Are the wheels coming off the train? Have enough people seen through Nigel Farage for the bandwagon to be faltering?
Iain Dale, the veteran broadcaster, commentator and writer, seems to think so. He opened his LBC show on Wednesday night by pronouncing that Farage was incapable of even appearing prime ministerial and that Reform seemed to have gone “a little bit bonkers”.
If Dale is correct, it flies in the face of the latest polling, which shows that Farage is on track to become our next prime minister—rocketing the number of his MPs from just five to 311.
Dale is the first to admit that his prediction may be wildly wrong. And yet who could disagree that, on the form of the past two weeks, Reform and its leader have indeed gone a little nuts?
There are people who seriously believe that foreigners are rounding up our royal swans to stew or toast them, but the actual evidence is thin to non-existent—and, believe me, I’ve trawled through the murky depths of X in search of the clues. So why, if you think you could be prime minister, would you waste a single breath suggesting it could be true?
And when his mate Donald Trump hints that sharia law could soon be coming to London, why would a politician wanting to be taken seriously not plainly say that the idea’s laughable? Instead of mumbling that he once heard something similar from a taxi driver…
When asked about Trump linking paracetamol with autism, why not just contradict him? Farage wants to be our nation’s leader, for heaven’s sake. Why not acquaint himself with the clinical trials rather than muttering about how “they” once told us Thalidomide was safe?
And what on earth was that recent American trip all about—the one when our would-be premier flew across the Atlantic to rubbish his own country by comparing it with North Korea? The comparison was plain silly, and no one wants a silly prime minister.
And why make headline-grabbing announcements about immigration crackdowns without checking the maths? We can all see what he’s doing: expect to see £234bn (of notional welfare savings) on the side of a bus near you soon. Like the £350m Brexit slogan, the figure doesn’t bear scrutiny, but that’s not the point, is it?
No one doubts that Farage exudes charisma and is a master of raw street politics. But prime ministerial still carries connotations of judgement, gravitas and, I don’t know, a respect for truth. We tried Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. We know how those movies ended.
So, yes, Reform is currently riding high in the polls, aided by a stagnant government, an invisible official opposition, and a prime-time £40k-a-month show on GB News. But could Dale be right in suspecting that, the nearer we get to an actual election, the more British voters will be reluctant to put someone so flaky into Downing Street?
In addition to the above-named factors, Farage benefits from a liberal cringe. Briefly summarised, it goes as follows: “He was right about Brexit, and we were wrong. Therefore, much as we dislike and disapprove of him, we have to accept that he is in touch with the public mood and we are clinging to out-of-date nostrums about what a civilised, enlightened society looks like.”
You can see it in the way the BBC showers him with confetti-like invitations to appear, with his pronouncements treated as if falling from the lips of the Dalai Lama. Never mind that the first thing Farage would do in power is cut the BBC off at its knees.
You can see it in the reluctance of liberals to crow over Brexit and demonstrate that it was the single greatest act of self-harm in modern British history. And to let Farage off with his airy assertions that this is because Brexit “wasn’t done properly”.
The polling could be wrong—just like the polling that says Reform is storming ahead just now—but YouGov consistently finds that just 13 per cent feel Brexit has been a success, against 56 to 61 per cent who think it’s been more of a failure, with 67 per cent of these blaming Farage himself.
You can see it in the assumption that Farage must somehow be in tune with some notional wavelength of “Englishness” to which liberal elites are supposedly tone-deaf.
But do the English really admire slipperiness with the truth or wilful ignorance of science? Are they really ready to salute a leader for so transparently sucking up to Trump, or making preposterous claims rubbishing his own country?
Farage drapes himself in red-white-and-blue patriotism, yet it was George Orwell, revered sage of the British character, who observed: “In England all the boasting and flag-wagging, the ‘Rule Britannia’ stuff is done by a small minority. The patriotism of the common people is not vocal or even conscious.”
In Farage, we have a would-be leader who heaped praise on the catastrophic Liz Truss budget. Who has some warm words for Vladimir Putin (“I admired him as a political operator because he’s managed to take control of running Russia… we provoked this war”) at a time when Britain is all but at war with the Kremlin dictator.
And then we have Farage, the embarrassingly craven Elon Musk fanboy. And the once-seen, never-forgotten image of Trump and Farage, two power-drunk egos basking in golden bling (“somewhere between a Martin Scorsese film and a scene from the heyday of the Third Reich,” as the critic Jonathan Jones put it.) It’s almost enough to make one feel nostalgic for the iconography of the Bullingdon Club.
As for Farage’s latest shameful, quasi-Trumpian plan to renege on promises to those who have already been granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK, one correspondent to the Times put it well on Friday: “Britain has been respected for centuries as a nation that keeps its word. It is keeping our word, not flying flags, that should make us feel proud to be British.” He’s right.
We have up to 46 months to go before the election which will decide Farage’s future. The current polling says Iain Dale is wrong. But the wise old owl of radio may yet have the last laugh.
