It’s time for Farage to choose between a big and small state
Reform UK can’t duck the tough choices any longer, says Eliot Wilson
Some had hailed it as a symbol of a new era of politics: when Reform UK issued its manifesto for the 2024 general election, with its impressive strike rate of eight photographs of Nigel Farage in a slender 28 pages, it included a pledge to take 50 per cent of each public utility into state hands. In other words, nationalisation.
This represented quite a journey for Farage, the former City commodities trader who seemed steeped in the atmosphere of the late-1980s Square Mile. But no, you see, explained some of the more chin-stroking mavens of the commentariat, this a reflection of how public opinion has shifted: small-state free-marketeers are bringing back control, and the people have had enough of being taken for a ride by giant faceless corporations.
Last week it was reported that Reform UK is reviewing its policy platform. Part-nationalisation of utilities will be dropped, just as last November Farage told an audience at Banking Hall that his party no longer stood by its promise of £90bn in tax cuts. A Reform UK spokesman explained the changes:
“Nigel has said that the Contract with the People – the 2024 manifesto – and in particular the fiscal pledges within that, are no longer party policy.Other parties are not continually held to their previous election manifestos.”
Up to a point, this is true: manifestos are expected to reflect fundamental philosophical principles, of course, but they are also necessarily political snapshots in time, shaped by the prevailing circumstances of when the election is held. Sir Keir Starmer was not expected to face the electorate in 2024 bound by Clement Attlee’s 1951 commitments to full employment, tougher price controls, guaranteed agricultural income and compulsory Development Councils.
Equally, Reform UK is not like other parties. It is not just the fact that it was created from the cast-off forms of the Brexit Party and the UK Independence Party, or that for some time it was a limited company owned by Nigel Farage. Its rise has been astonishingly rapid: unbeaten for the lead in major opinion polls for almost a year now, Reform UK did not even break into double figures until June 2023. What it has done is skilfully exploit disenchantment with the political status quo, a sense of powerlessness, almost innumerable mistakes by the established parties and difficult economic, social, political and cultural conditions.
The politics of opposition
Farage has done this with skill. Johnny Strabler in The Wild One is asked by Mildred what he is rebelling against, and delivers the legendary answer, “Whaddya got?” Nigel Farage has taken the same approach to political opposition, positioning Reform UK as against mass immigration, against high energy and utility prices, against NHS waiting lists, against growing welfare spending, against high taxation, against unnecessary regulation, against public sector inefficiency.
The way in which Labour and the Conservatives, with walk-on appearances by the Liberal Democrats, have formed what has often resembled a circular firing squad has given Farage his opportunity to capitalise on deep unhappiness and distrust within the electorate. Anyone who has opposed something the Conservatives or the Labour Party have done has been offered tea and sympathy – or perhaps, from Farage, a pint and sympathy. Yes, runs the Reform UK playbook, this is a terrible decision or outcome. We oppose it too.
In effect, Reform UK has been able to pursue politics with the most difficult element – making difficult decisions between competing policy and spending options – neatly taken away. Farage has managed to position himself and his party as a reflection of almost anything voters want it to be. But the scrutiny which has accompanied its rise in the polls, in addition to its performance in control of 12 local authorities, has asked more penetrating questions and made the spotlight less forgiving.
As we approach the end of the second year of this parliament, Reform UK is less able to hide behind generic stances it opposes and a will-o’-the-wisp sense that as a party of common sense outsiders it will mend “broken Britain”.
The dropping of its pledge to nationalise public utilities is not a wholesale embrace of a Friedmanite free economy
The dropping of its pledge to nationalise public utilities is not a wholesale embrace of a Friedmanite free economy; Farage has said he believes “in the government having stakes in companies”, citing Rolls Royce as an example: “I wouldn’t mind the government buying a 10 per cent stake, and working with them on small nuclear reactors”. But this is old-fashioned “picking winners”, and there is no reason to believe that a Reform UK government would be any better at it than preceding administrations.
Farage and Reform will struggle to construct a coherent policy platform, because that is not how the party was created. It was constructed as a cry of frustration, of disenchantment, the vehicle of voters who didn’t like the world they saw around them. That has been shown to be a potent force. But it provides no positive unifying belief or framework, and it treats every issue as discrete, gathering together the dissatisfied on each matter.
No party, no politician can escape the warning of Pierre Mendès France to the National Assembly in 1953, as he narrowly failed to construct a government of the French Fourth Republic.
“Gouverneur, c’est choisir, si difficiles que soient les choix.”
He was right: to govern is to choose, however difficult the choices are. Reform UK has enjoyed the luxury of opposition, where choices can be ducked or deferred. But that time has run out.
Eliot Wilson is a writer and historian; senior fellow for national security at Coalition for Global Prosperity; contributing editor, Defence on the Brink