Could Nigel Farage come back to haunt British politics once again?

Tory red-wall MPs might be feeling nervous about their prospects at the next general election, writes Sean O'Grady. Does that leave room for another Farage comeback?

Nigel Farage is said to have conversations with some Tory red-wall MPs (AFP/Getty)

Nigel Farage, former leader of Ukip, former leader of the Brexit Party and presently playing an angry pub bore on GB News, is apparently seeking to stir British politics up again. Reports vary, but it seems that there has been contact with a group of disenchanted Conservative MPs in red-wall seats potentially for help and spiritual guidance, rather in the way The Beatles did with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi back in the psychedelic Sixties. All sorts of options were explored. None of them was promising for the Sunak administration’s chances of getting re-elected.

A revived Reform UK, successor to Ukip and the Brexit Party (albeit a rump Ukip soldiers on) has declared that it will field parliamentary candidates in every seat in England, Wales and Scotland. The leader is the lacklustre Richard Tice, an old colleague of Farage, who always gives the impression that he’s just keeping the seat warm until Farage returns.

Reform claims to have attracted Tory members unhappy with their party’s net zero and high tax ways, and believes it can similarly attract Tory voters and, maybe, win seats. It’s targeted 11 or so for the next election, five Conservative seats, six Labour-held ones in the Leave-inclined North, North East and Midlands. They are: Barnsley East, Hartlepool, Doncaster North, Wentworth & Deane, Don Valley, Rother Valley, Bolsover, Rotherham, Makerfield, Stoke-on-Trent North, and Mansfield. All would most likely return to Labour on current polling.

So Tory MPs in those areas rightly fear being even more vulnerable to Labour if Brexit takes a slice of their support away. Hence there’s some talk of a northern group of Conservative MPs (there’s already a Northern Research Group) being formed to press the government to adopt policies they believe will save them from an additional challenge from Reform UK. The unspoken threat is that they might defect to Reform UK, and either hold the seats narrowly against an official Conservative candidate or split the vote and let Labour in

The situation is fluid, but as with Ukip and the Brexit Party before, the main impact of this gossip and hyping up of Reform UK may be to push the Tory government in a direction more to the taste of the Brexit right (ie, inside and outside Conservative ranks). That means a harder line in Europe (no more talk of Swiss-style deals), “sending back” refugees, and cuts to taxes and public spending. The analogy would be how the success of Ukip and Farage pushed David Cameron into promising an In/Out EU referendum back in 2013; and, more arguable, how the Brexit Party appearing in time for the European and Westminster polls in 2019 pushed Theresa May out of office and pushed Boris Johnson towards a harder Brexit than might otherwise have been agreed. The defections of Tory backbenchers Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless in the 2010s would be the precursor for a new round of such desertions in the next year or two.

But if the Sunak government cannot – or will not – deliver those things, then the next election could be a quite chaotic affair with the intervention of the Reform party (as it’s commonly called). The pressure from Reform will only add to the instability within the Tory party. It’s a little more likely it will continue to find it difficult to get its programme through parliament – the public finances, planning and housing, migration, energy and net zero, levelling up, and the Northern Ireland protocol will continue to divide and weaken the governing party. Johnson and Liz Truss seem to be out for trouble, too. It might even fall prematurely, exhausted and demoralised.

At this point in the discussion, it is necessary to calm down. The Tories are in possession of a large majority, and will not easily vote for an early general election. Also, Reform UK polls around 4 per cent in most polls, despite Farage’s notoriety.

The old Leave/Remain divide is less salient than it was, and Reform UK’s mix of anti-immigrant, radical tax cutting and socially anti-woke policies don’t have quite the same force. It’s also possible the voters are a bit wary of populists and demagogues who promised them the earth last time around and failed to deliver.

If Labour sustains a 20-point lead, and anti-Tory tactical voting reappears, then it doesn’t really matter what Farage or Tice do anyway – they’ll be swept aside in an unprecedented Labour landslide. But, if the election is a bit tighter when it comes in 2024, then Reform might damage the Tories more than Labour, and make it more likely that Keir Starmer would win an overall majority. The Brexit Party’s last outing, in 2019, tended to hurt the Tories more than Labour, even though the Brexit Party didn’t run in Tory-held constituencies.

According to the authors of the definitive study of the 2019 election: “Standing down in Conservative-held seats made only a marginal difference to the outcome. Meanwhile, where it did stand, the [Brexit Party] was not especially successful at garnering the support of those who would otherwise have voted Labour, and as a result, may have denied Boris Johnson what might otherwise have been an overall majority of around 130 … the division of support for pro-Brexit parties that did occur still significantly reduced the scale of the Conservatives’ election success.”

It’s going to be a confusing few years ahead. Again.