4 hours ago
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I fear for Nigel Farage. This should be his big year, the make-or-break 2026. Last year his Reform party finally began to top the polls and he was feted by Washington as the UK’s Trump and next prime minister. So how now would he turn a sheaf of poll results into a disciplined election-winning machine? Or has he for the past year merely been doing what most third parties do at this stage of a parliament, which is feast on the misfortune of their opponents?
The polls sent Reform surging into a steady lead last spring. It held that position through the summer, with a high of 29% according to YouGov, and 33% according to More in Common. But pollsters now suggest that Farage’s party may have peaked – with YouGov’s December polling showing a drop in its vote share to 26%, its lowest since April. Some of this has been credited to increasing support for the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and to the joint Lib Dem/Green vote surging to nearly 30%. It seems likely that this confusion will survive through this May’s local elections. Betting in this field is for madmen.
Meanwhile Farage’s Reform remains a classic one-man show. I recall interviewing him before the referendum about how things were going in his back office. Was it still the much-publicised chaos? He gazed up at the ceiling. The fact is that British politics has long handled the occasional star performer, an Enoch Powell, Roy Jenkins, Nye Bevan, Lloyd George or Winston Churchill. But it rarely votes “presidentially” to put them into office. The US votes for populist stars, relying on its constitution to curb any resulting autocracy. Britain votes for parties and their programmes.
Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous claim that American politics defaults to the mob and British politics to the club was never truer than it is today. The electoral success of the Tories over the past century has been rooted in presenting the voters with a disciplined group of reasonably competent ministers. They obeyed one vital requirement of cabinet government, collective loyalty. They worked and socialised together and governed as friends. The same was true of many Labour cabinets.
That tradition survived even through the Cameron years. It collapsed under the conspiratorial era of Boris Johnson and has never recovered. The concept of the internecine cabinet emerged into the open and has never disappeared. It can be seen today in the absurd factionalism of Keir Starmer’s first year in office, with ministers and officials relentlessly briefing against each other.
The same applies to Farage. He has to defend his colleagues – and himself – from one unfortunate remark after another. It has turned leadership and even membership into a revolving door. Reform has had three chairs in under two years. They come and go in the night. Reform’s latest leader in Wales is currently in prison.
The result is barely recognisable as a party. Reform’s nearest thing to a shadow chancellor appears to be a property tycoon, Nick Candy. There is no core of seasoned professionals that is so important to electoral success. There is rather a stage army of dissident former Tory MPs such as Andrea Jenkyns, Ann Widdecombe and Danny Kruger. None is famous for party loyalty. Reform’s chief whip, Lee Anderson, had previously stood both for election for the Labour party and the Conservative party.
Farage has tried desperately to position his party on the political spectrum. He grovelled his way to Mar-a-Lago to be lauded by Trump and Elon Musk. He then had to endure Musk’s contempt when he refused to back the appalling Tommy Robinson. He wisely distanced himself from Trump’s more extreme associates, such as the Heritage Foundation. But he purports to be a friend of Steve Bannon and has spent time with JD Vance. This is risky when Trump is way below par among British voters, with 22% for and 72% against.
On policy, Farage runs another risk in identifying himself almost solely with immigration. Single-issue parties may do well in a good year, but who knows where immigration will be in 2029? Reform may have 12 councils under its belt, but whether its adoption of Musk’s chainsaw approach to public spending is a vote-winner remains to be seen. Farage is now frantically identifying issues such as the countryside and net-zero energy subsidies on which Tories might switch to him.
Farage has undeniable charisma on the platform. He can be affable, humorous, passionate and concise: qualities suited to de Tocqueville’s mob but absent from his club. They will also be absent from Westminster’s murky offices and corridors over the next two years. The one reliable prediction is that the next election will send to Westminster the multiparty shambles of a hung parliament. From that I do not expect Farage to emerge on top.
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Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
