Nothing to be cheerful about

I’m reminded of that Jonathan Swift quote. “It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom”.

This is what I think to myself when I observe Farage mania on Twitter. As a veteran blogger on the subject of Ukip, I vividly recall how they all thought Ukip was going to smash into the mainstream of politics. And then it didn’t. Similarly, the Brexit Party polled consistently in the high teens for a time, with some eye-opening outliers, and then it scored zero MPs. If we look at 2019 polls, BXP peaks at 26% and ends up with just 2%.

Admittedly, there are a whole range of circumstances, but the point is that this far out from polling day, polls mean very little.

I am not taken, then, with the same giddy excitement when a YouGov online poll puts Reform on 17%, almost on par with the Tories. Reform is still in zero seats territory, unless you take it as read that Farage will win Clacton.

The real story of the YouGov poll, if it means anything at all, is that Labour’s lead has narrowed by 5%. This is probably a reflection of the changes in the methodology. The new result confirms that YouGov has been over-estimating the Labour vote. I think this will fall further still. I cannot reconcile Labour’s astonishing poll lead with the fact that nobody seems to like them, even with the Tories as unpopular as they are.

When it comes to the Reform vote though, there are certain biases tainting my analysis. I trust my own hunches more than I trust Farage mania, but I have to admit that the return of Farage displeases me greatly. Prior to his return there was at least the potential to build something new. Now there is not. And I fear it’s not going to end well.

Let's say, best case scenario (for Reform), that it wins six seats. It's not enough to make any demands of the Tories or stage a takeover. Defections seem unlikely because if sitting Tory MPs survived this cull, then they're safe as safe gets and they won't defect on principle because they're Tories. If normal dynamics apply, the Reform MPs will end up squabbling over something or other, and we're likely to see one or two of them defecting to the Tories. There's precedent for that from the Euro parliament.

If then Labour is as super awful as we all imagine it will be, the Tories will still look like the best bet to get rid of them. It won't matter if the rump party is predominantly Tory wets because they'll go more to the right (because that's generally what Tories do in opposition). If they're led by Penny Mordaunt (if she survives), voters will warm to her. She is a good performer at the dispatch box, and if they fell for Boris's shtick then they'll fall for hers too. Electorates don't generally have a long term memory and very often any port in a storm will do.

There is then an outside chance the Tories could win in 2029, albeit by a very small margin, making the PM dependent on Reform to pass laws. In this scenario, Reform has slightly increased its numbers to nine MPs. In the meantime, Reform won't have done any planning or policy thinking. Farage hasn't done any in the last thirty years and he's not about to start. So when it comes to setting terms for cooperation, Farage will rattle off the first three soundbites off the top of his head, which will be entirely dependent on which side of the bed he got out of.

There will be talk of a merger with Reform, but the Tories will be well aware that carries the risk of a Farage leadership challenge and the Tories will tell him to FO. In this scenario, to head off further Reform growth, we'll quit the ECHR, after which Farage will claim credit and declare victory, but the Tory party will be the chief beneficiary afterwards. Farage will probably get bored and step down.

What you're then left with is the same old Tory party that will very rapidly revert to form, and a Reform party that's as spent as Ukip is now.

The alternate scenario is that the Tories lose in 2029, but still increase their headcount, precipitating a leadership election, resulting in a vaguely conservative leader. For the same reasons as before, they will rule out a merger with Reform, and Reform will start to slide in popularity as apathy reasserts itself - made worse by the conduct of Reform MPs who are likely to be either expenses fiddling crooks or absolute cranks (think Desmond Swayne crossed with Laurence Fox). Great meme fodder, but not at all popular in their home constituencies.

Either way, Reform ends up as a busted flush because it has no intellectual foundation, no particular agenda, no vetting process, and a leader who doesn't know what he's doing with the day until he's had breakfast.

The strain of amateurism that haunted Ukip follows Farage everywhere he goes, and there will be nobody to continue the work because Farage always surrounds himself with sycophants and quarterwits. Ukip ended up on the scrapheap because there was no plan beyond the referendum, and the Brexit Party surrendered the leverage it had. Farage walking away from wreckage has been the one consistent feature of his political career. I see no reason to expect anything different this time.

I'm just spitballing here but the point being is that I don't see any scenario where the laziness and cavalier approach of Farage pays off. He's good at rabble rousing on the outside, but he's a useless politician. I could be wildly wrong, but I personally believe that rootless Faragist populism cannot win an outright mandate, and some of what we want is as good as none.

Insofar as Reform has a "manifesto", it's all completely meaningless. The party apparatus gives the illusion of a party, but in reality it's a Farage fan club, and what we're seeing is a cult of personality.

As usual, he's leaving the details for someone else to define - meaning he'll march his troops to the top of the hill, wash his hands of it, and then go back to whinging when whoever's in charge doesn't deliver on the unspecified reform agenda. Brexit all over again. Then it's back to square one for the right because nobody can be bothered to craft actual policy alternatives or a meaningful reform package.

Farage can dent the Tory party, give Starmer a super majority, and maybe nudge Westminster in the direction of marginal (and temporary) curbs on immigration, but unless the right is willing to build a real movement with an intellectual foundation, a vision, and serious policies to implement that vision, then we're still going to be here in another twenty years without power or representation. For as long as Farage is around, the right will never get its act together.