For the past year, Nigel Farage has been a man on a mission. His task: to turn Reform UK from a shambolic, amateur assortment of political rebels into an efficient, professional political party capable of winning power on a national scale.
Alongside party chair Zia Yusuf, Farage has been relentlessly trying to tighten up all areas of Reform’s operations, from candidate vetting to fundraising, communications to campaigning. The pair have succeeded: their party is a much more professional outfit than it was even at the time of last year’s general election, when it won 14 per cent of the vote.
But while Reform’s apparatus is in much better shape, a series of controversies and rows have dealt fresh blows to its reputation – not least the very public falling out between Farage and Rupert Lowe, who until being suspended in March was one of Reform’s five MPs.
Now, an interview with Reform’s candidate in one of the four key regional mayoral elections taking place this week has again raised questions about the party’s ability to actually hold power itself, rather than just criticise those who do.
Arron Banks, a multimillionaire businessman, political donor and longstanding ally of Farage, is standing to become mayor of the West of England Combined Authority – reportedly at Farage’s personal request. But, according to Banks himself, the role is a “meaningless job” and it is a “bit worrying” that he might soon hold it, as he had been “hoping for an honourable second”. If he does end up being elected, Banks quipped, he will “appoint a deputy mayor” and boss him around “from my chateau 30 miles behind the lines”.
It is the sort of jocular interview you might expect from a comic protest candidate – a Lord Buckethead or a Count Binface – rather than someone campaigning to represent one million people on behalf of what polls suggest is currently the UK’s currently most popular political party.
And as he tours the country desperately to convince people that his party is ready to govern, it is not one that Farage is likely to welcome (indeed, even Banks admitted that the interview would likely get him “crucified by Nigel”). It is a sign that Reform, for all the efforts of its leaders, still sometimes resembles a political comedy act more than it does a government in waiting.
And yet the chances are high that this circus may soon be coming to a town near you. Despite its ongoing problems, Reform is on the march. None of the barbs being fired from opponents on the outside and critics within seem to be hitting their mark. Its support has continued to rise: one in four voters now say they would back it. If a general election were held tomorrow, Reform would have more MPs than Labour or the Conservatives. The prospects of Nigel Farage becoming prime minister have rapidly changed from outlandish to very real.
If the political establishment is now under threat, it does not appear to have realised it. As Farage marches onwards, those in the watchtowers in Westminster remain fast asleep. Many appear to have convinced themselves that Reform’s poll-topping performance will be short-lived. “It won’t last”, one senior Tory confidently assured me last week. “Their support will disappear once we get our act together.” Many in Labour express similar views.
They might be in for a shock. Those who insist that Reform’s surge is nothing more than a mid-term protest vote, or is just a temporary outburst of anger about current levels of immigration, show how little they understand what is happening outside the confines of SW1.
They fail to grasp that, far from simply being a beneficiary of short-term frustrations, Reform is capitalising on years of deep-rooted anger and alienation about what millions of people see as the long slide of national decline.
For years, Westminster politicians have seemed hopelessly out of touch with what is happening. They boasted about their miniscule successes, ignored the much bigger failures, and squabbled over whether global events or domestic policies were more to blame for the countries’ woes. And as they did so, wages fell, housing costs soared, high streets shops were boarded up, communities fragmented, trains failed to turn up, bins weren’t emptied, many people’s jobs became ever more meaningless and insecure, young people saw their futures disappear and net migration hit record highs.
A series of focus groups conducted by More in Common last week laid bare how people feel about all of this. When participants were asked to describe Britain in one word or phrase, their choices said it all: “a shambles”, “depressing”, “chaotic”, “rapidly in decline”. This is not an expression of a passive malaise – it is a boiling over of long-simmering anger and indignation at the politicians who oversaw such a decline, and those who promised to reverse it but didn’t.
That national mood handed the Tories their worst ever defeat last July and gave Labour a historic majority, despite a widespread lack of enthusiasm about its offering. Sir Keir Starmer’s team grasped the loud clamour for change. They campaigned on it and were elected on it. Actually delivering it has proved to be far more difficult.
While slow progress is being made, the Government is being hindered by the lack of money available for major investment and the Prime Minister’s and Chancellor’s innate allergy to the sort of radical action needed to deliver major change.
Voters see this and are rapidly losing hope that Labour has what it takes to stop the rot. It is not that there has been no improvement (although few currently feel it) – it is that the scale of what is being done is so vastly outweighed by the scale of what needs doing. The public is not in the mood for gradual improvement; after so many failures, and with so much seemingly broken, they want transformation rather than slow transition.
That, then, is the allure of Reform: the promise of something completely different.
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Read MoreMillions of people have lost faith that the normal way of doing politics will deliver the change they want. In these febrile times, perhaps the chaos and controversy around Reform UK actually burnishes their anti-establishment credentials and makes clear the contrast with other parties. Brits love an underdog – even a scruffy, rather shambolic one.
It is a fallacy, of course: Reform UK does not have serious solutions to the problems the country faces. As Banks has again demonstrated, they often do not even have serious candidates. And yet they are increasingly seen as the best option to govern the country in a different way after years of decline.
It is possible that the Tory and Labour optimists will be proven right: Reform’s emergence may indeed be a fleeting moment in time, worthy of a mere footnote in the history books. But from all the evidence I see, it looks far more likely that we are currently witnessing the crumbling of a century-old, two-party Westminster order, and a permanent transformation of Britain’s political landscape.
Where this ends depends partly on Farage’s success in trying to professionalise Reform’s operation. It depends far more on whether, and when, Labour and the Conservatives wake up to the threat Reform poses to them – and finally find a way to counter it. For now, their slumber continues.
Ben Kentish presents his LBC show from Monday to Friday at 10pm, and is a former Westminster editor
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