How is the idea that Nigel Farage might join the ‘broad church’ Conservative party going then? Given that he floated the notion mainly to troll the party’s high-ups and then they breathed life into it mainly to try and keep right-leaning voters on board, it’s going about as well as one might expect. Which is to say terribly.
On Thursday, Farage replied as follows to a tweet by James Cleverly that had sought to claim credit for the lack of small boat Channel crossings over Christmas: ‘You may be called Cleverly but you are clearly a moron. I am close to Dover now, the wind has been gusting 50 mph…That is why there are no migrant crossings. You charlatans and liars all deserve to lose your seats at the election.’
In the absence of a scare, many 2019 Conservative voters are likely to be in the mood for insurrection
So that’s that then. Yet Farage still has a very big call to make. Given he considers this government to be comprised of deceitful chancers deserving ejection from the Commons, should he not put his shoulder fully to the wheel to help make that happen?
We will find out much more about the former UKIP leader’s intentions at a press conference to be held by the Reform party on Wednesday. Though he is honorary president of Reform, which is the successor to the Brexit party, he has largely left the slog of putting it on the map to party leader Richard Tice.
And despite taking a while to warm-up to the idea of immigration being by far the most powerful issue when it comes to attracting electoral support, Tice has brought the party quite a long way. Double-digit polling scores are now commonplace. While Conservative strategists are currently confident of squeezing the challenger party hard during the election proper, all that would change were Farage to spearhead its campaign.
Farage has been very canny in the past about which election campaigns he fronts – such as the triumphant European elections of 2014 and 2019 and the 2015 general election in which UKIP won almost four million votes – and which he side-steps, like the 2010 and 2017 general elections when circumstances were less propitious. He also knows that the first-past-the-post electoral system is an almost impregnable barrier against an insurgent victory.
Yet any assessment of current political circumstances would suggest that fronting the Reform campaign in 2024 – either as leader or as chief campaigner, TV debater and speaker at rallies while Tice goes to fight the Hartlepool seat – has plenty to offer on the upside.
The Tories do not these days have a compelling offer for right-wing voters, such as they had when pledging an EU referendum in 2015 or to ‘Get Brexit Done’ in 2019. And neither is there a sufficient left-wing bogeyman to dragoon alienated voters back into line, such as the 2015 idea of Nicola Sturgeon turning Ed Miliband into a puppet premier or the 2019 nightmare of Jeremy Corbyn potentially getting the keys to 10 Downing Street.
In the absence of such a scare, many 2019 Conservative voters are likely to be in the mood for insurrection – with his giant profile and personality, Farage will be ideally placed to exploit that. He has understood ever since the EU enlargement of 2004 flooded the UK labour market that public scepticism towards mass immigration is the key electoral impulse to own. And own it he does – both in terms of combating illegal arrivals and campaigning to radically reduce legal migration – thanks to his relentless focus upon it for two decades.
Currently Farage is in an extraordinary position – the only credible convener of a right-of-centre rebellion against the established parties. He is also the effective holder of a veto against anyone else having a go: nobody is going to get momentum or critical mass while it is thought that Nigel is ready to leap back into action.
With such pre-eminence comes a huge burden of expectations among voters hungry for change. Some still blame him for standing down Brexit party candidates in Conservative-held seats in 2019. Were he, to the relief of the Tories, to duck out of playing a central role in the next election, then parts of his core audience would begin to mutter about him being ‘controlled opposition’ (a favourite trope among conspiracy theorists on the right) and his brand could soon be in big trouble.
At the Reform party press conference next week Farage has three basic choices: to announce that he won’t come back for the election, to announce that he will or to carry on with a dance of the seven veils designed to keep himself in the news and Tory nerves frayed by dropping heavy hints about his appetite for party politics being refreshed.
I would expect Farage to take this third option for now. But when the election is called he will indeed seek to be a massive presence in the campaign. And he will be wearing the light blue rosette of Reform rather than the dark blue one of a Tory.
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