How the cracks are beginning to show in Nigel Farage’s Reform UK
TThe warning issued by Reform’s Kent County Council (KCC) leader Linden Kemkaran to a fellow councilor may be one that voters will have to get used to if Nigel Farage becomes prime minister.
“I’m afraid if you don’t like it, you’re going to have to screw it up,” he said in a rather chaotic Zoom meeting.
During the tape of the video conference broadcast for the first time GuardMajor Kemkaran also made a very valid point and it should worry Mr Farage and other senior figures in Reform.
“Let’s not forget, we are the showcase of KCC. People are looking at us, judging us every minute of every day. Nigel knows this. He is acutely aware that we are the flagship of the council.”
The problem with the party is that, if it is a shop, it looks like one of those “everything for £1” shops on a run-down high street where the once great flagship stores (Conservatives and Labor) are now mostly closed.
Reform still leads the polls by a large margin (32 per cent to the Conservatives’ 17 per cent and Labour’s 15 per cent, according to Find Out Now) but cracks are beginning to appear that could cast doubt on whether the outsized lead is sustainable.
This rather chaotic video from Kent coincided with new troubles for people close to Mr Farage and the arrival of the Reform leader’s far-right, anti-abortion, Christian nationalist adviser.
Crack 1: Proving themselves in government
Let’s start with Kent, where Reform last May promised to cut council tax with new Elon Musk-inspired Doge units.
It spoke volumes about the Doge units run by former party chief Zia Yusuf that they hired online video experts rather than accountants.
But Kent was the first council they took over with serious hopes of cutting spending.
Now in the video, Major Kemkaran admits he is struggling to come up with £2.5bn cuts and will still have to raise council tax.
His only hope is for them to raise less than the maximum 5 percent, which he told his fellow council members was the main goal. We’re not really reducing people’s council tax bills.
It was reminiscent of a promise by Lincolnshire’s new mayor, Andrea Jenkyns, to sack diversity officers, who after being elected was met with the news that the county council had not recruited any of them.
Reform took control of 10 councils last May, and it took an 18-year-old to lead one of them. While turnout is expected to be low, they could take office in Wales after the next election and win many other councils.
But the experience so far is that managing and running businesses is a difficult task. Implementing easy political slogans and simple solutions is much harder said than done.
By 2029, Reformation will have a record of governance visible to voters. So far it’s not looking good.
Crack 2: Dependence on Nigel Farage
At Reform’s conference in September, Mr Farage openly mocked the idea that the party was a “one-man team”. He then pointed to a row of football jerseys with leading party figures such as Zia Yusuf, Dame Andrea Jenkyns and Richard Tice printed on the back.
However, only one shirt was sold in the store; shirt with Mr Farage’s name on the back.
The truth is that Reform is the party of Nigel Farage.
Political opponents in the 2024 general election and last year’s local elections report how voters on their doorstep will tell them: “I’m voting for Nigel.”
He never voted for Reformation. His rich skills and personality elevated him and his party on the path to national power.
But while Mr Farage is strong, he is also weak. Now the microscope is applied to those closest to him and those around him. The picture is not very nice.
This weekend it emerged that Mr Farage’s French partner, Laure Ferrari, was at the center of a fraud investigation in Brussels.
The investigation relates to his previous role as director general of the Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe (IDDE), a think tank based in the Belgian capital, where auditors refused to sign off on spending hundreds of thousands of euros of public funds in 2016.
But it’s not just that. Nathan Gill, the former Welsh leader of Reform and a long-time friend and ally of Mr Farage, was found guilty of taking Russia-linked bribes. Gill, of Llangefni, Anglesey, pleaded guilty last month to eight charges of bribery committed between December 6, 2018, and July 18, 2019.
While some, including pollster and commentator Matthew Goodwin, believe this is simply an attempt to throw mud at Farage, if there’s enough of it, eventually the mud starts to stick.
Politicians embroiled in scandals have difficulty gaining the mass support they need to win. Just ask Marine Le Pen in France. But without Mr Farage, Reformation’s support is likely to wane.
Crack 3: Policy gap
At the conference in Birmingham in September, corporate consultants visiting Reform were impressed by their enthusiasm and energy, but they were all concerned about the policy gap.
We now see that this gap has already been filled in a way that raises eyebrows.
Within weeks, anti-abortion, Christian nationalist right-wing MP Danny Kruger joined Reform and was given the task of drafting Reform policies for the next election.
This weekend, theologian James Orr, a similarly anti-abortion, Christian nationalist, officially joined the party and became an adviser to Mr Farage.
Two extremely intelligent men saw the gap and perhaps saw the opportunity to shape a party with the kind of extreme social conservatism they believed in, and this was evident in Hungary with Viktor Orban.
It is not surprising that Orr sees asylum seekers coming to the UK as “invaders”.
It is not surprising that both are close to the Maga movement in the United States, especially its vice president, J.D. Vance, who shares their views.
While there’s certainly room for this type of party in the UK, the question is whether it’s a winning formula.
The narrow perspective is unlikely to gain the broad appeal needed to win in the UK.
Crack 4: An unsustainable coalition
Reformation is currently popular; This is largely due to the fact that the two traditional main parties, Labor and the Conservative Party, have historically low levels of support.
But the 32 percent who consistently vote is made up of a wide range of voters whose views often conflict.
In addition, about 10 percent are made up of people who either rarely or never vote, so they cannot be trusted to go to the polls.
The experience at the reform conference was enough to suggest that some on the right and left of politics would be disappointed.
At the conference, Independent He spoke to a former Tory donor in the network of super-rich donors who once funded the Conservatives.
He praised reform as a breath of fresh air and a party that would eventually deregulate Britain towards a kind of very low-tax, zero-employment rights, Singapore-style economy.
After a short while, Independent I chatted with a Reform member who was a Tube driver in London. Unlike the millionaire businessman, he was looking forward to the Reformation nationalizing everything and increasing taxes. In fact, he was a member of the RMT union and was planning to go on strike the next day.
UK politics is used to widening churches within the main parties, but the gap between these positions cannot be bridged.
While Mr Farage nods to left and right and hopes to unite them on issues such as immigration and culture war policies, this will only go so far and could cause problems at the next general election.
