Nigel Farage may be all for Reform – but he is still going nowhere

I won’t risk predicting that the Farage phenomenon is over, but this phase of his career is certainly a dud, writes John Rentoul

Nigel Farage, at a Leave means Leave rally in 2019 (PA)

I have an interest to declare, in that I rashly said on live TV in June 2014 that, in five years’ time, we would have forgotten who Nigel Farage was. I could contend that I was six months out, in that he played a big role in the general election in December 2019 and has not been heard of since. 

But that does rather overlook the period in between, in which he was possibly the most significant politician in British history never to have been a member of the House of Commons. I contend that a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU was probable after Gordon Brown refused to hold one on the Lisbon treaty, but no one can doubt Farage’s role in mobilising public opinion through Ukip, putting pressure on David Cameron to make it a manifesto pledge. 

Farage’s rise and fade has been full of paradoxes. Although he did so much to make it happen when it did, he and the “bad boys of Brexit” were not actually allowed a leading role in the referendum itself. Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings wisely wouldn’t let Farage and his allies near the official campaign. And if that campaign had been in the hands of Farage’s outfit, Leave.EU, it probably would have lost. Remainers ought to have been nicer to Farage – given him a peerage and an honorary chair at Oxford at the very least – and we might still be in the EU now.