WHAT a difference a year makes.
Just 365 days ago Nigel Farage was all but retired, sitting out the General Election.
The PM’s attempts to paint Nigel Farage as a Putin patsy who wants to sell the NHS have flopped GettyFarage plans to step back from much of the day-to-day media[/caption]As the BBC put it, he had “announced that he wouldn’t try to win a seat in Parliament . . . prompting a reporter from The Sun to tease him that he was a chicken”.
A year ago to the day, he blew all that up.
“I remember it very well,” he told me over the weekend.
“I was sitting at home, I’d been thinking hard for 48 hours about it. I had a group call and I just said, ‘F*** it, I’m doing it. Find me a venue for tomorrow, please’.”
In an age of backtracks, that might just go down as one of the most important U-turns in British political history.
He insists it was more a sense of guilt — “a feeling I was letting people down” — behind the decision as well as the “gap in the political market” that saw a dying Tory Party and a uniquely uninspiring Labour who were set to win by default out of pure hatred of the Conservatives.
Either way he was right — and eighth time lucky an MP.
Fast forward a year and he is edging a double-digit lead in the polls, nudging that crucial 30 per cent of the vote that could, remarkably, see Reform UK form the next government.
Farage’s keen instinct for the political mood of the country appears to have been spot on.
In Scotland, where Farage was forced to hide in a pub 12 years ago from a nationalist mob, Reform look set to push Labour into third place at a by-election this week — to the bewilderment of the cosy Holyrood establishment.
If you don’t believe the numbers, just look at the reaction from his rivals.
Struggling Kemi Badenoch’s Opposition leadership has never got off the ground due to the massive looming menace on her right flank.
Her attempts to mimic Reform have fallen flat, while her attempts to ridicule them just drive ever more disillusioned Tories into their arms.
And a Labour PM — who not only inherited the fastest- growing G7 economy and on-target inflation, propped up by a state broadcaster and cheered on by the chattering classes — should still be enjoying a Blair-style honeymoon.
I hope Kemi stays, I hope Starmer keeps obsessing about me, the poor bloke — he’ll have to go see a psychiatrist before too long
Nigel FarageBut instead, after ten months, Sir Keir Starmer leads the most unpopular government in British polling history.
And he’s in a right flap, as Reform not so much parks its tanks on Labour’s lawn but napalms the entire village.
The PM’s attempts to paint Farage as a Putin patsy who wants to sell the NHS have flopped, as will attempts to brand him out of touch with working-class voters — who voted Reform in droves just last month.
“I hope nothing changes,” says Farage. “I hope Kemi stays, I hope Starmer keeps obsessing about me, the poor bloke — he’ll have to go see a psychiatrist before too long.
“It has way exceeded in the space of a year even my most optimistic expectations.”
Teddy bears’ picnic
But he would be mad to rest on any laurels yet. Everything IS about to change.
The fight is only getting started, and Reform has a very long way to go before asking the people of Britain to hand this untested and unknown political force the keys to No10.
There is still a minimum of three years until another election, and in any election contest the last place you want to be is out front early, with a giant target on your back.
Old Dominic Cummings warned darkly this week that the deep state is already gearing up to trash Reform and protect the old system of the established parties doing what they are told.
Parties, government departments, newsreaders, quangos, think-tanks, unions, charities — you name it — will all line up in an onslaught that will make the battle against Brexit, and latterly Boris Johnson, look like a teddy bears’ picnic.
And Farage agrees, though he hopes: “I don’t really think those voters that have come to us already actually give a damn about this stuff.”
But he needs to win over plenty of waverers, too.
So everything possible will be escalated to stop that happening and if the Government and their pliant friends across the establishment get their message right, that poll lead could start to look rather soft.
So is it wise of Farage to be giving his opponents ammunition this early in the cycle?
I make the arguments I believe in, and when I start they are usually minority arguments but I’m generally good at bringing people with us.
Nigel FarageThis week, Reform’s first foray into detailed policy away from immigration gave their opponents their first real straw to grasp at in months.
Some 59 per cent of Reform voters and 42 per cent of Labour voters support keeping the two-child benefits cap for larger families.
Labour MPs may want the PM to scrap it, but from what I hear that is still far from a done deal, amid concerns the Government is walking into a trap on increasing benefits for foreigners who tend to have more kids.
But punching the bruise of the division in Labour, Farage declared Reform would abolish it, as well as take anyone earning under £20,000 out of paying income tax and reinstate all Winter Fuel Payments.
He insists it’s about more than just money, boldly claiming he’s “not a populist”.
He said: “I make the arguments I believe in, and when I start they are usually minority arguments but I’m generally good at bringing people with us.”
But it was a multi-billion-pound spending pledge made in seconds that has drawn easy comparisons to Liz Truss’s relaxed attitude about making the sums add up.
Farage insists both parties don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to dodgy maths and more detail is coming on what he would cut — but he has clearly given them both some flesh to target when they were struggling to land blows
Harry ColeRight on cue came the Institute for Fiscal Studies, lapped up by the BBC, who Farage accuses of “now criticising every thing we do”. He added: “Well, ask the question, who funds them? The Government.”
Dodgy maths
He’s not wrong there, with the apparently independent fiscal think-tank receiving £13million of taxpayer funding over the past five years.
But simply saying “scrapping Net Zero” will cover the costs of these massive pledges is fag- packet maths and a free gift to his struggling opponents.
Farage insists both parties don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to dodgy maths and more detail is coming on what he would cut — but he has clearly given them both some flesh to target when they were struggling to land blows.
Which leads me to the other problem Reform faces, relating to numbers and the road to No10. With just five MPs, they can barely fill a taxi let alone a Shadow Cabinet table.
Farage plans to step back from much of the day-to-day media, promoting party figures like Richard Tice and Zia Yusuf instead.
And the hunt is on for “high-profile” outsiders to stand for the party as an alternative government at the next election, before they even have a seat in the Commons.
Well, why not start that process right now?
Solve two numbers problems in one go and appoint a prominent, respected and credible figure to be Reform’s Shadow Chancellor.
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