What farcical Farage’s Reform UK no-show really tells us

Despite all the hype ahead of Reform UK’s new year press conference today, there was only one type of show: a no-show, writes Andrew Grice – and what kind of panto dame does that?

Richard Tice, the party’s leader, told us he is ‘very confident’ Nigel Farage, its honorary president, will take on a bigger role but said Farage was ‘still assessing that’ (Getty)

Anyone would have thought it was still pantomime season – with onlookers begging to clamour, “He’s behind you!”... except, of course, he wasn’t. Whatever Reform UK leader Richard Tice may say about Nigel Farage being “firmly behind him”, the stark reality is that he was nowhere to be seen.

And despite all the hype ahead of Reform UK’s new year press conference today, there was only one type of show: a no-show. What kind of panto dame does that? One, it seems, who just wants attention.

What it tells us about Reform UK, the successor to the Brexit Party, is that it is still waiting for Farage. Thus, the party was unable to answer the $64,000 question: is the UK’s answer to Frank Sinatra going to make yet another comeback to frontline politics?

Tice, the party’s leader, told us he is “very confident” Farage, its honorary president, will take on a bigger role but said Farage was “still assessing that.” Tice described the former Ukip and Brexit Party leader as “the master of political timing”. Which I think we can translate as: Farage will continue with his slow dance of the 70 veils before announcing that, despite enjoying a nicer life as a GB News presenter, he has been reluctantly dragged back into the political fray for another last hurrah.

Pull the other one: the lure of an election, and a Conservative Party on the ropes over legal and illegal migration, was always going to tempt Farage back. My guess is that he won’t stand for parliament for an eighth time after seven bruising defeats, but he will probably head Reform’s election campaign.

Today, Tice gave a “categoric” assurance his party would not stand aside for the Tories “under any circumstances” and would definitely contest every seat in England, Scotland and Wales. That is bad news for Rishi Sunak: in 2019, Farage stood down his Brexit Party candidates in the 317 seats the Tories were defending, helping Boris Johnson achieve his thumping majority of 80.

The Tories are again spooked by the ghost of Farage. They have begun to warn their disaffected supporters that a vote for Reform would let in Labour by the back door. Tice tried to counter this argument by turning his fire on Labour: his message was that Labour, by joining the Tories in supporting mass immigration, had betrayed the working class and that a Labour government would mean “Starmergeddon.” (Oh dear). This “catastrophic cocktail” would include “economic incompetence,” an attack on Britain’s cultural values and taking it closer to a sclerotic EU.

True, this might appeal to disillusioned 2019 Tory voters who agree with Tice that Sunak’s party has “broken Britain” and who are worried about immigration. But Reform cannot escape the fundamental flaw in its pitch: a vote for it makes what it calls “Starmergeddon” more likely. The disaster would be for the Tories, not the country.

In 2019, Farage’s party had the power to damage both the Tories and Labour. But a lot has changed: Brexit has been “done” and voters, while wanting to know more about Keir Starmer, do know he is “not Jeremy Corbyn.” (Just in case, Starmer will repeat the message in his new year speech tomorrow). This, coupled with Starmer’s reassuring noises on the economy, make it much harder for the Tories to portray him as another left-wing bogeyman.

So Sunak finds himself in the position all Tory leaders strive to avoid: in danger of being outflanked on his right. Reform is running at about 9 per cent in the opinion polls and the inevitable, if delayed, return of Farage could add another five points to its rating.

While Reform would be unlikely to win any Commons seats under our archaic first-past-the-post system, it could easily draw enough votes away from the Tories to deny them victory in about 30 marginal seats. Reform won’t end up with any MPs but has the capacity to cost the Tories 30 seats by taking votes away from them. (In the recent by-elections in Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth, the number of votes cast for Reform was greater than Labour’s majority).

So, Sunak faces an agonising dilemma. If he tacks to the right to counter the Reform threat – for example, with a Tory manifesto pledge for a referendum on whether to leave the European Convention on Human Rights – he will alienate more liberal-minded potential Tory supporters, boosting the prospects of Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the blue wall in the south.

But if Sunak stays where he is in the centre ground and ignores a Reform threat enhanced by Farage’s return, then he will haemorrhage further votes on the right, allowing Labour to win more key marginals.

Which way will Sunak jump? He’ll probably stick to the centre for now, if only to limit losses if the polls remain bleak; the red wall might already be lost, but some senior Tories believe they could avoid a landslide defeat by retaining blue wall seats.

However, we can’t rule out a panicky lurch to the right when the election comes. Sunak has changed tack before, throwing his strategy overboard last autumn to present himself as the “change candidate” before dumping that approach about five minutes later.

How Sunak handles the nightmarish dilemma posed by Reform will have big implications for an election which I think will prove much tighter than the polls currently suggest.

And if today’s Farage-related farce is anything to reckon with, he’s not the only one...