For much of the time since Nigel Farage resumed the Reform UK leadership two long years ago, his party has been an island of relative stability in the increasingly rough sea of British politics. While other parties plunged queasily in the polls, messily purged dissidents, argued publicly about their direction and changed leaders, Farage dominated Reform UK and gave impregnably self-assured interviews. The party’s popularity moved steadily upwards, comfortably above that of all the others.
It is a paradox that a new party with wildly expectant members, not many experienced politicians and few properly worked-out policies became the pole around which the country’s political debate revolved, and yet this seemed to do no harm to Reform’s chances of winning the next general election. As with rising rightwing populist parties across the world, Reform’s tendency to make it up as it went along appeared to be not a weakness but, for many voters, much of its appeal.
That seems less the case now. Amid multiple, worsening funding scandals, and with the party openly divided about how to respond to them, this year Reform has lost about a quarter of its support and its poll lead over Labour. There are internal mutterings about the attention-seeking and leadership ambitions of its home affairs spokesperson, the relentlessly abrasive Zia Yusuf, and its Treasury spokesperson, the slippery former Tory Robert Jenrick.
Meanwhile, Farage himself, who at 62 is two decades older than them, and has been active in politics for more than 40 years, may be finally losing his composure. Interviewed by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg last weekend, after months of largely and uncharacteristically avoiding journalists, he switched between anger at his enemies, claims to victimhood and unconvincing insouciance: eyes bulging with fury one moment, head bobbing with forced laughter the next. Even by the feverish standards of modern British politics, it was a strange, almost manic performance.
What might happen to Reform and our wider politics if the party’s troubles continue and deepen? The answers may be less reassuring than Reform’s enemies like to think. While the diminishing likelihood of a Reform government is welcome, the party’s crisis could change Reform, and the forces massing further to the right of it – both in parliament and on the streets – in unpredictable and dangerous ways.
At the party’s conference last week, the mood felt brittle and volatile. Whereas speakers insisted that Reform was still a “government in waiting”, and banners, lanyards and speeches relentlessly hyped its potential “first 100 days”, the delegates I spoke to were worried about the party’s slide in the polls and general election chances, Andy Burnham’s assured start as prime minister, and the growing pressure Farage was under. After his speech was repeatedly interrupted by hecklers from the green group Climate Resistance, I overheard two delegates, mild-looking, middle-aged men in suits, discussing the protest. “It’s got to stop,” said one. The other said: “Smash ’em in the face!”
Another Reform reaction to the party’s difficulties has been to announce ever more extreme, dramatic policies, such as deporting foreign prisoners, possibly to the infamously brutal jails of El Salvador, and deploying the Royal Navy and Royal Marines to intercept and take all small boat migrants back to France, in “the biggest military operation in the English Channel since the second world war”. In his conference speech, Yusuf described “Operation Fortress” with lingering detail, while huge images of a military helicopter and warship were projected on to the set behind him, and a storm of applause came from the packed hall. Perhaps the potential for such authoritarian political theatre and performatively aggressive policy was always there in Reform, but both feel much more central to its activities now.
“All parliamentary recesses will be cancelled,” declared Farage in his speech. “Parliament will sit, if necessary, for 24 hours a day, six days a week, until we pass the necessary legislation.” Nothing would be allowed to obstruct “the will of the people” – even though, with modern election turnouts low and half a dozen parties now competing seriously across the country, a Reform victory might represent the will of only a fifth of voters, or less.
This year, with the party losing the electoral initiative, new movements have appeared on the anti-migrant right: the even more hardline Restore Britain, and Patriot Platform, the black-clad blockaders of Dover and Portsmouth. Though Farage has criticised both groups, the latter for wearing balaclavas at their protests, the boundaries between Reform and these rivals are not as firm as he would like more mainstream rightwing Britons – whose support Reform badly needs – to think. Restore and Reform’s rhetoric and policies can be hard to distinguish, while on Monday, Yusuf visited Portsmouth and was accosted by Patriot Platform’s organiser, Daniel Thomas, a convicted attempted kidnapper.
Thomas told Yusuf he was upset by Farage’s criticism, and that the protests were not meant to intimidate, but that he still considered Farage a “hero” for his campaigning against the small boats. “You have done really well,” said Thomas. “A lot of people support you.” “Thank you,” said Yusuf, who listened to him at length, nodding respectfully. Then Yusuf replied: “I will take that message – you’ve got my word … take that back to him [Farage].”
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The encounter suggested that Reform’s problems may create new alliances and opportunities for the hard right, reshaping but not weakening anti-migrant politics. While the Conservative shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, condemned the Portsmouth violence, he added: “People are genuinely angry at the government’s failure to stop the boats.” Even Labour dares not challenge the legitimacy of what the policing minister, Sarah Jones, called on Monday “the frustration we see in our communities today” about the boats. Just as Reform’s rise made both Labour and the Tories more nationalist and socially conservative, there is a danger that its decline, temporary or otherwise, could continue that process, as they compete for its former supporters.
If you’re opposed to Reform’s policies, and especially if you might become one of their victims, then its setbacks this year may be a relief. But that relief will only be partial while its ideas and claims remain so thoroughly embedded across politics and the media, and in many people’s everyday conversations and thinking. One day, Farage will retire, but what he represents will be even harder to stop.
