The National Liberal Club is a mausoleum. I refer not to the age or appearance of its patrons, but to an expired purpose. The Liberal Party was not only the most successful political movement of the 19th century, but defined an entire period of British politics, one which came to an end in the 1920s, when the current Labour-Conservative stranglehold established itself. Since then, the party’s name has lived on as part of the Liberal Democrats. But the “Liberal England” it represented has strangely died.
So when Reform UK selected the club as the venue for its agenda-seizing press conference today, the symbolism was clear. Nigel Farage was making the sarcophagus of a fallen political movement into the rostrum for his new one, dancing on a grave. Today he promised a political “revolution” on the scale of that which buried the Liberals, led by an increasingly professional Reform vanguard (in a great show of media coordination, almost the entire contents of Farage’s speech has been briefed to the media over the last two days). But this project goes beyond even that which destroyed the Liberals: Farage is promising to destroy not only the Conservative Party, but Labour as well.
Beneath the chandeliers of a colonnaded library, Farage had summoned the nation’s media to witness the closest he’s come to a programme for government. Indeed, as Farage claimed, Reform is already in government. Behind the podium, he was backed by a seated tableau of his newly elected local mayors and council leaders, the latter of which he boasted now control a combined budget of £10bn.
But Farage promised the prize of central government is now his for the taking. Whether led by Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick (whose Ozempic-enabled health kick, tailored suits and dental work Farage speculated upon sneeringly), the Conservative Party is finished. “It’s over. It is done.” And even should he shrug off his “heavy domestic duties”, Boris Johnson isn’t coming to save it. Its connection to the nation is severed, Farage told us, the culmination of a terminal rot between leadership and base.
Farage has spent his political career stealing the Tories’ lunch. But now, like an enterprising school bully, he has spied a new victim. He had much the same to say about the Labour Party, which has “no connection with working people” or “with what we used to call working-class communities”. And despite appearances – the public-school bark and impeccably shiny shoes – Farage is keen to display his own credentials on this score.
His is the party of people whose alarms go off at five in the morning, he told us, the grafters and entrepreneurs. These people are the opposite of the present cabinet, he said, none of whom have run successful businesses, despite their combined experience in the realm of “international law”. He invited Keir Starmer to debate him head-to-head at a working men’s club, though doubted the Prime Minister could stomach an afternoon of “beers with the lads” and “Channel 4 racing”.
This easy demotic, this dialect of “fluent human”, is classic Farage. We also had the standard reel of “King and country”, “Britain has nothing to be ashamed of” patriotism. What was new is his fighting this battle at a policy level, well beyond the broad gestures of his usual rhetorical style. Today, in a direct attack upon the Labour government, Farage promised to reverse the winter fuel cuts and to remove the two-child benefit cap, not because he tolerated a “benefits culture”, but to promote the growth of traditional families. (Farage pre-empted any criticism of his own record on family values, joking about his “track record” in divorce and allegations of adultery.) And this wasn’t all. He went on to introduce a slew of other economic policies: raising the personal income tax allowance to £20,000 and introducing a transferrable tax allowance for married couples.
It’s clear that he isn’t really enjoying all this, all these sums. Nigel Farage doesn’t like being bored, and perhaps no press conference he’s ever given has involved so much arithmetic. Pressed on funding these promises, he snapped on a pair of reading glasses and scanned down a ledger of savings. Net zero – which he amorphously claimed was costing us £45bn – would be scrapped, as would migrant hotels (the migrants in question would not be rehoused in tents as Andrea Jenkyns has suggested – they would be “gone”, Farage promised). DEI policies are also out (they were said to cost government £7bn). There is a distinctly American attempt here to merge fiscal policy with the culture wars, which is striking but distinctly unserious.
And, of course, none of it adds up. Speaking on the Today programme this morning, Reform hype-man and ConservativeHome founder Tim Montgomerie admitted as much, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has since said Reform’s income tax plan would cost up to £80bn. But Farage can skate over the accusations about “costings” that felled lesser politicians in the 2010s (when one questioner brought up the “magic money tree”, Farage simply grinned through the spotlight). Because, as ever with Farage, this conference was far more about projection than substance. “Small state, low tax, up-by-your-bootstraps” might serve as the motto not only of Reform UK, but its constituency, the provincial English petit-bourgeoisie. And for all his talk of “workers” and “working people”, this is an appeal to a slightly more specific class, the same one first courted on the right by Margaret Thatcher.
I was sat next to one of its exemplary members. Joseph Boam, who at 22 years old is the deputy leader of the Reform administration of Leicestershire County Council, has a “working-class” background, and this press conference represented only his second-ever visit to London. But this wasn’t incompatible with his various business dealings: he has his own ice cream company and property portfolio, despite not yet owning his own home. In a perfect encapsulation of Thatcherite exile, his branch of Reform has been holding its meetings in an old Conservative club house.
It might sound strange to say, but no other British politician is as fashion-conscious as Nigel Farage. And so far his conversion to working-class champion has formed a strenuous theatrical exercise. Like a political Action Man, so far this year he has launched a variety of new outfits. We’ve had Steelworker Nige (hard hat and protective glasses included). We’ve had Farmer Farage, all Harris tweed and heavy Barbour. And we’ve had the working men’s club compere (the purple trousers say it all). But for all his talk of circling the political horseshoe, this agenda of patriotic small-statism, of what Stuart Hall in 1979 called “authoritarian populism”, is not unfamiliar. So far Farage has moved too fast for these inconsistencies to clarify, hiding from proper scrutiny behind a blur of costume changes. But even he cannot combine book-keeper and sans-culotte forever.
[See also: Reform UK’s taproom revolutionaries]
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