As much as many people would like to rid politics of Nigel Farage, and though a string of political events have gone against the leader of Reform, he still has several things in his favour – alas.
His decision to quietly pocket £5m from a cryptocurrency magnate who makes his home in Thailand, and his unfortunate failure to declare it to the parliamentary authorities, has knocked the Reform leader off course. Left wing pundits have been predicting his imminent demise for some time, but now they have been joined by the likes of Piers Morgan and Dan Hodges.
“It’s an unconditional gift. I could spend it on Ferraris if I want,” he said recently, having previously insisted that it was donated to pay for his security. Farage accepts that he might be sanctioned by parliament for failing to declare the money, but he could not be less repentant. These things don’t matter to him.
The idea of a politician being so enriched might usually send the Daily Mail into paroxysms of fury, but its censoriousness is put on hold for Farage. Just a week ago, there was a photo of a beaming Farage above a column he had written. It began with what is undeniably true: “Ten years ago this week, the Brexit vote delivered an earthquake in Westminster… You can still feel the shockwaves of that seismic moment reverberating in our country today.”
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Farage was the chief instigator of that devastating earthquake, which the majority of the British public now regret, not, largely, for ideological reasons but because of the actual costs it has inflicted on them. But Farage doesn’t. He continues to rail against any attempt to take the UK closer to the EU.
The Mail itself is just as unrepentant. Alongside his column was an editorial headlined “No Bregrets”. Even when it comes to the devastation caused by Brexit, Farage still has his media supporters.
Some had hoped that Reform’s failure to deliver on its bullish predictions in the Makerfield by-election might mark at least the beginning of the end of that support. Farage has confessed to being “disappointed” with the outcome, in which Andy Burnham beat the sexist Reform candidate by 20 points. Farage had been hoping for a tight contest, and publicly backed Robert Kenyon even when it seemed clear that he was a loser.
The emergence of Restore UK, the extremely nasty party led by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe, and now favoured by the increasingly nasty Elon Musk, attracted some right wingers. But, while nearly 7% of the vote went to Restore, the Reform vote was still three points ahead of its showing in the 2024 general election. That was despite fielding a completely hopeless candidate.
Kenyon was never likely to appeal to most Farage fans. He could have been AI’s effort to create the antithesis of Farage. Only in his refusal to apologise, in his case for outrageous sexist comments he had made in the past, did he bear a resemblance to the leader.
Kenyon was just the latest Reform candidate in the party’s chequered personnel history. Only last year, the former leader of Reform in Wales, Nathan Gill, was found guilty of accepting bribes to argue in favour of Russia during his time in the European Parliament. Gill is now serving 10 and a half years in jail, but the scandal seems to have left Farage unscathed.
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Entirely unfazed by this association between his party and extracurricular money-making activities, Farage now spends most of his time not in parliament but endorsing a bullion business to the extent that his earnings hit almost £1m last year, making him now the highest-earning MP. But even this seems to have passed most of his supporters by.
This “Teflon” coat is why we cannot write him off – or Reform. Makerfield was, in any case, a very special case even among the special cases which by-elections tend to be. Widespread discontent, irrationally manifesting as an extraordinary hatred of Keir Starmer, led to a strong vote in favour of the man highly likely to push him out of No 10.
Labour’s vote was up 10 points on the general election of two years ago and while some of that increase might have been a vote against Reform, it is far more likely that it was simply directed at getting Starmer out.
Reform, and now Restore, draw their support from the disaffected, and those people are not all in Burnham’s beloved north. If, by the time of the next election, those in desperately deprived parts of Cornwall, or Wales, for instance, feel that their plight has been ignored, their discontent will only be exacerbated. And Farage will still be around to capitalise on it.
