Nigel Farage is signing football shirts when I arrive at Reform’s campaign headquarters in Millbank Tower, the building where New Labour prepared for power before 1997. The black shirts are emblazoned with ‘Farage 10’ in gold. ‘Someone called them Nazi colours,’ the leader complains. ‘This always happens when we do well.’
As favourite to be the next prime minister, Farage is sanguine. ‘They’re a special edition, £350 each.’ How many is he signing? ‘—king hundreds,’ he says, pulling his punches on the profanity. Seven hundred to be precise, a cool £245,000 for party coffers. This is the same week the party registers a £9 million donation from the crypto millionaire Christopher Harborne, the largest single donation in British political history.
‘When you see the Q3 returns, you’ll see a massive uptick in money raised,’ Farage says. ‘Fundraising was slower than we hoped it would be to begin with, but people wanted to see us prove ourselves. 1 May was just the beginning of that.’ That was when Reform won ten councils in the local elections.
Now his focus is on 7 May 2026, the date Farage believes is his moment of destiny. He expects to make huge strides in Scotland, to top the polls in Wales and, in England, his goal is to render the Conservatives extinct as the major party of the right. ‘This is it,’ he says. ‘All my time is spent on 7 May. Nothing else matters.’
Farage shows me round the office, proud of what he has built from nothing. Reform has 259,000 members, pushing half a million registered supporters, while the Tories are struggling to keep their membership in six figures. He also knows they have a long way to go if Reform is to form the next government. ‘We’ve set up 470 branches in 16 months and some are good and some are not, but those that are good are getting really good.’ The office includes a TV studio from where Farage delivered a near-live response to Keir Starmer’s party conference speech. ‘We’re going to open our own podcast channel very soon,’ he adds.
The centrepiece of the war room is a giant whiteboard listing every contest in the May elections in England, Scotland and Wales. There are green asterisks next to Reform’s targets. Some are classic Red Wall seats, such as Barnsley and Gateshead where, he says ‘we will be having a serious crack’. In London they’re the outer ‘doughnut’ of boroughs where the Tories used to be strong – Bromley and Bexley – but also Barking, Dagenham and parts of Croydon. Farage believes the rise of the Greens and Lutfur Rahman’s supporters in east London mean ‘Labour could be in more trouble than you can imagine.’ Farage thinks neither Starmer nor Rachel Reeves will be leading Labour by 2029. ‘It might be Angela Rayner,’ he adds. ‘At least she’s got a personality.’
‘You do wonder why
the others didn’t copy
me years ago’
Zack Polanski, the new Green party leader, he pronounces ‘a maniac’, with policies on ‘no borders’ and drug legalisation that Farage thinks are ‘absolutely crackers’. But there is also respect for a fellow populist. ‘You do wonder why the others didn’t copy me years ago,’ he says. ‘He poses a massive problem for Starmer and he’s eaten [Jeremy] Corbyn’s lunch.’ Corbyn, he says ‘couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery’, not a charge ever levelled at Farage.
A smaller whiteboard lists council by-elections around the country that week. Farage is particularly delighted to have won a seat in Hunstanton against the Lib Dems. ‘They put in a massive campaign there,’ he says. ‘That was a really big one.’
But it is the Tories who are his chosen prey: ‘Next May you will see this historic party eliminated in Scotland and probably for the most part eliminated in Wales too.’ In England, he says: ‘I think they will do terribly, far worse than this year. I said last year that our aim was to replace them and I believe we will.’
When the bookies made him favourite to be the next PM, did people start looking at him differently? ‘The business community is completely different. I’m out tonight at a private dinner for 14. There’s some very serious dudes in the room. Even the CBI [the most outspoken business voice against Brexit].’ Not everyone is reconciled to his success. ‘Those that hate us probably hate us even more, to the point where it’s a bit worrying.’ Farage won’t speak about his own security, but says he is ‘concerned’ for ‘people out canvassing’.
In parliament, ‘the Lib Dems are pretty horrible’, he says. There is abuse in the corridors, ‘and they try to nick our seats in the chamber’. He thinks Labour MPs are ‘the most peculiar bunch of people’. However, he says, ‘My relationship with probably half the Tory MPs is markedly warmer’ since he launched a ten-minute rule bill in October to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. ‘Something just changed. They thought: this is what we should be doing.’ This warmth does not apply to ‘the One Nation lot’.
There is a live debate in Reform over how many Tory defectors they should accept. Three former Tory MPs jumped ship this month – Jonathan Gullis, Chris Green and Lia Nici. Farage will only accept those who have the support of his activists. He predicts a new wave of Tory defectors after May. ‘There are two or three very senior people that we’re talking to. There are one or two of the new intake that we like very much.’ Would he take any defectors from the ranks of Labour MPs? ‘There’s an office down the corridor for Shabana Mahmood,’ he jokes, calling her a ‘very determined Home Secretary’.
What Farage needs most is people with ministerial and Downing Street experience. ‘We must not be the Tory party 2.0, but the Tory party has within it a lot of people who worked at the coalface. I haven’t. Lee [Anderson] hasn’t, Richard [Tice] hasn’t. Zia [Yusuf] hasn’t. We do want more of them who’ve been in and around No. 10.’ That is why he has talked to Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser.
It is why Farage calls the defection of Danny Kruger, a former aide to both David Cameron and Johnson, ‘so bloody important’. He says: ‘That was the defection that no one saw coming.’ Farage has put Kruger in charge of planning how Reform would govern if they won the 2029 general election. He says: ‘Number one, the architecture of the way in which government’s done would change. Number two, the ability to appoint your own people is absolutely crucial. That’s why the first eight months of the Trump government was a success.’ He wants to ‘reduce the size of the civil service’ and hire political appointees, including outside experts, to key positions.
