VETERAN ANTI-IMMIGRATION AND eurosceptic politician Nigel Farage announced this week that he would be running for a seat in the UK Parliament as the leader of the latest incarnation of the Brexit party, a move that has shaken up a campaign already seen as a Labour cakewalk.
Farage is running as the leader of Reform UK and has said this week that he intends to “take over” the Conservative Party by attracting voters disillusioned with the Tories over the last number of years.
“I genuinely think we can get more votes in this election than the Conservative Party,” he told ITV.
He said he is not interested in being the leader of “this Conservative Party”, which he said is controlled by “social democrats”.
“You can speculate as to what will happen in three or four years’ time. All I will tell you is if Reform succeed in a way that I think they can, then a chunk of the Conservative Party will join us.”
In the last election, the party did not field candidates in constituencies being defended by the Tories, which helped to pave the way for Boris Johnson’s landslide victory.
This time it is aiming to stand in every constituency in England, Scotland and Wales, potentially intensifying the squeeze on the Conservative vote.
Last night, the BBC hosted a debate that included the leaders of smaller parties and deputies from the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats, during which Farage reiterated his call for voters to “join the revolt”.
“He obviously has decided there is an opportunity for him at the eighth time of asking to actually win a seat,” said Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University in London.
“I think he’s looked at the Tories’ poll rating and realised that even in previously safe seats their candidates are quite vulnerable.”
Bales says a surge in Reform UK support “could make the difference between a really, really bad result and a bad result” for the Conservatives.
The Tories took another blow this week when Rishi Sunak enraged people across the political spectrum by choosing to skip an event commemorating D-Day in France.
He, instead, sent his Foreign Minister David Cameron and went home to do a television interview.
An apology on Sky News did little to take the pressure off.
Reform UK, previously the Brexit Party, had been led by Richard Tice up until this week, and Farage had said he would stay in the United States to continue supporting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Tice is a businessman and politician who has at different times been the chair of the party, which began as a spinoff from the UK Independence Party (UKIP), then evolved into the Brexit Party. Because Reform UK is a company and not a traditional political party, its major shareholder, Farage, has simply taken the leadership away from him.
Farage was a founder of UKIP in the early 1990s and was elected leader in 2006, a position he held at different times between then an 2016. He also represented the eurosceptic party as a member of the European Parliament.
The Brexit Party was founded in 2018 and advocated for a no-deal exit from the bloc as negotiations went on, but when the UK did actually leave the EU the party was renamed Reform UK.
In spite of Farage’s saying he wanted to stay on the campaign trail in the US, it seems a return to the political fray in the UK was too much for him to resist after Conservative leader and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made the surprise move of calling a 4 July general election a couple of weeks ago.
“It’s not always a sign of weakness,” Farage said of his change of mind.
Bale believes that Farage’s MAGA sojourn across the Atlantic may not have lived up to his expectations and that this may be another reason for this sudden change of heart.
“It’s also partly because he’s realised that actually the opportunities for him weren’t quite as impressive as he rather arrogantly thought they might be,” Bale said.
“I think he’d only been booked for, you know, one big rally in Detroit, rather than sort of tagging along at every Trump event. Probably some of the TV work wasn’t quite as plentiful as he thought it might be. So that probably had a bearing.”
Farage managed to grab the limelight ahead of this week’s debate between Sunak and Labour leader Keir Starmer. But much more worryingly for the Tories, there’s a chance he may grab a sizeable proportion of the Conservative vote.
According to polling from YouGov this week, Labour are on 40%, the Tories on 19%, Reform UK on 16%, the Liberal Democrats on 11% and the Greens on 7%. And that was before Sunak’s D-Day gaffe.
With Sunak’s party already lagging in the polls before this week, a newly invigorated challenge from the right is the last thing the embattled prime minister needs.
Even before Farage threw his hat in the ring, another YouGov projection said Labour could win 422 out of 650 seats, leaving the Tories with just 140.
Reform UK (and its previous iterations) has historically struggled to turn support into seats. Farage has never been elected as an MP despite seven previous runs. In 2019, the then-Brexit Party won no seats while in 2015 UKIP won one seat in Clacton, Essex, Farage’s chosen constituency this time round.
While announcing his intention to run this week – and remain as party leader for the next five years – Farage said he would “surprise” people again, referring to the successful Brexit campaign he spearheaded.
“What I intend to lead is a political revolt, a turning of our backs on the political status quo,” he said.
The election is over, it’s done. Labour have won the election.”
He also said the Conservative Party “needs no help in being crushed. It’s crushed itself already”, adding that he believes Reform UK can exceed the four million votes it got in 2015.
Farage has said directly that he intends to “take over” the Conservative Party but what exactly does he mean by this and how does he expect to achieve it?
Farage said his plan is for Reform to be the main opposition party, instead of the Conservatives.
“I don’t want to join the Conservative Party, I think the better thing to do would be to take it over,” Farage told ITV.
“I guess it depends on how the Tories end up after the election,” says Tim Bale.
“If they suffer a really bad defeat, Farage could perhaps win his seat for Reform. There might be a few conservatives willing to defect to Reform, at which point he and they may be able to suggest some kind of merger should take place.
Another option for Farage could be to jump ship once he gets into Parliament.
“Of course he could defect to the Conservative Party and become a Conservative MP for Clacton, and hope that in the leadership contest after the one that will presumably take place following the general election, he would be able to stand.”
Farage has pointed to the example of the Canadian Reform party, which in the 2000s conducted a “reverse takeover” (as he described it) of the establishment Conservative party.
“He does actually think that in the long term there is an opportunity, particularly if he gets into parliament, for the Conservative Party to be reconfigured possibly under his leadership,” said Bale.
If that is Farage’s strategy, it begs the question: Will the Tories have him?
Bale believes it is likely as defections are usually seen as a coup for parliamentary parties.
“One thing the Conservatives are obsessed with is not being outflanked on the right,” says Bale.
“And clearly both UKIP and the Brexit party were a big concern in that respect and Reform is also a big concern. So, you know, absorbing that threat rather than necessarily trying to counter it externally might be the best way of doing it.”
While the prospect remains a possibility, Bale says it would take some time for it to come about, but that it could feasibly happen during the lifetime of the next five-year parliamentary term.
“I wouldn’t write it off. I wouldn’t predict it, but I certainly wouldn’t write it off.”
Includes reporting from Press Association
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