Nigel Farage still deserves a peerage – if he’d got one years ago, we wouldn't be in this mess

Ukip and Farage’s lack of representation in parliament over the years is a shameful indictment of our political system. Would Brexit have even happened had they been in Westminster?

(Reuters)

Two and a half years ago, as the implications of the EU referendum result were still sinking in, there was speculation that Nigel Farage, then leader of the UK Independence Party, might be recommended for a peerage. In the brief media debate that followed, I argued that he absolutely should be: arise, Baron Farage of Little England, was my line – and make it hereditary, so his heirs have to account for what he sowed.

Among the reasons I gave was that, whether you liked him and his views or not, Nigel Farage had become a considerable figure in UK politics. He had, almost single-handed, put the question of leaving the European Union on the mainstream agenda, formed a party to campaign for it, led his party to top the 2014 European parliamentary elections, and helped the Leave campaign to their narrow victory in the referendum.

Tory Eurosceptics had made life difficult for successive Conservative prime ministers, but it was not until Farage came along, with his straight talk and popular appeal, that what has become Brexit started to feature on the mainstream political map. Here was an individual who had changed not only the face of British politics, but – potentially – the whole future direction of the UK itself. Should not such a figure be recognised and given a voice in parliament?

But there was another, very practical and perhaps cynical, reason why I argued – and would still argue – for Nigel Farage to be elevated to a peerage. Just as Theresa May had included Boris Johnson in her cabinet, on the apparent grounds that he would be more dangerous out than in, so with Farage: “A Baron Farage safely quaffing his pints in a parliamentary bar might be less of a danger to the public order than a compulsive fomenter of discontent out in the country at large,” is what I wrote – and so it has come to pass.

A large part of Farage’s attraction for voters was, and is, his status as an outsider who purports to take “the people’s” side. But it was the political system that enabled him to play that role – indeed, forced him into it. He has stood no fewer than seven times for the UK parliament and has never been elected. Even though Ukip had won 4 million votes at the 2015 general election, even though Leave had prevailed in the EU referendum, the party and its standard-bearer remained in the cold.

A peerage would have been one way of getting around that – as it has been for others. Consider Lord Green, formerly Sir Andrew Green, founder and chief spokesperson for MigrationWatch and another thorn in successive governments’ sides. He entered the House of Lords in 2014, since then his public criticism of migration has seemed less strident. As a former ambassador, however, he was doubtless easier to welcome to the red benches than a self-made outsider such as Nigel Farage.

The current political chaos and calls for his Brexit Party to be included in any new EU negotiations, now it has topped the UK’s EU parliament vote, are reasons why Farage’s non-peerage is suddenly being revisited. It has been flagged up by some as a missed opportunity to curtail his rallying power by bringing him inside the tent – the very point I made in 2016. But I am not raising it now in the spirit of vindication, but as an illustration of how our political system excludes whole swathes of opinion, even when that opinion starts to enter the mainstream.

As the commoner he remains, Nigel Farage is a living indictment of our political institutions as they are formulated and function today. He reflects back at us almost everything that is wrong with our supposed democracy. The European parliament gave him an outlet not just because the UK and the EU was his prime cause, but the EU electoral system could accommodate even such a hostile voice, while the UK system could not.

In even the most basic proportional system, Nigel Farage would have been elected to the House of Commons long ago, and Ukip would have had a voice that bore some relation to its following. That did not happen. Even if the Brexit vote itself was not a direct consequence of that institutional exclusion – people voted in the referendum who had not voted for years, or ever – then the failure of the establishment to anticipate that result certainly was. Ukip simply did not register on the country’s mainstream political radar, because the electoral system was rigged against it.

The 2017 general election – Theresa May’s catastrophically misguided “snap” election – should by rights have been fought on the issue of Brexit. And it could have made life a lot easier for any government if it had been. But it was not and could not be, because both main parties were split down the middle on that central issue, and Ukip (and other smaller parties, such as the Greens) were effectively excluded by “first past the post”.

The DUP, on the other hand, gained wildly disproportionate power because it is a mainstream party in Northern Ireland (so manages to get MPs elected) and because May needed an ally to remain in government. The result is an effective veto on the terms of Brexit to a party that could never be elected UK-wide. How democratic is that?

Another general election is one remedy proposed in the hope of ending the present parliamentary stalemate over Brexit – the other being a second referendum or “people’s vote”. The chancellor, Philip Hammond, this week indicated a slight preference for the latter, on the grounds that it would at least be fought on the actual issue at hand. A general election, in contrast, could result in a similar parliamentary stalemate to the one we have now.

It might, of course – if the results of the recent EU parliament elections are anything to judge by – be a different stalemate, with the Conservatives and Labour being eviscerated, as voters opted en masse for the pro- or anti-EU parties, and sitting MPs defected accordingly. But the parliamentary arithmetic could end up as intractable as it currently is.

While such a possibility has its attractions – not least as a dramatic breaking of the mould of UK politics – the resulting House of Commons would be no less inclusive than the present one, with the centre-right and hard-left relegated to the margins of UK politics as effectively as Brexit was before. Indeed, if anything the climate could be even more divisive.

It is beyond time to look across to the continent, especially to Germany, whose post-war electoral system the British essentially devised. Yes, perpetual coalitions can produce a sameness of government, but Germany’s proportional elections allow for the waxing and waning of parties and a far broader representation of views in the national parliament. And with a voice in the national debating chamber comes responsibility.

The current shambles in UK politics is largely of our own making. Not only have we refused to make our electoral system more inclusive, but the then government made no effort to address the undoubted Ukip challenge by giving Nigel Farage an institutional forum for his views. It is too late for that now. But the next government – whoever forms it – cannot buck the responsibility. It must treat electoral renewal as a priority.