After weeks of growing scrutiny over the £5m gift received from the Thailand-based billionaire Christopher Harborne, Nigel Farage resigned his Clacton seat in order to be elected again. In true populist fashion, he framed it as a battle between “the people” and “the establishment”. Many voters buy in to this rhetoric. While Farage’s general approval rating has somewhat suffered due to this scandal, a survey earlier this year showed that nearly 40 per cent of those in routine and manual occupations and 36 per cent of small employers and the self-employed now support Reform. Even trade union members are reportedly as likely to back Reform as Labour.
How is it, then, that the claim of a privately educated, ex-City trader who received a multimillion-pound gift from the sixth richest Briton alive to be the champion of “ordinary people” still have any traction? It’s because his notion of “the people” is deliberately vague – it includes “patriotic” trade union members, sole traders “who actually keep the country running”, as well as landlords with over a dozen properties. Depending on his audience, Farage simultaneously presents Reform as “the true party of the workers” and also the party that would deliver “the most pro-business government this country has seen in modern times”.
This cross-class appeal sits at the core of Reform’s standing in polls. The glue is not just the anti-immigration attitudes but a producerist worldview that pits “makers” (entrepreneurs and workers who generate the country’s wealth) against “takers” (political elites and undeserving categories who simply take advantage of it). This is the hallmark of far-right populism across Europe.
But performative rhetoric aimed at winning votes is one thing; actual policymaking is another. That Reform’s messaging is able to unify capital and labour does not mean a Reform government would follow up on it. In fact, there are good reasons to expect otherwise.
As I show in a recent research paper, the party’s cadre is overwhelmingly drawn from the ranks of the professional managerial class (52 per cent) and the petty bourgeoisie (39 per cent). Some of them might see themselves as working class, for example landlord Sian Astley, the councillor and Greater Manchester mayoral candidate offended by Labour’s suggestion that landlords should not be classed as “working people”. But we can see that Reform has recruited extremely few candidates with an actual working-class occupation – just like the mainstream parties it purports to oppose.
The party’s economic agenda is hardly pro-worker either. Its pro-business policies range from reducing corporate tax and raising the VAT registration threshold to deregulating fossil fuel and financial industries – sectors that coincidentally account for many of the donations received by Reform. The party now proposes tax exemptions for overseas income and capital gains.
When it comes to workers’ wages, job security, or affordable housing, there is nothing on offer apart from the pledge to eliminate income tax on overtime above a 40-hour week. In fact, the MPs of “the party of the workers” unanimously opposed the Employment Rights Bill, despite Reform voters agreeing with the bill’s key provisions, such as banning zero-hour contracts, protection from unfair dismissal or the provision of statutory sick pay for all workers. Reform leaders vowed additionally vowed to scrap the Renters’ Rights Bill if elected.
The only piece of legislation the party has drafted so far is the Cryptoassets and Digital Finance Bill, which would entail tax cuts on crypto capital gains. Farage personally lobbied the Bank of England governor to drop plans for a state-issued cryptocurrency that would compete with that issued by Tether, a company which happens to be partly owned by Christopher Harborne. The draft bill has now been removed from the party’s website.
Reform’s local government track record is even more indicative of where its priorities might lie. Not only have Reform-led councils scrapped net zero targets, but its national leadership has repeatedly pledged to legalise fracking. According to Richard Tice, “It’s our patriotic duty to use our energy treasure.” Perhaps it was this “patriotic duty” that reportedly animated Andrea Jenkyns, Reform’s mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, to contact the US fracking company Heyco Energy following a major gas discovery in Lincolnshire’s Gainsborough Trough to ask how she “could help with your recent gas find in my county”. But how “patriotic” is a policy that faces widespread opposition not only among the general public but also the farming community, due to to water and air quality as well as potential earthquakes and warming effects?
In other areas of policymaking, such as social care, the Reform-led councils in Derbyshire and Lancashire tried to shut down care homes and day centres, with residents due to be moved to the private sector. In the latter case, Reform councillors (who include the co-owner of a private care provider) faced enough grassroots opposition to eventually suspend their plans, but the future of those care homes and their residents still hangs in balance.
All in all, whether we look at Reform’s party elites, donors, economic policy, or local government practice, what we find is a big discrepancy with its claims to be on the side of “the people” and against “the establishment”. If we scratch the rhetorical surface, we discover a party based on the petty bourgeoisie but led by wealthy elites linked to finance capital and the fossil fuel industry. Wasn’t the whole point about Reform, that they would be different? That they would be an alternative to the establishment rather than the political vehicle of one faction of it? Perhaps not standing a candidate in this by-election is a missed opportunity for the other parties to expose this huge contradiction at the heart of Farage’s political project.
[Further reading: Ed Balls: Burnham cannot miss this chance to tackle regional inequality]
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Subscribe here to commentA British version of Trump and MAGA on a much smaller scale and budget with less violence. Get the punters to vote you in and then do what you really want. C’est la vie.