i know, i know, i know…
It’s been a while and I’ve missed you too. My only defence is I’ve been gallivanting but I’m back now and keen to comment on the main political story that’s taken place in this country during my time away, yep the continued rise and rise of Farage’s Reform.
Of the current party leaders in Westminster, the one with the best chance of becoming Prime Minister at the next general election is Nigel Farage. That was the finding of the nationwide pre-local election poll and the results certainly backed it up. It’s worth reminding ourselves that Reform UK picked-up 677 of the 1,641 seats being contested and took control of ten councils, thrashing the Tories in the shires and Labour in its northern strongholds. Furthermore, they gained another MP in the Runcorn & Helsby by-election and saw two Reform mayors voted in. If these numbers were extrapolated, they’d be a shoe-in next time around. Kemi-the-invisible openly called it a “bloodbath” and it wasn’t any prettier for the incumbent, Sir Keir.
For many years, Farage has proved a canny operator. Having already lured away a majority of Tory voters, he is now drawing support from Labour’s industrial heartlands by presenting himself as, in his own words, the “true voice of the ordinary working man and woman”. Quite something for a privately educated, ex-stockbroker multi-millionaire. Notably delivering the speech in a working men’s club in Durham, Comrade Nigel, pint in fist, voiced solidarity with the trade union movement and demanded the immediate nationalisation of the steel industry.
Rationally, it’s blatant pandering backed by no coherent policy programme, but there’s no denying that he’s a master at exploiting grievance. The party largely remains something of a personality cult, as evidenced by the burqa-banning parliamentary question by its newest MP (clearly sanctioned by Nige) and the subsequent resignation/redeployment of its former Chairman, but it begs the question in today’s political landscape: does it matter?
The detailed economic arguments are secondary to the real reason he is outflanking the other parties. At its root, Reform UK are cleverly making the argument about identity and belonging. The ‘red wall’ voters are disenfranchised, feel left-out and want immigration to stop. Brexit was about immigration, pure and simple. They are nostalgic for the days when homogenous communities provided meaning, cohesion, security and work. To these people Reform is not about the balance of payments, fiscal policy or international trade deals, but culture and belonging and that card is being played very successfully. Class politics has been replaced by culture politics.
One of naughty Nigel’s most potent lines of attack is that Labour, having campaigned on pledges to be different, are revealed as merely more of the same. If Starmer offers no genuine alternative to a failing settlement – no vision of work, welfare or home that speaks to how people live now and wish to in the near future – he will find the great unwashed looks elsewhere for one.
