The Farage Effect
Political pundits are missing the point.
As Nigel Farage leaves the jungle the media are indulging in speculation that he might join the Conservative Party, or even lead it. The authors of these pieces are writing from a position of studied ignorance; had they bothered to attend the Reform UK conference in London back in early October they would have heard him tell his party that he had no intention of rejoining the Tories. Rather, he and Reform intend to destroy them. At the time of writing, with Reform on around 10% of the vote, that looks likely.
I suspect that much of the noise about Farage rejoining the Tories is being created by the Tories – their only hope of avoiding electoral oblivion is to neuter Reform. In the last election the Brexit Party (as Reform UK then was) stood down its candidates in seats that had Tory leaver incumbents. That gave Johnson a majority, which he squandered in his half-baked Brexit and subsequent ineptitude. Once bitten, twice shy. Reform will have candidates in every seat (disclosure, I’m one of them) and they will not stand aside.
Reading all this speculation amongst political insiders too seriously is to miss the point; Jo Public is the person whose voice matters and they face a choice between the failed government of the Tories and the unlikely to succeed wannabe government of Labour. Why do I say that they are unlikely to succeed? Because, as the Opposition they have not opposed the wholesale mismanagement of the country and the destruction of the economy. Lockdown? They supported. Facemasks in schools? Supported. Vaccines? Supported. Out of control migration. Supported. HS2? Supported. So the election may change the faces, but it won’t change the tune.
It gets worse. Ed Milliband was the creator of net zero and, of course, the Labour party supports it. In fact they want to accelerate it. That’s simultaneously technically impossible and unaffordable, but what to modern politicians care about such trifles? Labour’s spending plans are opaque – there may or may not be £28 billion for the green energy white elephant. There is zero probability of the public sector diminishing – not least because those are the unions that bankroll the party.
And of course, Labour has its internal lunatic fringe. Whether is the pro-Palestinian antisemitic Corbynistas, the remains of the ultra-left and the intellectual vacuum that is Diane Abbot, there are remarkably few Labour MPs who one would employ to run a whelk stall. Which means that changing the government is unlikely to change the disastrous course that this country has been set upon.
The simple reality is that both the main parties have become advocates of big government and authoritarian rather than libertarian. Too many of their MPs are apparatchiks rather than leaders or thinkers. Too few have any experience of the realities of life in the private sector. The era of the professional politician has not been a success.
Worse, the language of political discussion has been debased and its goalposts have moved. Large state socialism, such as we have in the UK, is now described as the centre. Anything libertarian of free marked is described with contempt as right wing, or even far-right. (No-one ever mentions that the communists Mao and Stalin murdered many, many more than Hitler. Hitler was a socialist anyway). The democratic deficit doesn’t just lie in the Houses of Parliament, it has become embedded in political commentary and thus political debate.
That is a shame. I pay attention to politics and don’t remember options to vote for (or against) the penury that net zero is delivering. I didn’t vote for uncontrolled immigration. I didn’t vote for out of control debt. Neither did anyone else as we weren’t given the option. I also didn’t vote for the UK to be split by the Windsor Agreement and I didn’t vote for ever closer ties with the EU. (The current Labour position on the EU is confused at best. That’s no surprise; according to the usually reliable YouGov, 35% of those who voted Labour in 2015 voted to leave the EU. If Starmer lost those voters it would be his Labour party facing oblivion as their lead in the polls would slump
If Nigel Farage’s time in the jungle makes him and his party more attractive to the average TV viewer. Labour also has a problem, Reform has an opportunity and Jo Public some hope of a better sort of government.