It’s time Labour and the Tories showed Nigel Farage is not the answer to the UK’s problems

Editorial: The real ‘national interest’ requires Starmer and his ministers to govern much more effectively than they have so far, and to show voters some progress

Normally, when either Labour or the Conservatives are doing badly, the other prospers. But unusually, the two main parties are both ending 2024 in something of a sorry state. Sir Keir Starmer’s government has had a bumpy start, to put it mildly – and after the worst defeat in their history, the Tories are struggling to make waves under their new leader Kemi Badenoch.

The one party with undoubted momentum is Reform UK, which has turned the opinion polls into a three-horse race and is narrowly behind the two biggest parties. Nigel Farage’s latest venture looks shinier and more roadworthy than his previous vehicles, Ukip and the Brexit Party. This time, he is trying to build a professional machine. Reform might have only five MPs, but on Thursday it said its membership had overtaken that of the Conservative Party, allowing it to claim that it is now “the real opposition.”

Funding appears to be going well. Nick Candy, the former Tory donor who is now Reform’s treasurer, has claimed that as well as Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, several other billionaires are ready to pump money in.

Mr Farage is relishing his capacity to pose awkward dilemmas for Labour and the Tories. So what should they do about him? Should they attack him head-on, and risk alienating more voters who might be tempted by his populist pitch? Or should they ignore him in an effort to avoid supplying him with the oxygen of publicity, and risk leaving the field clear for his right-wing outfit?

Ms Badenoch needs to win back Tory supporters who switched to Reform at the election in July. Her party is split over whether to seek an electoral pact with Mr Farage, like the one that helped Boris Johnson secure a majority of 80 in 2019.

The new Tory leader’s strategy of delaying major policy announcements until much closer to the next election might have been right if her party were facing a traditional fight with Labour. But, as this week’s unimpressive interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme showed, its being almost a policy-free zone allows Reform to fill a vacuum. The danger is that, when the Tories eventually declare their hand, it will look as if they are running to catch up with the ubiquitous Mr Farage.

Labour, meanwhile, rightly takes the threat of Reform seriously in the red-wall seats in the North and the Midlands that it won back from the Tories in July. Sir Keir’s recipe for holding back the populist tide sweeping much of Europe is to show competence and deliver the change he promised. Both are proving much harder than he and many of his colleagues expected.

The prime minister has another dilemma after Mr Farage offered to act as a go-between to smooth Britain’s path to Donald Trump when the former US president returns to the White House next month. The Reform leader argues that this would be in “the national interest”. It would, of course, be in his self-interest.

Peter Mandelson, the UK’s new ambassador in Washington, has previously suggested that the government should be prepared to use Mr Farage as a bridge and that Labour should end its feud with Mr Musk. But Downing Street and some cabinet ministers are more wary, and want Mr Farage kept at arm’s length.

The Independent thinks they are right. The handling of an unpredictable US president cannot be subcontracted to the leader of a rival party that is breathing down Labour’s neck in 89 seats where it came second to it in the last general election.

It is not in the government’s interests to provide Mr Farage with a bigger platform than he already has, and to enhance his credentials as the potential prime minister he now aspires to be. Lord Mandelson must be the most important UK voice in the Trump administration’s ear.

For now, Mr Farage can enjoy his party’s progress without being subjected to the scrutiny Labour and the Tories are rightly put under. Reform can throw out policies like confetti, calling for the nationalisation of Thames Water, and of the British Steel plant in Scunthorpe, if that is needed to keep it open.

Reform’s spending plans at the general election did not add up; now it is a bigger player, it should be treated as one by the media, and its policies and promises given much closer attention. The two main parties would be wise to turn their guns on Reform before it becomes even stronger.

Success brings challenges: at the local elections next May, Mr Farage will need to prove that his party’s momentum is real rather than another false dawn.

Despite his offer to act as an intermediary between Britain and the US, the real “national interest” requires Sir Keir and his ministers to govern much more effectively than they have so far, and to show voters some progress on the economy and public services. That is the way to keep at bay the self-styled “disrupters” in Reform, who have no answers to the UK’s problems.