The Brexit October Revolution

Can Reform beat the Conservative Party?

I imagine that the last remaining serotonin emptied from the bodies of the Tory election team when they heard that Nigel Farage was to return as leader of the Reform Party and stand at Clacton. 

The likelihood is that Farage will win that seat, and the reception he received was certainly electric. And Clacton is not even among Reform’s top 20 targets, according to Matt Goodwin.

It’s possible that the party could overtake the Tories in some polls, although I doubt that they will beat them on election day. That is certainly Farage’s aim, and as he said on Monday: ‘I genuinely believe we can get more votes in this election than the Conservative Party. They are on the verge of total collapse… I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again. I will surprise everybody.’

Contrary to the jokes about Farage failing to get elected, or the criticism that he is a ‘serial loser’, he is arguably the most successful politician of the past decade. He built up a minuscule party of ‘fruitcakes and gadflies’ to win two successive European elections. He made Brexit happen, and then stood his candidates down in a number of seats to ensure the Leave alliance remained united in 2019, securing Boris Johnson a victory.

For which he didn’t get the thanks he felt was due, something he alluded to at Monday’s press conference. From what I understand the Tory establishment treated him with a snooty disdain which many an outsider has experienced with the British upper class. And for those making the old point that Farage’s private school background bars him from being a true outsider, that’s not how high society works. Populist movements claiming to represent the downtrodden or disenfranchised have invariably been led by people from highly educated or privileged backgrounds, whether of the Left or Right.

Farage’s targeted constituency certainly fits that bill. Clacton is the town that Matthew Parris called ‘Britain on crutches’ in a piece warning the Tories not to desert their traditional middle-class voters. But the problem for the party is that, through a combination of authoritarian vibes and very liberal policies, they have managed to lose both. Rather than making moderate, soothing sounds while using the British executive’s immense power to shape the country around their will, they have done the exact opposite.

The Government’s disastrous polling figures are not some great mystery. Conservatives don’t tend to have the same emotional attachment to their party as the Labour family does. They vote Tory because they want them to do three things: cut immigration, put more criminals away, and lower taxes. It’s nothing more complicated than that, and they’ve failed on all three.

It is obviously the former that has provoked the most bitterness towards the party. I’m a great believer in Stephen Davies’s analysis of alignment in politics, and the central issue in British politics is immigration, multiculturalism and diversity. Labour are unquestionably on one side of this issue; the Tories are broadly pro-multiculturalism and, while issuing soundbites critical of high immigration, have raised it to record levels. If both main parties are seen to be on one side, something else will fill that gap in the market. Political parties are amoral bodies seeking voting coalitions, and the side which is most united in aligning its core groups around primary and secondary issues will win.

That was the case with the Right in 2019, allowing Johnson’s Conservatives to win a resounding victory that tricked them into believing the future was theirs. In reality, they presided over a coalition both in demographic retreat and liable to fracture.

A key part of this alliance was a section of society that felt extreme discontent with the political system, and for which the European Union served as a focus of anger – one that would inevitably return home to be directed at Westminster. The Tories clearly misunderstood this feeling, and are now being consumed by a revolution they helped to create.

In his book on the Brexit revolt, Values, Voice and Virtue, Goodwin noted that ‘Boris Johnson won over more than eight in ten people who had voted for Nigel Farage.’ The Tories had been handed the victory but: ‘In the aftermath of the 2019 general election, a window of oppor­tunity briefly opened for the new elite to finally bring the turbulence of the last decade to an end and address the country’s deepening divides by bringing forward a new social settlement – one that is defined by moderate not mass immigration, evolutionary not revolutionary change and a national conversation that better reflects the wide range of voices in British society. Given the current direction of both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, that window of opportunity is swiftly closing.’ 

He observed how ‘we now live in a country where more than half of people think “none of the main parties represent my priorities and values”, more than six in ten think “Britain is broken”, and nearly seven in ten think “the experts in this country do not understand people like me”.’

This is the discontent Farage alluded to when he said that ‘Nothing in this country works anymore. The health service doesn’t work. The roads don’t work. None of our public services are up to scratch. We are in decline. This will only be turned around with boldness.’

The Conservatives rode this tiger and assumed the fervour would die away if Farage retired from politics, so that without a threat on the Right they could pursue their preferred course of vaguely Right-wing economics and liberal social policies while putting their names to occasional newspaper articles about ‘wokery’.

Even before Farage’s return, they had managed to damage their brand with an immigration policy directed by Treasury needs. Immigration has accelerated under the Conservatives, and as this Victoria Derbyshire interview illustrates, the Tories have repeatedly made promises they have no intention of keeping, they have lied to the voters, and no one believes them any more. The issue, once their strong point, is now lost, and it feels delusional to put out videos criticising Labour on their record.

Bizarrely, the Conservatives have just now proposed an annual cap on visas which puts the Migration Advisory Committee in charge of setting the figures, and so further taking this question out of the hands of voters - exactly the sort of depoliticisation of a necessarily political issue that enrages the public.

It’s not just immigration. There’s a huge problem with a Conservative Party that doesn’t really believe in anything, many of whose MPs seem think the culture war is ‘mythical’, when it is as central to how we order society as religion was to the early modern era. This has become even more the case since 2020, when the culture wars heated up still further and American progressivism grew far more overbearing.

That year made me wonder if the undercurrents heading over the Atlantic would see the former Brexit alliance becoming more ‘European’, and this has been accelerated since October 7 with continental politics turning further to the right.

If right-wing populism becomes a force across western Europe, where it now polls more than 20% in almost every country, there’s no reason why Britain will remain immune. Britons have more liberal views on immigration than most continentals, but there is still a sizeable market for this kind of politics.

Britain’s voting system makes it harder for a minor party to break through, although party loyalties are not what they were and Ukip finished second in 120 seats in 2015, which might have laid the ground for a future breakthrough. But the system also makes it possible for a radical party to replace a mainstream group if voters feel disillusioned enough and the duopoly become too aligned on the primary issue.

In every European country a great deal of the population hold non-mainstream views on immigration, for the simple reason that the establishment consensus is so radical and historically unprecedented. There is a gap in the market, and the only thing previously missing in Britain was an avatar.

Farage is that figurehead. With the possible exception of George Galloway, he is the most charismatic politician in Britain; he lights up a beer garden when he walks in. Among Reform voters, Farage has a ‘God-like’ net positivity rating of +79.

Reform obviously has a natural upper limit, much smaller than that of the Tories, and it’s fair to say that Farage is not a national darling; many people actively hate him. Reform does not have much of a party structure and I assume that there will be lots of eccentric candidates whose online posting embarrass them before July 4.

Their voters also tend to be a lot older, not promising for any ‘revolution’, but it’s also worth noting that Farage’s digital content is way better than the Conservatives. He is already doing well on TikTok, tapping into a young male audience, just as the populist right has done across the continent. He is surrounded by young activists, and though there is a huge generational voting gap, even 20-something voters think immigration has been too high.

What’s notable about younger conservatives – in particular young men – is that while they are a shrinking minority, they seem considerably more right-wing than their parents, embittered about what they see as the raw deal they have been granted by a generational Ponzi scheme that encompasses immigration, welfare and the housing bubble. And as one rather noted political thinker put it, ‘men sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.’

Farage’s many detractors will hope that the Brexit revolt repeats itself as farce, yet he’s done it before and may well surprise them again. For the Conservatives it certainly will be a tragedy, for a party now consumed by their own revolution.