How the Reform UK leader’s woes serve as a warning for Pauline Hanson and One Nation
Pauline Hanson was due to meet Nigel Farage this week. Given the saga the populist MP in the UK is in, he might be better off hopping on a plane back to Australia.
He and his chief adviser James Ashby are in London to meet Farage and others in the global populist right ecosystem.
Barnaby Joyce was also enjoying the British heatwave before returning this week. He said on Monday: “Nigel Farage is about to become Britain’s prime minister, according to the polls. Pauline and One Nation are doing incredibly well and I think they need to combine notes.”
Two days later, before his meeting with Hanson, Farage made a move that plunged the Reform UK party into its most dangerous moment. He may not have time to meet with the One Nation leader.
Farage resigned his seat in Clacton and launched what he called a “people’s anti-establishment” campaign in the election. The fervent anti-immigration organization was under pressure over a $9.6 million donation from a crypto billionaire and gifts from a criminal known as “Posh George.”
The British parliament is investigating the allegations. But Farage, who has recently returned from celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States with Donald Trump’s inner circle, wants the vote to prove against Westminster elites that Britons support him.
The 62-year-old’s opponents have called his bluff and will not contest the by-election. Bizarrely, if parliament impeaches him and 10 per cent of Clacton voters sign a petition for a new vote, he may win the poll and be forced to call a new by-election. His possible victory may not save his credibility.
The details of the story are less important than what it means: the halo that seemed to perch above Farage’s head has faded. In the early stages of Hanson’s rise, before his rise, mainstream right-wingers in the UK bemoaned Farage’s Teflon quality. As the charismatic outrage machine outpaced its rivals on social media, scandal after scandal seemed to do little to stop it.
The same goes for Hanson. While the Queensland senator mistreated journalists and failed to comply with disclosure rules regarding flights and gifts from mining billionaire Gina Rinehart, political gravity does not appear to have dragged One Nation’s leader down.
That began to change when Hanson moved from the periphery to center stage for the first time. His performance at the National Press Club last month proved that Ashby, seen as a master political operator in Canberra, can overstep his limits like no other.
Rather than moderating and acknowledging that One Nation’s support comes from Australians of all stripes, Hanson has pushed an agenda to the right of many populist leaders.
Often, conservative disruptors offer generous welfare and tax policies along with tough stances on immigration. It’s not Hanson, echoing Elon Musk’s chainsaw-wielding slash-and-burn approach. It took a few months, but Trump eventually distanced himself from Musk.
Hanson has fallen in the polls since then. He spent the past week in Canberra cleaning up his mess and announcing that he actually supports paid parental leave.
All this means that the normal rules of politics may still apply to nationalists in the Anglosphere.
Hanson is at the beginning of his journey as a mainstream political threat. Like Farage’s team, it has yet to face the inevitable infighting that will emerge as it recruits more MPs and candidates. The UK media found time to set their sights on Farage in a way that the Australian media did not on Hanson.
Reform UK lost nearly five percentage points of support as it debated back immigration policies, a concept that refers to the mass deportation of non-white immigrants. Hanson’s party has not embraced the concept of a radical rollback, but One Nation’s online supporters are pushing for such policies. Hanson admitted that its branches had been “infiltrated by extremists”.
The spivs that Farage surrounds himself with are like moths to the flames of populist parties. It will be difficult for One Nation to create systems that will weed out problematic figures or avoid the temptation to take money. Hanson’s bravado over a plane donated by Rinehart earlier this year contrasted with One Nation’s concerns about how the relationship with Rinehart could cause problems for the party.
Farage’s antics and Hanson’s press club sobs show that patience, not panic, should be the name of the game in the Coalition’s quest to win back voters from One Nation.
Its underperforming leader, Angus Taylor, has a shorter tenure than his more impressive England counterpart, Kemi Badenoch. Both seek to outline consistent but responsible conservative positions on energy and immigration to convince right-wing voters that they, like Hanson and Farage, want to create real change.
Time may be their only friend.
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Paul Sakkal is the Chief Political Correspondent. He has previously covered Victorian politics and won the Walkley award as well as the 2025 Press Gallery Journalist of the Year award. Contact him securely on Signal @paulsakkal.14.Connect with: X or email.
