What Prime Minister Farage would do
Farage has grasped the new winning formula in politics
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Nigel Farage, his critics used to say, could never get above 15% of the vote. He is too toxic, too divisive, too controversial a figure, they said, to attract the broad electoral coalition that is needed to win a national election and transform the country.
This is what Dominic Cummings and the Tory Brexiteers used to say, in 2016, when explaining why they sought to keep Farage at arms length from the official Brexit campaign (Farage powered on, regardless).
It’s what liberal Tories like Gavin Barwell, Fraser Nelson, and Daniel Finkelstein have also suggested over the years, joining the Tory elite class in portraying Farage as a kind of relic who speaks for a dwindling coalition of angry, old, white men from places like Clacton who, in the infamous words of another liberal Tory, Matthew Parris, “are going nowhere” (in the end, they did go somewhere —they embraced Farage).
And it’s what pro-Labour academics like Robert Ford have also routinely argued, that while Farage might do well in some quarters, he remains woefully out-of-touch with a new Britain that is rapidly diversifying, becoming more university educated, more socially liberal and will only elect politicians who embrace things like immigration and happen to hold the same liberal beliefs as the expert class.
Only, things haven’t worked out that way, have they?
From America to Europe, the politicians that have been really thriving at the ballot box in recent years are, as we’ve long predicted, national populist ones —politicians who are not only critical of mass immigration, broken borders, multiculturalism, and a liberal elite minority that looks increasingly adrift from a forgotten majority but who recognise the need to keep a more left-leaning working-class on side.
It’s by filling this sweet spot of leaning a little to the populist left on the economy while leaning firmly right on culture and identity that has allowed many national populists to reach new heights —by outflanking the liberal graduate minority in the big cities and the university towns to rally a much broader coalition.
And now, the same trend is unfolding here in Britain —as, again, we said it would. Contrary to what his critics have long argued, contrary to all the talk about his “low electoral ceiling”, across all of the very latest opinion polls in Britain, Nigel Farage and Reform are now averaging 30 per cent of the national vote, more than double what they won at the general election only eleven months ago and twice what his critics used to say was Farage’s ceiling. He is now completely smashing through it.
And he’s managing to do all this precisely because, as we saw in a big speech in London, yesterday, he too has grasped what the new winning formula is in politics. It’s not simply jamming more and more social and economic liberalism down people’s throats —a combination that peaked during the 2000s and early 2010s but has been alienating and demoralising voters ever since. It’s about delivering what no other party in British politics is capable of delivering; it’s about leaning a little bit left on economics while leaning firmly right on culture.
Let me be clear about what I mean here. By ‘leaning left on economics’, I’m not talking about economic redistribution and raising taxes. I’m talking about appealing to the concerns, values, and aspirations of the workers who keep Western nations moving, who we might call the Alarm Clock Class, the people who have to get up in the morning, work hard, pay their taxes, and who, crucially, expect everybody else in society to play by the same rules —to make a contribution.
Aspirational and unashamedly patriotic, their growing attraction to populist left positions on the economy has been shaped by having to watch their strong sense of fairness repeatedly violated by the effects of this liberal consensus —rising numbers of illegal migrants breaking our laws, millions of their fellow citizens choosing welfare over work, a crony capitalism that is allowing big corporates to weaken the nation by becoming addicted to cheap migrant labour and avoiding any sense of responsibility to the national community, a political establishment that thinks it is acceptable to offer tax breaks to Indian workers that are not given to British workers, and by a British state that is now in the absurd position of outbidding hard-working, tax-paying British workers in the housing market so that it can prioritise foreigners.
All this flies in the face of the sense of fairness and contribution that unites the Alarm Clock Class —the workers who believe, strongly, that the economic system is now firmly rigged against workers and contributors like them because, to be blunt, it is.
Farage has recognised this palpable sense of unfairness and is now talking directly to these people, using language and vibes they understand. He’s appealing to their economically populist left instincts by following up on recent promises to nationalise British steel, re-industrialise the blue-collar heartlands, and talking tough on profligate water companies by calling, yesterday, for the reinstatement of winter fuel payments for Britain’s pensioners. Why should these payments be stripped from people who have worked and contributed their whole lives while the British state simultaneously wastes hundreds of billions on illegal migrants who break our laws, by literally paying billions to give away our own territory to countries that are aligned with our enemies, and by refusing to clamp down on welfare on those who have not worked at all? On what planet is this fair?
He also made clear his hope to lift the salary level at which people start to pay income tax to £20,000. Why should millions of people be incentivised to stay at home on benefits while the Alarm Clock Class have to get up and go to work only to come home to the same standard of living as those who don’t? What Farage is saying is what is immediately obvious to everybody who actually works for a living. We need to push millions of people on out-of-work benefits back into work so they can contribute, too. We need to completely change the incentive structures in this country.
