Just when you thought that British politics had lost touch with reality, up pops Nigel Farage to say that he will be standing for parliament as a Reform UK candidate. Banquo’s ghost didn’t make a better entrance. Mr Farage has been haunting the Tories for more than a decade. This time he will contest Clacton in Essex, a seat once held by his previous party, Ukip. Yet Mr Farage is a serial loser: he has been rejected seven times by voters in six constituencies over two decades.
Reform UK’s leader, who is also its majority shareholder, has influence over rightwing, socially conservative voters. That frightens the Tories, some of whose supporters like the sound of Mr Farage’s antediluvian views. His parties have fomented rage, paranoia and xenophobia. He can claim to have been responsible in large part for Britain’s departure from the EU, a historic mistake for which this country continues to pay a heavy price. His Brexit party’s indirect electoral impact, say academics, was substantial: in splitting the leave vote in Labour seats, Mr Farage cost the Conservatives around 25 gains from Labour in 2017.
Labour and the Conservatives are both guilty of making promises on the campaign trail that they cannot keep. However, Mr Farage has long perfected this form of politics. His party’s brazen assertions “feel true” to their target voters, but have no basis in fact. What will surely worry Rishi Sunak is that Reform’s leader will use the number of migrants coming across the Channel in small boats – about 10,000 so far this year – to mock the Tory claim that their Brexit deal allowed the UK to “take back control” of its borders. Mr Farage’s blatant racism at the start of the campaign – claiming that Muslims lack British values – should ring alarm bells.
Mr Farage is no stranger to extremism and has tried in the past to cloak his intolerance in respectable garb. However, with the former Tory prime minister Liz Truss appearing on far-right YouTube shows, Mr Farage can’t risk being outflanked on the right. The prospect of the Conservatives and Reform merging no longer seems outlandish. Last October, Mr Farage was bizarrely feted during the Tory conference, even though he had left the party in the early 1990s. Mr Sunak had been reduced, when asked whether Mr Farage might be welcome to rejoin the Conservatives, to saying only that his party is a “broad church”. There is a difference. Mr Sunak’s attempts to please opposing factions have left the Tories with a vague, incoherent set of policies, while Mr Farage offers a more fire and brimstone, old-time religion.
The main role of Reform UK in this general election isn’t going to be winning seats, but helping the Conservatives lose theirs. Mr Farage views Sir Keir Starmer’s victory as necessary for his “reverse takeover” of the Tories. He points to the Canadian Reform party, a populist, right-of-centre, small state, low tax, anglophone party that came from nowhere in 1993 to win 52 seats in Canada’s federal parliament.
Canada’s Reform routed its Conservative party – which was left with just two seats – and soon became the official opposition. It was not until Reform and its successors merged with the Canadian Conservatives that they could defeat the ruling Liberal party. History is unlikely, however, to repeat itself. Britain is not Canada. And every unhappy electorate is unhappy in its own way.
