Rishi Sunak’s snap summer election means that Nigel Farage faces a decisive moment. For months if not years, Farage has held back from taking a role in the heat of the political fray. Instead, he has preferred to be a backseat driver to his ally Richard Tice as leader of the Reform UK party he created.
Sunak is banking on Labour – and Reform – being unprepared for the coming fight
Farage, as his fans claim, has ‘kept his powder dry’ as honorary president of the party, and restricted himself to commenting on politics as a presenter on GB News. He has, at times, seemingly put more effort into helping Donald Trump win back the US presidency than into British politics. The hard graft of building Reform has been left to Tice, who, while he has avoided any egregious errors, lacks Farage’s popular charisma and his appeal as a barnstorming orator.
But now that Sunak has unexpectedly fired the gun for a six-week summer election campaign, Farage’s position as a backseat driver is not sustainable. Farage has vowed to think ‘overnight’ about whether he will be standing for Reform UK. The former Brexit party leader said there was ‘no commitment either way from me at the moment’, but hinted that the Tories are running scared: ‘I met a cabinet minister at a social event on Monday this week, and the venom directed towards me was quite extraordinary, the fear was quite extraordinary.’
The Tories are right to be worried: even Farage’s enemies concede that he is the most consequential politician since Margaret Thatcher. If it had not been for his twenty years on the road campaigning to free Britain from the clammy grip of the EU, David Cameron would not have been forced to call the 2016 referendum, and Brexit would not have happened.
Then, when it became clear that Theresa May was hell bent on watering down Brexit, Farage created the Brexit Party almost overnight. In doing so, he stormed the 2019 European elections – reducing the Tories to a paltry nine per cent of the poll – and forcing the hapless Mrs May from office.
Now that the Tories have confirmed all Farage’s most dire forecasts by botching Brexit and chaotically governing in a way that does not resemble ‘true blue’ conservatism, Farage has no excuses left: aged 60, he must come out of his well-heeled retirement and rally his troops for one last campaign to take the fight to Starmer and Sunak.
Farage’s active participation in the election campaign would surely boost Reform from their present 12 per cent in the polls to the mid-teens: enough to rout the Tories in many Red Wall seats, and turn a mere defeat into something much more decisive. It would be a just punishment for a party that promised so much but delivered so little for Red Wall voters and others who put their trust in the Tories for the first time.
Reform would not pick up many – if any – seats themselves under Britain’s first-past-the-post system. And, as Farage has himself conceded, Labour is almost certainly on course to win the election: ‘The whole plan for Reform was that it was a six-year plan – fight this election, get ready for when Labour fail, which they will,’ Farage said last night. But that Reform might not return any MPs shouldn’t put Farage off: as he did by holding May’s feet to the fire, Farage can put pressure on the Tories to embrace a more typical conservatism that it has turned its back on in recent years. By leading one more campaign, Farage could lay the ground for the emergence of a new genuinely Conservative party.
‘I think the timing of this general election has quite a lot to do with me,’ said Farage of Sunak’s snap announcement. He’s probably right: by going early, Sunak is banking on Labour – and Reform – being unprepared for the coming fight. But ready or not, it’s time for Farage to get off the sidelines and join the fight.
It’s time for Nigel Farage to get off the fence
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1
23.05.2024
Rishi Sunak’s snap summer election means that Nigel Farage faces a decisive moment. For months if not years, Farage has held back from taking a role in the heat of the political fray. Instead, he has preferred to be a backseat driver to his ally Richard Tice as leader of the Reform UK party he created.
Sunak is banking on Labour – and Reform – being unprepared for the coming fight
Farage, as his fans claim, has ‘kept his powder dry’ as honorary president of the party, and restricted himself to commenting on politics as a presenter on GB News. He has, at times, seemingly put more effort into helping Donald Trump win back the US presidency than into British politics. The hard graft of building Reform has been left to Tice, who, while he has avoided any egregious errors, lacks Farage’s popular charisma and his appeal as a barnstorming orator.
But now that Sunak has unexpectedly fired the gun for a six-week summer election campaign,........
© The Spectator
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