An unlikely source points the way to a second Brexit referendum

Reform has now led in over 150 consecutive opinion polls and its leader has revealed he made £207,000 in October, dwarfing the £7,800 he earns each month for actually doing his job and being an MP. Yet happily, it’s still not easy being Nigel Farage.

To have one close friend and colleague admit to taking Russian money to make pro-Kremlin speeches may be regarded as a misfortune. To have your schoolboy racism exposed in a national newspaper, your flagship Kent council exposed as divided and incompetent, your council tax promises in tatters and your new global affairs advisor revealed to have called you a “tinpot dictator” looks like carelessness.

It may still be Farage’s permanently open mouth that trips him up, however. His new plan to strip EU citizens living in Britain of their right to claim universal credit – and thus start a new Brexit trade war with Brussels – risks such catastrophic consequences that even Kemi Badenoch thinks it is a bad idea.

Farage refused to say whether Reform has modelled the damage this might do to the fragile UK economy, which means that he hasn’t bothered. “Make Brexit work” might be a stupid slogan, but “Make Brexit worse” is a disaster.

Yet Nigel’s habit of not thinking through the consequences of his own actions may end up helping those who oppose him. The other day, he defied the odds by saying something interesting – so interesting, in fact, that you could tell he’d not worked out what it might mean. Something that sounds even more interesting when you hear the excellent but despairing speech by former PM John Major at the London School of Economics the other night.

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Major said: “Over half of the British electorate now believe it was a mistake to leave the European Union, and less than one third now supports having done so. Among the young, support for Brexit falls as low as 13%. The trend is inexorable.

“That is why it is so disappointing that both government and opposition are so wretchedly timid in their policy ambitions, that Labour and the Tories are terrified by a residual Brexit vote…

“Much though I wish otherwise, I do not foresee an early return to full membership of the European Union… a full return to Europe is almost certainly unobtainable in any likely parliament until a younger generation of pro-European politicians comes to power, and the Brexiteer voice again retreats to the fringes”.

Ah, but what if it was a Brexiteer coming to power that resulted in a full return to Europe? At a press conference last week, Farage probably had leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (which he supports), or bringing back the death penalty (which he opposes) in mind when he said this:

“The really big electoral reform I favour, and it would need to be a high bar, but I do think that the British people, if they feel the political class are out of touch with them substantially on a major issue, should have the chance through petition to call a national referendum on a subject of their choosing.”

There could be no silver lining to this clod becoming prime minister. But wouldn’t it be the most poetic justice of all if Nigel Farage slipped into Downing Street in 2029, guaranteed a referendum by petition on the issue that the country cared most about – and then watched the silenced majority secure a vote on rejoining the EU?