“This week Nigel Farage promised a revolution with Reform winning the next election... Here’s why he could be right...”. The headline on Andrew Neil’s December 7th Daily Mail column sums up what’s proving, like it or not, a remarkable media roll for the Reform leader.
No great Farage lover himself, Neil wrote: “Nigel Farage this week won ‘Newcomer of The Year’ at The Spectator’s prestigious Parliamentarian of the Year awards, Westminster’s version of the Oscars. The Reform party leader, of course, is no newcomer. He’s been a seminal Marmite figure in British politics these past 15 years, How the audience, dominated by Westminster’s Labour-Tory establishment and its media camp followers, chortled. Until Farage made it clear he expects to have the last laugh. “I’ve got a bit of a shock for you”, he said, while collecting his trophy. “If you think that I and four other newcomer Reform MPs were a shock, I’m very sorry. At the next election in 2029 or before, there will be hundreds of newcomers under the Reform UK label. We are about to witness a political revolution the likes of which we have not seen since Labour after the First World War. Politics is about to change in the most astonishing way. Newcomers will win the next election.”
Reflected Neil, the veteran political broadcaster and ex Sunday Times editor and, until recently, Spectator magazine chairman, “Farage returned to his seat in silence. He has few friends among this sort of audience. But it wasn’t so much a silent protest as a stunned silence. It had dawned on the room that he might well be right.”
Comparing Farage’s prospects to his friend Donald Trump’s overwhelming election victory, Neil continued: “The omens are propitious for Reform, not so much for Labour or the Tories. When even the denizens of the Westminster village can see the writing on the wall, as they did at that fancy awards ceremony, it’s time to take the prospects for Reform seriously.”
While the ‘Newcomer’ award tag can be put down to a touch of characteristic tongue-in-cheek mischief from the Spectator’s new editor Michael Gove and the magazine’s wealthy new proprietor and major GB News investor, Sir Paul Marshall, other news developments served to reinforce the Neil warning and gift Farage morale boosting print and broadcast headlines. Contrasting with the largely negative ones for the prime minister and new Tory leader Kemi Badenoch. Including:
- Opinion polls putting Reform at over 20% and ahead of Labour and virtually level with the Tories. With Farage’s personal ratings ahead of both Starmer and Badenoch.
- Former Tory minister Andrea Jenkyns defecting to Reform in a carefully staged media event.
- Conservative Home website founder, former Boris Johnson adviser and Times columnist Tim Montgomerie defecting to Reform after 30 years as a loyal, high-profile Tory.
- Rael Braverman, businessman husband of former home secretary, and onetime leadership contender Suella Braverman, announcing he had ditched Tories for Reform and — hey ho — being conveniently spotted by the media out canvassing in Hertfordshire. Inevitably, media rumours were rife that Suella would do likewise, but she told The Times and The Independent: “It’s not true. I am not defecting. My husband and I have a healthy respect for each other’s independence — he doesn’t tell me how to do my job, and I don’t tell him how to pick a political party.” For what it’s worth, I don’t know many in either the Reform or Tory parties who expect her non-defector status to last very long into 2025.
- The Farage defection coup continued on Tuesday this week when major Tory donor Nick Candy, one of Britain’s richest men, made a headline-grabbing swich to Reform UK where he is now treasurer and set to become the party’s fundraiser-in-chief , tasked with recruiting wealthy friends and contacts to the cause. Candy, known to be friends with Donald Trump and Boris Johnson as well as Farage. Candy’s famous wife, the Australian actress and singer Holly Valance, had already joined Reform.
Predictably news of Nick Candy’s defection — a major blow to the Tories — emerged on GB News, where of course Farage is its main star, on Monday evening before being picked up by Tuesday’s national titles and broadcast outlets. To maximise media publicity Farage and Candy staged a major lunch in London with other potential backers on Tuesday.
Musk’s money
Fuelling the fundraising fire has been The Times report that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who bankrolled much of Trump’s presidential campaign, plans to donate up to £80m to Farage’s Reform party. It’s a report the X and Tesla tycoon has half-denied while, along with Trump himself, making it clear via social media their ambition to see Nigel Farage as Britain’s prime minister. For his part, Musk has been bigging up via his X platform the parliamentary petition started by a right-wing UK pub landlord demanding a general election that has reached nearly 3 million signatures in record time. But how many could be the disruptive work of Russian bots is open to question.
That said, Labour and many Tory MPs, as well as The Guardian and Byline Times among liberal media voices, are alarmed enough by the ‘Musk Factor’ to be stepping up pressure on the prime minister to forge ahead with legislation that would prevent foreign plutocrats, such as the X-owner, from making huge political donations via UK branches of their global empires, to influence the outcome of our elections.
