Nigel Farage’s left-wing turn looks like a triumph

Nigel Farage declared earlier this year that ‘economics might be bigger than immigration for us at the next election’. Most people at Westminster didn’t take him particularly seriously. After all, Reform UK is all about immigration, right?

When Farage based his local election campaign on an overt pitch to working-class Labour voters by talking about trade unions and reindustrialisation, some parts of the political village were still dismissive. How could a Thatcherite public schoolboy and former City trader ever sell left-wing economics to the electorate?

The results of those elections, and the by-election in Runcorn, mean that Reform’s economic pitch to Labour supporters – and the wider electorate – now needs to be taken very seriously.

To be fair, there were two groups who always saw the importance of Reform on economics. First, the people who run Labour’s political strategy. The likes of Morgan