And by leaning firmly right on identity and culture, I’m not talking about pitching to what the expert class in Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge routinely portray as some kind of extremist, fringe minority. I’m talking about appealing directly, unequivocally, and unapologetically to where the vast majority of voters are in this country —critical of mass immigration, no longer convinced it’s strengthening their economy and society, desperate to find somebody who will regain control of their own borders, and willing to do whatever it takes to see these things through.
Farage has already committed a Reform-led government to ending the policy of mass uncontrolled immigration, leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, the ECHR, and repealing the Human Rights Act, all of which are not only things we’ve called for but are absolutely necessary to stop the small boats. London liberals will recoil at all this but it’s what is needed to regain control of our territory, save hundreds of billions in lost revenue and prevent public trust in the entire system from collapsing altogether, which would leave us in a very dark place indeed.
He’s also reaffirmed his commitment to deporting illegal migrants and foreign criminals, and holding a fresh statutory inquiry into the rape gangs, a symbol of the wider failure of the state-backed policy of multiculturalism. While this, too, will shock London liberals who have never had to live with the consequences of their decisions, all of it, as Farage knows, is supported by large majorities of voters. This is what is meant by leaning firmly right on culture —completely rejecting the socially liberal consensus that’s created the disaster we now see around us today.
And, as we learned yesterday, Farage is now also going further than any other party leader in advocating for something else that every normal person up and down this country will agree with even if nobody in Westminster is, bizarrely, willing to talk about it —the importance of family. Pointing to a looming demographic catastrophe in not just Britain but across the West, Farage is now saying openly he wants to make it easier for people to have children, offering more generous tax breaks for married people and scrapping the two-child benefit limit. Will this on its own make a difference to birth-rates? The experience of Poland and Hungary suggests not. But what Farage has recognised is what most people know to be true even if nobody in the Labour government will ever say it out loud. Nations, societies, communities, economies all work best when they are organised around strong families.
How will Reform fund all this? Some of Farage’s ideas here, too, will be popular among voters, such as calling to make substantial savings each year by ending hotels and accommodation for illegal migrants and asylum-seekers, scrapping all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives across the public sector, and demolishing the increasingly expensive, unaccountable, and unelected Quangocracy that is spreading its tentacles around the British state. To this, I would personally have added slashing the foreign aid budget until we have fixed public services here in Britain (“fix Britain before helping the world”), scrapping the entire policy of Indefinite Leave to Remain, forecast to cost hundreds of billions in the years ahead, and pointing out that even the National Audit Office has noted Britain is losing somewhere between £55 and £81 billion a year in fraud and waste every year. He should make much more of this.
We did hear some other things that will go down less well among voters, such as Farage’s call to completely scrap funding for Net Zero. While it’s true voters are increasingly sceptical of the costs associated with Net Zero, scrapping it altogether is electorally risky. Nonetheless, by showing his willingness to directly take on the failing consensus —rejecting mass immigration, rejecting the ECHR, breaking the family taboo, openly questioning Net Zero, and speaking up loudly for the Alarm Clock Class—Farage is showing his willingness to break with the orthodoxy that has stifled this country for the last thirty years, even when it’s not the popular thing to do.
All this, leaning to the populist left on economics while leaning firmly right on culture is why, I think, Farage’s support is now surging. Since the general election, last July, his support among Tory voters has rocketed from 25 to 33 per cent, among Brexit voters has nearly doubled to 54 per cent, among the working-class has surged from 20 to nearly 40 per cent, and among men has increased from 17 to 33 per cent. And while this support remains male-heavy, it’s telling that his support among women has doubled, too. Such is the British people’s exasperation with the liberal elite consensus that Farage’s electorate, today, is both broader and more diverse than anything he mobilised previously, with the UK Independence Party and the Brexit Party. The Liberal Democrats and liberal Tories might complain about his “toxicity” but the fact of the matter is Farage is now more popular than both among the middle-class.
He’s leading the most popular party of all among Brexit voters, the working-class, men, the over-50s, and people across non-London England. He is leading, in other words, the most significant revolt this country has seen since the rise of the Labour Party in the early twentieth century. And he’s doing it by openly rejecting the socially and economically liberal consensus of the last thirty years while speaking directly to the Alarm Clock Class —to the people who keep Britain moving and who are just as fed up with this broken consensus as the man who is now leading them.
Thatcher (please don't groan, read on) understood the electoral benefit of appealing to the Alarm Clock Class. As a working class young adult, I found Thatcher's retail pitch intoxicating, exciting and liberating. I no longer felt like a plebian ruled by an aloof Elite, I was welcomed as a participating member of a vibrant and mobile society, one with simple to understand fundamental values. Farage et al herald the same revolution. Embrace it because it will save our country from incompetent dictatorial ruin.
I think Farage is making it possible for people to be unashamed of their national identity and culture. Placing the family back as something that is good and important is also welcome. The things that are central to society’s wellbeing have been sneered at for too long.