Nigel Farage is becoming a moderniser

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[/audioplayer]There are many words that you might associate with Nigel Farage, but moderniser probably isn’t one. Yet the Ukip leader is embarking on the process of modernising his party. He has concluded that it cannot achieve its aims with its current level of support. So he is repositioning it in the hope of winning new converts even at the risk of alienating traditional supporters.

If this sounds similar to what David Cameron did after winning the Tory leadership in 2005, that’s because it is. Interviewing Farage during his triumphant European election campaign, I was struck by how he talked approvingly of ‘New Ukip’, which he claimed had ‘gone past the hobby horse’ phase and had the discipline to target individual seats, unlike ‘Old Ukip’. It was reminiscent of how the Cameroons used to talk in the early days of his leadership or, going further back, how those around Tony Blair would boast of their transformation of the Labour party.

There is an irony here. Cameron’s modernising programme was one of the things that gave Ukip space to grow. The Cameroons assumed that voters on the right had nowhere else to go as they changed tack on a whole host of issues. But Ukip picked up a number of these people.

It has also adeptly tapped into local Tory discontent with coalition policies. ‘Do not underestimate the number of people in the English county elections last year who voted for us on the wind farm issue,’ Farage told The Spectator recently. ‘There are 310, I think, wind farm protest action groups in this country and every single one of them is talking to Ukip.’

Farage would not thank you for comparing his approach to Cameron’s; he prides himself on being different from the Tory leader.