2 May 2025

Does Farage own the future?

Keir Starmer must prove he understands the fury of many voters with his government.

We wake in early May to find the political world entirely upended, and yet exactly the same. The great triumph of Reform – and it is a triumph, no lesser word will do – probably sets the scene for British politics between now and the next general election.

Nigel Farage has, at long last, an effective, professional, well-organised political machine behind him, one able to take on the ruthless professionalism of Keir Starmer’s Labour and beat it, even if by the narrowest whisker, in what should have been a safe parliamentary seat. It is a machine also able to lay waste to the Tories in right-wing, Brexity heartlands such as Lincolnshire and Staffordshire.

“Fruit cakes, loonies and closet racists”, as David Cameron dismissed Ukip nearly 20 years ago, long before losing the Brexit referendum? Among the new Reform councillors there are no doubt some fruity figures; yet the old beery, dandruff-flecked image is vanishing. Nobody in British politics can any longer think Reform can be dismissed with a sneer.

The impact will be very widespread. Reform will be given more respect and more scrutiny as well. Somehow, having even a single female MP will make the party seem different in the Commons.

Labour is already promising to double down on its harder-edged politics. “I get it,” says Keir Starmer. Yes, but what does he get? I think we can assume that the more aggressive anti-migration policies, such as the overseas hubs crackdown on employers being pursued by Yvette Cooper’s Home Office is what he gets; and the more socially conservative line on trans issues; and perhaps more than a quiet nod of agreement with Tony Blair on net zero policies.

But does he get the fury of many voters, even now, about the removal of the winter fuel allowance, or the cuts to disability payments, or the general discontent with wage levels? Listening to reports of what voters have been saying about why they turned against Labour, you would think that the department under most pressure would now be the Treasury. But because Starmer is so tied to the policies of Rachel Reeves, that seems unlikely in the near term. Yet as my colleague George Eaton has argued, this will, for sure, sharpen policy tensions inside the government and Treasury orthodoxy may yet to be one of the victims.

A deep desire for reindustrialisation and “proper jobs”, which has been expertly weaponised by Farage, will drive a renewed focus on energy costs. Ed Miliband has a strong story to tell about this (though seems curiously reluctant to tell it). But with the Unite union in rare agreement with the Tony Blair Institute, Miliband needs to watch his back more than ever.

Think next about immigration – the first thing raised by Farage after the Runcorn victory. Talking recently to a veteran Blairite minister, I was struck by how long and how fiercely the Treasury has defended mass immigration as a shortcut to growth and (behind their well-manicured hands) as means of suppressing wages. In a political culture more dominated by Reform voters, which, whether you like it or not, is where we are, that kind of thinking is no longer sustainable.

This new world is also one, of course, of a four or five-party system in which it’s very hard to see a new government taking office with an overall majority. The Conservatives’ average vote in the local elections is down an astonishing 26 points from May 2021. I think Farage’s suggestion that the Conservative Party itself is going to disappear is somewhat overwrought, as is the idea that with five MPs he now leads the official opposition. But it is Kemi Badenoch who should be the most disquieted politician in the country today.

Similarly, when we ask that crucial question – what has happened to the left? – the answer increasingly looks like, “they are now called the Liberal Democrats.” On opposition to Donald Trump, on the environment and on a host of cultural issues, they are the nearest to a big left protest movement that Britain currently has. A Tory party which woke up to the threat and turned properly on them might begin to revive itself.

So in all these ways, we are in a new world. And yet, fundamentally, it is exactly the same political world that we have become accustomed to – one driven by a deeply angry and cynical people living in an economy failing to deliver the goods, whose political class seems alien, thrashing around in search of a weapon to wield.

That is how it felt in the Tory years. During last summer’s election, a relatively small number of voters shifting would have made a Reform explosion possible then. Next year, we will see a further episode of the story play out in Scotland and Wales. Meanwhile, we badly need a close and forensic analysis of Reform’s politics; how far is it really classical liberalism, how far opportunistic populism?

For here is the danger for Britain. With four or five parties competing in an atmosphere of pessimistic political turbulence, the likelihood is of a sequence of coalitions, failing to produce quick solutions, then collapsing and being replaced by others; a kind of downward spiral of protest, disappointment and political chaos.

The only thing standing in its way is this often disappointing, always confusing Labour government. Only if Starmer can produce some feeling of pro-worker, patriotic economic optimism, and confidence around security, can we avoid what feels, today, our likely, very wild, future.