No, Nigel Farage, you do not speak for the silent majority

Reform UK claims to say what ‘everyone really thinks’ – but a new opinion poll shows that nothing could be further from the truth, writes John Rentoul

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage’s claim that he speaks for the British public has been challenged by a new poll (PA Wire)

One of the devices of demagogues through the ages is to claim that only they are brave enough to say out loud what everyone really thinks. The claim is a core part of Nigel Farage’s act. He is not like other politicians, he says, because he is prepared to defy the establishment cover-up and speak up for the silent majority who want no immigration at all.

His claim is false, and a new opinion poll confirms it. More voters support resettlement from Ukraine, Hong Kong, Afghanistan and Syria than are opposed to it, according to an Ipsos survey for British Future. The general public is evenly divided on the question of whether immigration has a positive or negative impact overall, and only 19 per cent see immigration as the number one priority for the government.

The poll shows that Reform voters are out of line with public opinion on every measure. Whereas 58 per cent of Reform votes say they have “no sympathy at all” for those crossing the Channel, for example, this view is held by only 23 per cent of the general public.

“Most people don’t share Nigel Farage’s views and don’t trust him when he talks about immigration,” says Sunder Katwala, director of British Future. “Reform UK and Farage provide a political voice for the section of the public with the toughest views on immigration – but to say they speak for the British public on the issue would simply be mistaken.”

Farage’s trick is to say that the British voters consistently say that they want immigration to be reduced and instead it has increased, which is true, but that does not mean that the voters therefore want what he is selling.

Reform has been given an opening by the huge increase in immigration under Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit government, which is the main reason it did so well in the election, and is why Robert Jenrick, the favourite to succeed to the Conservative leadership, is talking about the threat to “English identity” on the front page of the Daily Mail today.

But that most emphatically does not mean Farage speaks for the nation on the subject. The British Future poll confirms that 55 per cent of the nation wants to reduce overall immigration numbers – as against 81 per cent of Reform voters. But only 38 per cent of the general public want “large reductions” in overall numbers, compared with 75 per cent of Reform voters, and when people are asked about specific categories of immigrant, their attitudes are very different. Only 14 per cent want to reduce the numbers of doctors and nurses immigrating; 18 per cent want fewer care home workers; and only 30 per cent want fewer students.

So it may be a mistake for Jenrick to copy Farageist lines in his pitch for the Tory leadership. In his article in the Mail he accuses the “metropolitan establishment” of having “put the very idea of England at risk”, which is overheated populist tosh backing up his unconvincing policies of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and limiting net immigration to 100,000.

The thing about the ECHR is that it is not popular, but once the implications of withdrawal are spelt out, most voters are wary of it.

As for the end of the “very idea of England”, the mere existence of the Britishcore trend on TikTok, a celebration of English-heavy low culture, is its refutation. This week, a Guardian article went viral for its list of “100 experiences that define and unite modern Britons”, and while some of the items ranged from the mundane (“Watching Waterloo Road”), to the esoteric (“Referring to Buckingham Palace as ‘Bucky P’ or ‘Bucko Pal’”) to the downright baffling (“Having a mate called Danny whose nickname is Danzo, ‘cuz he’s the king of Lanzo’”), Farage’s poisonous rhetoric unsurprisingly did not make the cut.

The appeasement of Reform voters is a dead end for the Tory party. The British Future research shows that they are outliers in their opinions. If the Tories try to accommodate them, they will risk losing voters at the other end of their spectrum, to the Liberal Democrats in particular – and it will make it harder to win back those voters that the Tories lost this year to the Lib Dems (and to Labour).

The weakness of Reform, and one of the reasons it is unlikely to break through in British politics, is that it has no policies. Its pretend policy on small boats is to tow them back to France, or to pick up the occupants and take them back to France – ignoring the problem of what happens when the French refuse to accept them. “War with France” sounds like a Britishcore joke, not the policy of a serious political party.

Similarly, Farage’s “one in, one out” plan for net nil immigration wilted under first cross-examination during the election campaign.

Jenrick should resist the lure of demagoguery. For the Tories to copy Reform is the one sure way to make sure that they lose touch with “what people really think”.