Just as the British public can’t escape Nigel Farage even when he’s on the other side of the world, Rishi Sunak couldn’t avoid being asked about the former Ukip leader as he headed to the COP climate talks.
Quizzed aboard a plane several thousand miles above Europe on the way to Dubai, the Prime Minister was brought down to earth by a simple question. Was Stanley Johnson right to call for Farage to be readmitted to the Tory party?
Stanley (who himself had a stint in the I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! jungle) had said Farage was the best way the Conservatives could hold on to working-class Brexit voters in the “Red Wall”. “I think we cannot afford to have a man of that talent not in our camp at the next election!” he said.
In reply, Sunak didn’t exactly kill the idea of a Farage return to the party that he left 31 long years ago (after John Major backed the Maastricht Treaty that created the European Union). “Our party has always been a broad church,” was the PM’s response.
Sunak had used an almost identical line during the Tory conference, where the former Brexit Party leader was feted for selfies by activists and when speculation last flurried about his political future.
Farage had for years been barred from Conservative conference, but in an apt metaphor for the clout he wields thanks to his high media profile, he was admitted on a press pass thanks to his role as a presenter on GB News.
After boogying the night away with Priti Patel, he once again seemed to be doing what he does best: leading the Tories a merry dance over just what kind of party they want to be.
Having for years ridiculed the Conservatives hokey-cokey over Europe, Farage is currently going through his own equivalent on his own links to the party. One minute he seems in, the next he seems out, but the real impact is that he’s shaking the Tories all about.
When asked during Tory conference about the prospect of becoming a Tory member, Farage teased: “Let’s see what happens…If it became a real Conservative Party I might think about it.”
Just hours later he changed tack: “Would I want to join a party that’s put the tax rate up to the highest in over 70 years, that has allowed net migration to run at over half a million a year, that has not used Brexit to deregulate to help small businesses? No, no and no.”
During his stint in the ITV jungle, he’s been back in tease mode. “As for little me, there’s a lot of speculation that after they lose the next election ’Oh, you know, maybe Nigel becomes the leader of the Tory Party one day’. There’s a lot of chatter about it…The important thing, though, is to say this: never say never.”
And just as pro-EU campaigners want Labour to start a “rejoin” conversation about the EU, Farage admirers want a “rejoin” conversation about the man they think is a huge electoral asset.
There’s no question that Farage would add real heft to the Tories’ appeal to some Leave voters, or that he’s a skilled political operator (his recent “debanking” campaign plus his early flagging of a Gaza ceasefire march on Armistice Day proved he can still set the agenda that Sunak follows).
The Reform Party founded by Farage is now polling 11 per cent, and some surveys suggest if he replaced Richard Tice as leader it would be even more popular – particularly among disaffected Tories.
His key insight in the 2000s was to spot that voter unease about higher immigration from Eastern Europe under New Labour could be harnessed to an historic distrust of Brussels itself. With Sunak’s government on the ropes over record illegal and legal migration, it needs Farage in the tent rather than outside it.
But any Tory leader who admitted him into the party would obviously run that risk of picking their own replacement. That’s precisely why it would in many ways make sense to make him a member of the House of Lords, where he could pose no such risk (as only an MP can lead the party, in this century at least).
The need to perhaps head off that tactic may have prompted the ever-canny Farage into his recent I’m A Celebrity remarks criticising the Lords. “It’s a throwback that needs modernising. It’s been stuffed full of people who have given parties money,” he said.
Indeed, during the 2019 election campaign, just after he gave Boris Johnson an early Christmas present by telling Brexit Party candidates not to stand against Tories, Farage said he had been offered a peerage (the Tory Party denied this). But he suggested he would turn it down. “Ridiculous – the thought they can buy me, a high-paid job.”
Still, Farage has in the past been rather keen on peerages. Back in 2013, after Ukip won 25 per cent of the vote in the local elections, the idea of the party getting some peerages was floated – but swiftly killed by David Cameron.
I recall Farage saying at the time that was “an insult to democracy in the UK”. He went on: “The message being sent out by the prime minister is ‘we don’t care how you think, we don’t care how you feel and not only will we wilfully ignore the way you vote we will actively block you from having any role in British politics.”
Those who know him well have suggested that for all Farage’s image as an outsider, he really craves being accepted as a senior figure, and a peerage would certainly cement his place in public life. Sitting alongside David Cameron would have an extra piquancy that may appeal to him too.
Of course, Farage is a divisive figure too. Not for nothing did Dominic Cummings believe Vote Leave won the 2016 referendum thanks to boosterish salesmanship of Johnson rather than the scary ‘migrants at the gates’ message of Farage.
But Farage’s return to the Tories would in some ways be the logical conclusion of the slow Ukip-isation of the Conservative party. Some of its MPs, activists and members are ex-Ukip members and its Rwanda plans and Illegal Migration Bill shows just how far the party has travelled on immigration policy.
Boris Johnson, who fancies a comeback of his own, would also be relieved to have a rival out of the way. If he ever became Opposition Leader himself, Johnson may be tempted to make that peerage offer, possibly tied to a shadow ministerial role for Farage too.
If they can recreate the 2019 mood, let alone the 2016 one, against a Starmer government facing problems of its own and with Farage’s best pal Donald Trump possibly in the White House again, the idea may not look that far-fetched.
Still, given Farage’s attacks on him it seems highly unlikely Sunak would agree to a peerage, no matter how desperate his current poll ratings appear to be. But the next Tory leader, particularly if they’ve been hammered by a Labour landslide, will want a quick way to attract voters who may have stayed at home in droves.
Farage may not be crowned “King of the Jungle” this year, but it’s not hard to envisage him becoming a Lord of the realm under a new Tory Leader of the Opposition.
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