, and had to resign. Meanwhile, Labour is down in the polls nationally and the economy is misfiring. Voters are even grumpier than usual and the by-election provides them with a chance to kick the government. Fail here and Farage will face gleeful media scrutiny.
So Reform is likely to win. If it is accompanied with breakthroughs in local government and a poor Tory showing on Thursday it will be presented as setting up the next general election as a fight between the incumbent Labour party and the populist Reform. The chatter against the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has already got going, though the party has no credible alternative leader. A senior Tory MP told me last week he would leave the party if Robert Jenrick replaced Badenoch. Note also that Badenoch had a much more impressive appearance at PMQs last week, as someone with a consistent record on the transgender disaster berating Sir Keir Starmer for flip-flopping.
For Labour, it is all about Reform right now. Already, Farage’s rise has forced Labour and its leader to change their approach. The Prime Minister’s strategist Morgan McSweeney has moved to toughen up Labour rhetoric and policy on welfare and immigration. The fight in the so-called Red Wall with Reform will be brutal. Simultaneously, Labour is exposed on its left flank to the Greens and independent Islamist candidates. The centrist Lib Dems are also rising in the prosperous Home Counties and beyond. If this persists, the conditions exist for a smash up of a general election in which no major party breaks 30% of the vote, or perhaps even 25% of the vote, and Farage becomes Prime Minister on a wave of destroy the establishment feeling at the head of a coalition, possibly with the depleted Conservatives.
That is the Reform hope, although three years is a long time and there is a world out there presenting a problem on the horizon for Farage and other European populists.