The Farage phenomenon

He’s hardly a soul-mate but I’m grateful to Nigel Farage. No really. Not for Brexit or his views on global warming. Or worrying about a Romanian family moving in next door.

I am grateful for the clarity he brings to the question: who governs Britain and, more important, how it is governed. Farage is the blood test that reveals a chronic sickness we’ve suspected for a long time but can’t face up to. Our political system is in intensive care. Major surgery is needed.

Established institutions are leaking public trust. Abject failure by successive governments to deal with a derelict NHS and the cost of living is compounded by the effects of global crises — migration, climate change, cyber warfare, pandemics, potholes.

NHS waiting lists stand at 7.4 million. Local authorities – Birmingham, Croydon, Thurrock — are going bankrupt. Prisons are bursting at the seams. Real wages remain at or below 2008 levels. Brexit has slashed trade and investment and increased business costs. Child poverty is at a record high.

This is not a party political disorder. All parties have contributed to this mess. All parties have failed to grasp the nettle because all of them are incurably tribal. It’s a systemic affliction.

Granted we live in a tangled, fast-changing world full of risk and ambiguity. It’s not easy to govern. But that’s the job. To govern is to choose. And so far, leaving aside his performance on the world stage, Keir Starmer has made, or perhaps more accurately, agreed to some pretty poor choices.

Where’s the difference from the previous lot?

Less than a year on from his resounding election victory, Starmer is executing a messy U-turn on some of the frankly bewildering policies announced by his Chancellor Rachel Reeves: the winter fuel payment cut; the two-child benefit cap; the upcoming welfare cuts.

Nobody seriously believes the Prime Minister’s claim that the Government can afford to look again at these policies because the economy is growing faster than expected. At its most basic, it’s the Farage effect. In particular, Reform UK’s deft positioning as a reborn socially conservative working class party.

Reform’s stunning success in the local elections and in the Runcorn parliamentary by-election on May 1, with a whopping 17.4% swing from Labour, speaks for itself. That has also sparked a revolt in Labour’s ranks, where feelings about a Tory-lite agenda are running high.

Farage now promises to destroy not just the Tories (“It’s over. It’s done”) but Labour as well. And who’s to say this is just bluster? Reform are already in government. They’ve swept to power in 10 local authorities and two mayoralties. Even Sir John Curtice, that modest, trustworthy, political oracle, concedes it’s not impossible.

It doesn’t matter that Farage has no track record as a legislator. Or that he promises the earth without properly costing his proposals. Or that his rhetoric is replete with contradictions. Farage can waffle for England. But he can also be as clear as a bell and sharp as a flick-knife. People like that.

The easy response to all this is to fall back on the “it’s just a protest vote” argument. And for much of the past 100 years that has been the case. Witness the rise and fall and rise again of the quintessential Third Force, the Liberal Democrats and their predecessors the Liberals: 158 MPs in 1923, 8 in 2015, 72 in 2024.

But British politics is becoming increasingly fragmented. As with any marketplace, people increasingly crave wider political choice. As the world changes and communities diversify, tastes evolve. If we don’t like what’s on offer, we go elsewhere — drawn by niche brands that offer “tailored experiences”.

The evidence for our disenchantment with politics as usual is overwhelming. In its last survey, the Office of National Statistics found that just one in four people trusted the Government while only 12% trusted political parties. I hear you say: ”What do you expect?” But that’s a really shocking figure which should give us pause.

And yet there’s a real disconnect between our disillusionment and our actions. Slagging off politicians is a national sport. They’re liars, time-servers, out of touch and out for themselves. But come elections we still troop to the polls and hand them the keys to the house. Like the hostages’ Stockholm syndrome, it’s a weird mix of fear and false hope.

Farage is a wake-up call to those who still believe in politics by the book. He’s a warning to those who persist in the old alliances of Left and Right. Politics, like shopping, is no longer a binary choice.

It’s tempting to draw a parallel with Donald Trump in the US or Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. But no two political situations are analogous. The rise of Farage in the UK was initially driven by the rise of a specifically English nationalism. Political scientists Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones ascribe this anger to a fear among the English that England is “no longer theirs”. Farage has adroitly built on this.

Farage is a politician of real consequence. He may or may not be resilient and enterprising enough to upend the Tories and Labour. Farage in Number 10 sounds like an oxymoron. But that’s what we said about Trump and the Oval Office.

This former City trader is living proof that the two-party system which has governed these islands since the Glorious Revolution in the 17^th century is on its last legs and needs an urgent overhaul to give people a real stake in their future.

The sensible, the prudent thing, would be to pre-empt its demise by preparing the ground for a different electoral system. Some form of proportional representation would offer at its core, responsible, participatory politics that people have a real stake in.

PR would restore equality of voice. Your vote matters. At its simplest a party that gets 20% of the vote gets 20% of the seats. It’s fair. It’s democratic. If Farage did end up in Downing Street he’d have to abandon extremism for collaboration.

Meloni has done just that in Italy. She has proved durable and stable and the economy is proving resilient. She is, as one observer said, “swimming in the middle of the pack”.

The standard response is that PR is a recipe for instability, bickering and inaction. But isn’t that precisely what we’ve got?

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