‘The two potential big barriers are the civil service and the House of Lords. They are the two things that Danny is wrestling with more than anything else.’ Farage doubts peers would honour the Salisbury convention, whereby the Lords does not block legislation from a winning party’s manifesto. His options for the upper house are simple: scrap it or stack it. ‘Would they honour the Salisbury convention if a party won an election saying specifically it would do things? Or do you have to basically threaten to destroy it to get them to vote for it? Or do you have to threaten them with 500 new peers? We’re debating all that.’
Farage is also conscious that there will need to be legal changes. He sees scrapping the Human Rights Act as a precursor to reform of judicial review. ‘Amending, repealing, replacing that piece of legislation is what you do on day one.’ He is also listening to ideas on how the government could pass legislation quickly to give itself the kind of executive powers used by the US president. ‘It’s difficult to see how you can do this without some level of executive powers.’ Emulating his friend Trump, Farage wants one big fight, not several. Breaking into an uncanny impersonation of the President, he says: ‘You have one great big beautiful bill, so beautiful.’
I have three times privately asked Farage if he actually wants to be prime minister and received equivocal answers. Now he says: ‘Yes!’ before adding: ‘But not for the title. I couldn’t give a toss about the title. It means nothing to me. But for what you could do with it.’
But can he get there? Like a lot of politicians on the cusp of great success there is an arrogance and confidence to Farage now, about what he has accomplished, but also a nervousness that it might all evaporate. Reform has dropped a couple of points in recent polls. ‘Good stocks don’t go straight up,’ he says. ‘There’s always a bit of a wobble on the way.’
Plenty of people will try to stop him, including those who have recently pushed stories about racist and anti-Semitic comments he is alleged to have made while at Dulwich College. He denies bullying and targeting individuals, not that he said offensive things. ‘Am I a bully? No. Would I take it out on an individual? No. Were all sorts of things said between people at school? Yes, of course. It was 50 bloody years ago. It was a different world.’
‘Am I a bully? No. Were all sorts of things said between people at school? Yes, of course’
There has also been internal dissent. Reform expelled Rupert Lowe, one of its original five MPs, after he challenged Farage’s authority. He admits he has had to be ‘ruthless’, but adds: ‘There’s one thing I prize. Loyalty, not fealty. The thing about Rupert was just utter constant disloyalty and the inability to act as part of a team. The five of us would have MPs meetings that would end in three minutes with him screaming at everybody and then going around saying “I’m the only person fit to be leader of this party”. This is not a dictatorship, but there are plenty of people over the years who have thought “If he can do it, we can do it”. But you know what? This stuff’s quite tough.’
Nonetheless, Farage knows he needs to share the stage. The four main faces are him, Richard Tice, Zia Yusuf, the head of policy, and the former Tory councillor Laila Cunningham, who is tipped to be Reform’s candidate for London mayor.
Farage also needs to find a party leader for Scotland and Wales. No one yet has formal shadow cabinet roles, including that of shadow chancellor. Some Reformers hope Robert Jenrick will cross the floor to take the job, which both Tice and Yusuf are said to covet. ‘It wouldn’t make sense to announce your team when I’m confident there’s great talent coming,’ Farage explains. ‘I think by the end of next year you will start to see who’s going to be in charge of this, that and the other.’
While Farage stresses Reform’s professionalism, traces of the old bon viveur remain. Stacked on his desk are three packets of Benson and Hedges. He boasts that Reform’s Portsmouth branch ‘signed up more new members than anywhere else in the country’ on ‘a massive extended pub crawl’. Down the corridor, in the compliance office, there hangs a tea towel emblazoned with the face of Herman Van Rompuy, the former European Council president whom Farage savaged in the European parliament as a ‘damp rag’ – his first viral video moment on social media.
Farage is hosting a dozen for Christmas (‘I do the drinks’) and has a third grandchild due over the festive season. He’s planning sloe gin cocktails and says: ‘I’ve got to get better at making negronis.’ He’ll go to the local hunt: ‘The only place you can get a drink at 10 a.m. on Boxing Day.’
Reform’s office also has a large bar area. Every Monday Farage invites in donors and potential donors for a drink. However, on 1 December, one of those present later claimed Farage indicated that he was ultimately prepared to do a deal with the Conservatives, on his terms, if that got him into power. Farage and his team say he said no such thing. But the reality is that if he is not on course to win a majority in 2029, there will be tremendous pressure from donors to come to an arrangement with the Tories.
If he does win, Farage will continue to do things his way. ‘I want a happy, jokey, laughy, fun environment. I want the staff to go to the pub after work.’ Would he live in No. 10? ‘Maybe four nights a week. Seven? Forget it. It ain’t happening. I think you have to try and make some time for fun. Starmer goes to watch the Arsenal. At the moment, I’m so bloody busy, I’m so overwhelmed with work, it takes a bit of a toll.’
Farage’s idea of fun is walking in the country or ‘going out to sea’. He says: ‘I want to do more tuna fishing, because they’re back in British waters. I’d also want occasionally to go and watch some cricket.’ Farage knows the Brexiteer Ian Botham and texts with Geoffrey Boycott, a Reform supporter. But his favourite player is the current England captain. ‘I love [Ben] Stokes. He’s brave. He’s what leadership is. [Joe] Root is a role model for youngsters, beautifully behaved, he’s never put a foot wrong. But as captain of England, we won one of his last 17 Tests. In comes the warrior. People respond to leadership. The next couple of weeks will make or break his legacy.’
Just as the next six months may make or break Farage’s. ‘We’re going for gold,’ he says. And with that he goes to sign more No. 10 football shirts.
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