He’s back. After all the teasing and all the rhetoric, Nigel Farage has finally announced his return as Reform leader. Having initially pledged that he would not stand at this election, he told a 100-strong room in Westminster: ‘I’ve changed my mind.’ He will now stand as Reform’s candidate in Clacton – the only seat Ukip ever won in a general election, back in 2015. ‘I cannot turn my back on the people’s army’ he said to the room. ‘I cannot turn my back on all those people who voted for us… I can’t let those people down, I won’t let those people down.’
If this is to be a change election, then Farage wants to lead the radical charge
If this is to be a change election, then Farage wants to lead the radical charge. ‘What I intend to lead is a political revolt’, he said. ‘Nothing in this country works anymore. The health service doesn’t work. The roads don’t work. None of our public services are up to scratch. We are in decline. This will only be turned around with boldness.’ It was his familiar narrative of betrayal and decline – but with an added emphasis on his self-regarding mantle as the people’s tribune. To those who ask whether Reform will do deals with individual MPs, Farage had two words to say: ‘2.4 million’. This is the number of legal migrants who have arrived here in the past two years.
The hacks in the room only had one question: how well will Reform actually do? Farage, as usual, was bold in his claims. ‘Our aim in this election is to get many, many millions of votes. And I’m talking far more votes than we got back in 2015 when we got 4 million votes. We’re going to get many, many, many more votes than that.’ This is quite something for a party that has just a handful of councillors and has never hit 20 per cent in a by-election. Yet that didn’t stop Farage from telling journalists, ‘I genuinely believe we can get more votes than the Conservative party. And you can hold me to that.’
Farage’s return as leader means that Richard Tice now becomes Reform chairman – an admission perhaps that the party’s campaign has not been going as well up to this point as the party might have wanted.
Regardless, this certainly is a further blow to the Conservative party, which is already forecast to lose more than half its seats on 4 July. Tory strategists breathed a sigh of relief ten days ago when they thought it would be Richard Tice, not Farage, as the face of Reform. Now they will have to contend with Farage spearheading the party’s efforts in the election debates.
Farage’s political hero is Enoch Powell who in February 1974 urged his followers to vote Labour to kick out Ted Heath’s Tory government. Fifty years later, Farage could now put the same party out of office for a generation.
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