To add to Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch’s concerns, and Farage’s delight, Britain’s top psephologist Professor Sir John Curtice told GB News that Reform is capitalising rapidly on public unrest with both their parties. While not going as far as forecasting Farage as PM, our best-known pollster depicted Sir Keir Starmer as a leader unable to tell the public a ‘compelling story’ — in contrast to Farage. (*A declaration of interest here: I am a left of centre commentator who quite often appears on Farage’s GB News, usually disagreeing with him. But I also recognise he is a skilled broadcaster and charismatic politician and undeniably one of the most significant political figures of his generation. While I certainly wouldn’t want to see him as prime minister, would I bet heavily against it happening? No. Not in these turbulent political times when even Labour’s lopsided landslide majority could be wiped out in 2029. The one area where Farage and I do have a degree of agreement is one also shared by the LibDems, the Greens and a number of Labour MPs. Namely that Britain’s first pass the post electoral system could be approaching its sell by date. In a book I co-authored on this year’s general election, I forecast that by the next one, the issue of electoral reform and proportional representation could figure prominently with the public.)
The Curtice analysis was reflected independently by the Guardian’s Labour supporting columnist Jonathan Freedland in his own December 7th column under the headline: ‘We can’t afford to see Starmer fail. Farage is lying in wait’... Freedland grimly warned: “If this Labour government goes down, what comes next will be Faragism, either as nationalist populism Reform-UK Conservative hybrid or neat and undiluted. The task that confronts Starmer and Rachel Reeves is that they not only have to make things better, they have to make voters feel better. One part of that is communication, telling a story that frames what people see and how they see it. Here, the record is, so far at least, alarmingly bad.” (Regular readers of this column will recall how I have lamented the communications ineptitude of this Labour administration compared to the surefooted expertise of the Campbell / Mandelson / Blair era at its most effective.)
Farage vs Morgan
But, amid Farage’s good news run of luck, there is one more thing he and his team are hoping for. The first exclusive post victory UK Big Interview with Trump. It’s the behind-the-scenes question titillating the broadcast media world. It also sparked an i newspaper November 30th article by its media correspondent Adam Sherwin headlined, ‘Piers Morgan battles Nigel Farage for first UK Donald Trump interview’.
Asked if he had persuaded Trump to appear on his YouTube ‘Piers Morgan Uncensored’ channel, the rarely modest presenter teased ‘Watch This Space’. Certainly, Piers has busily been ingratiating himself again with Trump after The Donald walked out of a 2022 interview when Morgan rejected the defeated president’s denial of losing to Joe Biden. Now Morgan is singing Trump’s praises on any media platform that will have him. He told the i newspaper he’d had several phone chats with Trump since his re-election. No doubt he’s also hoping that Rupert Murdoch who has himself rebuilt bridges to Trump and who part finances Morgan’s channel will have a supportive word in the president-elect’s ear.
Perhaps wisely, Nigel Farage is being more circumspect rather than boasting or teasing about his chances. But it’s worth noting that Farage secured a major Trump interview during the election campaign itself and it was Farage who was invited to Trump’s triumphant election victory gathering at Mar-a-Lago and Farage who Trump called on to take a public bow for his unwavering support.
As one senior GB News figure put it to me: “Nigel deserves to beat Piers. The difference is that unlike Morgan he’s supported Trump through thick and thin and that hopefully counts for a lot. But there’s no deal signed and everything else is just media speculation.”
According to Adam Sherwin’s article, the BBC, ITV and Channel4 have ruled themselves out for being too ‘liberal’ for the Trump camp’s liking. Maybe. Maybe not. A well-placed source whispers to me that Elon Musk is urging his bosom pal the president-elect to consider a ‘confrontational’ first UK interview with the BBC on the basis it would have the greatest impact in the UK and globally than doing it with Farage while also using the interview to talk up the Reform leader as Britain’s PM-in-waiting.
Interestingly enough, Andrew Neil’s Daily Mail take on things was echoed by a very senior former Conservative Cabinet minister I lunched with this week (No, it wasn’t Michael Gove). The ex-minister in question despises Farage but told me: “Unless Kemi Badenoch ups her game, I really can see the pressure for a Conservative / Reform merger, or at the very least, an electoral pact, becoming irresistible. And if that happens it’s hard to see anyone but Nigel Farage emerging as leader.” He suggested that private Conservative party membership polling reflects that, and so does much of the Conservative Home website reader traffic.
Musk machinations apart, if indeed Farage can seal that big interview deal, it would put the icing on the cake of his current political / media run of luck. So much so he might well celebrate by swapping his traditional pint of British bitter for a bottle of French champagne. Even if for PR purposes he does that off camera for once.
