Nigel Farage was triumphant. Exultant. He had occupied Lincolnshire, crashed his tanks through Staffordshire, seized the beaches and landing grounds of Kent. As we woke, the Labour party surrendered in Runcorn, losing the seat by just six votes. But as the day went on, the gain of another MP looked trivial next to the council wipeouts: Reform wasn’t just taking seats here and there but control of entire councils.
If the news was bad for Keir Starmer’s party — and not even the prime minister tried to pretend that it wasn’t — it was apocalyptic for Kemi Badenoch’s. Four years ago the Tories won 61 seats in Kent. This time the party wasn’t even in second place. “We’ve supplanted the Conservative party!” Farage crowed to broadcasters, his Mr Toad smile wider than ever. Asked about a deal with them, he couldn’t see the point: “The Conservative Party’s done. It’s got no future.”
It was a triumph for whatever it is that Farage is promising. And what was that? Answers floated past here and there: no more working from home; no more money spent on climate change. Maybe Twitter really is Britain. Certainly Twitter’s owner is back in favour, after a couple of months in which Farage has tried to suggest that he’s not as much of an Elon Musk fan as all that. “Every county needs a DOGE!” he declared, prompting the vision of hundreds of pimply teenagers randomly shutting down care homes and libraries because they don’t see the point of books.
Richard Tice, the man the BBC calls when it can’t get Farage, offered his own list of modern ills: Diversity Equity and Inclusion officers — does Kent have many of these? — and ergonomic chairs. It was put to him that council funding problems had rather more to do with the growing cost of caring for the elderly. “You have to provide those services by law,” Tice agreed. “That doesn’t mean they’re providing them cost-effectively.” Perhaps the grannies of Lancashire can be persuaded to sleep in bunk beds.
The prime minister made a brief appearance. He could, he told us, point out that governments always do badly in local elections, but he wasn’t going to do that, even though it was true that they did and we should all keep it in mind when looking at the results. Instead, he had accepted the message of the public, which was that “we need to go further and we need to go faster on the change that people want to see”, whatever it is.
The Great Leader, it turns out, is wise and just
Of Badenoch there was no sign. Just after lunch, a message was posted on her Twitter account. “I’m determined to win back the trust of the public,” it said. We waited for a follow-up assuring us that her captors were treating her well.
In her absence, her colleagues did their best. “We’re very grounded,” Priti Patel announced. She meant they were in touch with reality, but her follow-up comment — “My party’s totally grounded” — is true in other ways, too. Alex Burghart denied that the Tories had been supplanted by Reform. “We’ve got 121 MPs, we are the opposition!” he declared, a fairly pathetic boast from any perspective.
Farage meanwhile was holding a series of victory rallies. It was, he told an audience in Durham, “the beginning of the end of the Conservative Party.” He went on. “If you vote Conservative, you get Labour. If you vote Reform, you get … ” he paused. “REFORM!” the crowd shouted.
But what had people voted for? Andrea Jenkyns, the new mayor of Lincolnshire, tried to explain. “We can start rebuilding Britain,” she said. Would it be rude to ask why it needs rebuilding, and whether any of the blame lies with the Conservative government of which she was, quite recently, an enthusiastic supporter? “Inch by inch, Reform will reset Britain to its glorious past,” she went on. What does this mean? Are we going to take back India?
In the end, a vote for Reform seems to be a vote against immigration, and a vote in favour of Farage. Although this isn’t the correct form of address for him. Sarah Pochin, the new Runcorn MP, began the day paying tribute to her “Great Leader Nigel”.
Jenkyns took the line up. “I take my hat off to Our Great Leader Nigel,” she said. “I know one day he will make a magnificent prime minister.” Just three years ago, she was shouting abuse at crowds in Whitehall for celebrating the downfall of Boris Johnson. Like Farage, Johnson was for popular things and against unpopular things (at least until he became one himself). Does Jenkyns still think he was a magnificent prime minister, too, or is the Great Leader Nigel one whose shoelaces Boris was not fit to untie?
Tim Montgomerie, another Johnson enthusiast who has transferred his affections, popped up on the radio to assure us that the Great Leader will now take his party to a new stage of seriousness, putting its previous squabbles behind us. The Great Leader, it turns out, is wise and just. “He is willing to listen and understand,” Montgomerie assured us. How fortunate we are to live in the age of the Great Leader!
