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5 February 2025

Reform is coming for Labour in its old heartlands

In the wake of Trump’s victory, Nigel Farage is upbeat and promising “the biggest political change this country has ever seen”.

By Jason Cowley

On the evening of the last day of the first month of this new year, the fifth anniversary of Brexit no less, the Reform UK bandwagon rolled into Kemi Badenoch’s North West Essex constituency for a rally in the village of Quendon. On Boxing Day Badenoch had foolishly claimed that Reform was lying about its membership numbers (it now has more members than the Tories), and Farage and co were there to torment the Conservative leader and remind her of how broken her party was.

The setting was a 17th-century manor house reconceived as a wedding and conference venue for the modern era. It is a short drive away from the fine old Quaker town of Saffron Walden, for which Rab Butler was MP from 1927 to 1965. Anti-racism protesters were gathered on a foggy night at the gateway to a narrow driveway, along which cars moved at funereal pace as they made their way through parkland towards Quendon Hall. There, perhaps 350 to 400 local people had gathered.

The rally took place in a cavernous marquee at the back of the mansion house. There was an open bar, blasts of rock music and raucous football-style chanting as Reform MPs took their turn to speak (“Here we go, here we go, here we go!” greeted Lee Anderson as he arrived on stage punching the air). In style and atmosphere this felt more like an evening at the darts at Ally Pally or stand-up comedy than any Westminster event I’d previously attended. Anderson – the former miner, once of Labour, then of the Conservatives and now Reform MP for Ashfield, “the capital of common sense” as he called it – provoked continuous laughter at the expense of Ed Miliband, Huw Edwards and Prince Andrew. This is the politics of protest but also of showbiz. That, I guess, is the point: Reform UK MPs are anti-system iconoclasts. Their politics may be a contradictory mix of cultural conservatism, Red Ukip (Anderson), old-style Monday Club boorishness (Rupert Lowe), and free-market libertarianism (Richard Tice) – but they all delight in the panic they are causing at Westminster. Are they serious? They’re certainly determined. This year their five MPs and fellow travellers have been touring the country – the day after Quendon, the roadshow was in Sunderland – as they seek converts to their cause: new members, activists, candidates. “And you will be vetted!” Nigel Farage warned.

The star turn, and final speaker, was of course Farage. When his time came, he made his way to the stage along a walkway that cut through the seated audience. He was flanked by shaven-headed security guards as hands reached out to greet him. Reform had evidently been watching the recent World Darts Championship at Alexandra Palace. Farage’s entrance was reminiscent of what in darts is called a “walk-on”. A player approaches (usually flanked by security) the stage along a gangway, family and friends on one side, paying punters on the other, as their signature song blares out.

During the general election, when I spent the day with Farage as he campaigned on the Essex coast, he compared himself to the American evangelist Billy Graham. His style has evolved: his latest incarnation is a kind of fusion of game-show host and flamboyant secular preacher. His rhetoric has become much less hard-edged, especially compared with Lowe, MP for Great Yarmouth and former chairman of Southampton Football Club.

Farage spoke of “societal decline” while he relaxed against the lectern as if addressing all-comers at the golf club bar. He was fluent, as he always is, speaking without notes or a script. Lowe, by contrast, stood at the lectern reading. “Family, community, country – this is what we stand for,” Farage proclaimed. He praised Donald Trump’s war on woke, promised Reform would cut the size of the administrative state and said he would never judge anyone “by their colour, religion, sexual preference or gender”. He said “something extraordinary was happening out there” in the country. Reform, a new political party which until recently had no representation in parliament and no proper organisation or infrastructure, had polled “ahead of the Tories in seven consecutive polls” and was just behind Labour. Like a political seismologist alert to what was coming, he predicted an earthquake: “the biggest political change this country has ever seen”.

How much of a threat is Reform UK to Labour? Wes Streeting is wrong merely to dismiss Farage as a “miserabilist” as he did in a recent speech. Farage is not miserable. He has an upbeat message, jauntily delivered: the established parties have failed this great country, and Trump in America has lit a pathway through the dark to a new conservative era. He denounces liberals, progressives and “wokery”, but he is never pious and never talks down to Labour’s cherished “working people”. Recent polling by Hope Not Hate, on a constituency-by-constituency model, forecasts that Reform could win up to 76 seats from Labour if an election were held now. On 3 February Reform led a YouGov voting intention poll for the first time. As Farage keeps saying, something is going on out there – here, and in all Western democracies, as the populist right rises – and Labour has had fair warning.

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This appears in the 7-13 February 2025 issue of the New Statesman magazine

[See also: Sara Sharif and the case for transparency]

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This article appears in the 05 Feb 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The New Gods of AI