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Every politician has their catch phrase, Carter 'wasn’t just peanuts', Reagan had his 'morning in America,' and Trump, well Trump has his 'Make America Great Again'.
Over here Nigel Farage has his own old favourite. He will stand on stage, “Back when I started they all laughed at me” and like a crowd of concert goers, the audience will roar back “but they are not laughing now”. And they aren’t.
He has used this refrain, happily borrowed from an old comedian of the 70’s and 80’s (a Bob Monkhouse who went to Dulwich college, Farage’s old school) since 2016 after the Referendum. It works, because it is true.
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As it was in 2016 in the aftermath of the Brexit Referendum that was driven by his sheer force of will, and belief in the UK as a sovereign nation, so it is today.
On July the 4th 2024 they were laughing again. Only 4 weeks after he had left his semi-retirement he led his new, only 3 year old party to 14% of the national vote, but with only 5 seats in Parliament.
Reform and Farage’s populist revolt had been blunted, for all his success the establishment were laughing at him again.
Scroll forward a few short months and the picture is looking very different indeed. In recent weeks poll after poll is putting Farage’s Reform UK party ahead of the Conservatives across the country. This is even more impressive as places like London, with its huge population are still virtual no go areas for his party (though even that is starting to change). In Wales recent polls have Reform topping the table - which given it will be electing its regional government under a system of voting, proportional representation, that favours an upstart party might find Reform in Government. Even in Scotland, a place that in last summer’s elections Farage would not visit for security threats, the party is now touching 20% and it too is voting next year.
The rolling average of polls can be seen here
Seen like this the clear message is that since the election while Labour are on a death slide, and the Tories are bouncing along the bottom, Reform UK are on an inexorable drift upwards. However due t o the vagaries of our electoral system, this rise in the polls does not inevitably lead to seats in the House of Commons, far from it.
In July, at the election though Reform garnered 14% of the vote, it received under 1% of the seats. For each seat in the House, it required 800,000 votes, a Labour seat took only 26,000. However the First Past the Post system does create a hump back, once one has reached a point, then suddenly it works in a party’s favour. Current estimates are that if Reform UK can reach 32% then what was blocking them provides instead an electoral avalanche.
At 28% they become the largest party, by 32% they get an overall majority. Last week, for the first time Reform hit 27% in a national poll and the rise hasn’t begun to flatten off.
Other polling is also telling. When it comes to being the most popular individual to be Prime Minister, the establishment comfort blanket has been that Farage is too divisive to cut through beyond his base. Again the numbers no longer support that hypothesis.
This week a poll by More in Common has produced remarkable findings that far from being divisive, Faraghe is now the person regarded as the best option as Prime Minister.
The thing about Farage which he shares with the new POTUS is something that is unusual in modern, western liberal countries. As a politician he really doesn’t care what people think. He doesn't want everybody to like him. What he wants to do is to stay true to himself.
He also understands that to win a multi party democracy like the UK you do not need to have a majority of the vote, 50.01% to win an election, 34% will give you a massive majority in the House of Commons. But what might happen is that those who do not love you, might, at least respect you. And respect is something that lasts longer than the fickleness of political fashion.
Farage and Regform are here to stay, how high can they go? That we do not know, but the old establishment figures that have, month after month, told us that he and Reform have a support ceiling of 10%, 14%, 18%, now 27% have been wrong so often they make the old Biden Harris hiring strategy look like the wisdom of the ages.
Nobody is laughing at Farage any more.
Farage is a snake refuses to acknowledge Tommy Robinson is a political prisoner illegally held in isolation
Rupert Lowe is the real leader of Reform