Over the past few months, as Reform surged to a double-digit lead in the opinion polls and triumphed in the local elections, Westminster has reverberated with the same angst-ridden question: ‘Could Nigel Farage really become prime minister?’
Today they received their answer. Not only could Nigel Farage become prime minister in a few years time, but for all practical political purposes, he already is.
In a heavily trailed speech, Farage threw down the gauntlet to Keir Starmer. He should reverse the winter fuel cuts. He should abolish the two-child benefit cap. He should close the asylum hotels and get to grips with the immigration crisis.
Or that was the plan. The only problem was Sir Keir had pre-emptively snatched the gauntlet from his hand, and started manically beating himself around the head with it.
In anticipation of the Reform leader’s assault on his left flank, Starmer had already hurriedly announced the cuts to winter fuel would be reviewed. On this morning’s television round, his Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson was dispatched to declare that lifting of the two-child cap was now ‘on the table’.
Both interventions followed Sir Keir’s extraordinary speech this month in which he claimed immigration to Britain was in danger of creating ‘an island of strangers’.
People have long marvelled – and recoiled at – Nigel Farage’s ability to shape the national mood. But he is no longer simply setting the political narrative. He is now directly and actively dictating the policy of the Government.
Last week I spoke to a member of the Cabinet, who openly told me: ‘We’re going to need to shut down the asylum hotels. Farage is killing us on it.’ Fearful ministers are now pleading ‘how high?’ before Reform’s leader has even shouted ‘jump!’
Not only could Nigel Farage become prime minister in a few years time, but for all practical political purposes he already is, Dan Hodges writes
And on one level Sir Keir deserves credit for that. Following his initial tone-deaf response to his party’s local election shellacking, in which he pledged to go ‘further and faster’ with his existing strategy, the (titular) Prime Minister has started to respond – and recognised Farage’s claim that Reform has become ‘the party of working people’ represents no idle boast.
But the manner in which Sir Keir is now attempting to dance to Farage’s tune is in danger of seeing him and his Government waltzing off a cliff. Not least because of the panic-stricken manner he’s shredding his entire economic, fiscal and political strategy in a desperate effort to become more popular than the Godfather of British populism.
Even up until yesterday, Labour’s main charge against Farage was that he was a cynical opportunist, who would throw around any uncosted policy in order to curry favour. ‘His Reform manifesto included billions of pounds worth of unfunded spending pledges’, stormed Labour Chairman Ellie Reeves.
But her Government is literally doing the same. U-turning on winter fuel would cost an estimated £1.5billion, the two-child benefit cap an additional £3.5billion.
Yet Sir Keir and his colleagues are openly reacting to the Reform threat by floating these policies without the slightest idea of how they’ll be paid for.
Perhaps aware of that, Ellie Reeves opened up a secondary line of attack, branding Farage ‘a privately-educated stockbroker and career politician’. Setting aside the fact that Reeves is herself a former chairman of the Oxford University Labour Club, chairman of Labour Students, former member of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee, former London Labour vice-chairman, former trade union lawyer, current Minister without Portfolio, sister of Chancellor Rachel Reeves and wife of Labour Peer Lord Cryer, it’s unclear why she believes a stockbroker should naturally be more out of touch with working people than the Knight of the Realm and international human rights lawyer who currently leads her own party.
The reality is this low-grade character assassination is indicative of Starmer’s inability to mount an authentic challenge to the Farage insurgency.
In his speech Reform’s leader levelled his own critique at Sir Keir: ‘It is clear to me that this man doesn’t believe in anything. You would have thought there was a plan, you would have thought there was a passion for what they would do in government. We see that lack of any political thought, with the daily veering off left and right.’
The difficulty for Starmer is not only does this indictment resonate, it’s one I’ve personally heard echoed by a succession of his own ministers and backbenchers.
Sir Keir will not defeat Nigel Farage by sending Lord Alli out shopping for a Barbour jacket and Burberry baseball cap. Instead he must set out a clear vision for addressing the concerns of the working Britain, articulate it with consistency and sincerity, then back it up with action and hard results.
If he can’t, it’s only a matter of time before the man who is Britain’s effective prime minister is officially handed the role.
