Nigel Farage likes to project an image of a man who knows how to have fun, who is more often found at a bar than at a desk, and of someone who doesn’t take life too seriously. This is probably the least sincere thing about the Reform UK leader, though; because, for all the pints on show, he works harder than many mainstream politicians.
He had his first overseas break in three years back in May – but since then has not been away. And so he has been capitalising on the fact that government ministers – who are totally exhausted – have gone quiet for a few weeks. While they’ve been trying to rest and remember what their families look like, Farage has been hammering home Reform’s message on asylum hotels and deportations. It’s working.
Labour knows it has to tackle Reform’s popularity – currently polling eight points ahead of the governing party – and talks about it constantly. But ministers still haven’t really worked out how to make an effective rebuttal of Farage’s proposals. Do they attack them as unworkable and absurdly expensive? Do they even engage on that level, or accuse Reform of wanting the UK to “fail”, as Nick Thomas-Symonds did this week? Or, do they end up inching towards some of Reform’s policies anyway, even if they would never admit to doing this?
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It would be much easier to attack Farage if Labour offered a sense that it knows what it’s doing and is managing to get a grip on the migrant crisis. The Prime Minister himself does not project confidence on the issue: he has spent the past few months wondering out loud whether he should have read out a line about Britain turning into an “island of strangers” in one of his own speeches. It underlined that Keir Starmer doesn’t really know what he thinks his party’s policies should be, and that he is only able to acknowledge that there is a huge political problem, but go no further in tackling it.
Even the progress Starmer and his colleagues have been pointing to on small boats is in danger of collapse as a result of the political turmoil in France. Earlier this year, ministers hailed a “gamechanger” deal agreed with the French government which would allow the country’s police to intercept boats in the sea.
This change, which was set to be implemented this summer, would be delayed if, as is expected, the French government loses a confidence vote on 8 September. It is a matter even further out of the control of Starmer’s Government than the migrant crisis, and the chances are pretty slim of ministers persuading a new administration in Paris to make a deal on boats a priority.
The impact of this deal not delivering will be to make it seem even more that politicians have no grip at all on the system. Voters have grown used to ignoring promises from all mainstream figures on immigration. They might reasonably have expected an actual deal – something much more concrete than a mere pledge made in a speech – to happen, but even that appears to be evaporating.
They won’t be particularly pleased to have managed this, but the Tories have contributed to Labour’s troubles on this topic. If both parties have failed to answer the question of how to stop the boats, then Reform is much better able to dismiss any proposals that seem moderate and considered as just being the same tinkering that’s led to so many boats landing, and so much noise about asylum accommodation.
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Farage himself pointed out this week that journalists at his press conference were asking him detailed questions about policy, saying: “What I notice is there is very little pushback from the media against the idea that we really are in very, very big trouble in this country.” He wants to suggest that this shift has come because Reform is now so much more professional and credible.
But it is also because both Conservatives and Labour have now offered ample evidence to the electorate that they really don’t know how to deal with the migrant crisis in a way that goes beyond big speeches and eye-catching proposals.
When things appear this out of control, and mainstream politicians look this out of their depth, it is easy to make the argument for a radical approach to a crisis. It’s not just Farage who is doing this: senior figures such as Jack Straw and David Blunkett, successive home secretaries under Tony Blair, have made suggestions on “decoupling” from the European Convention on Human Rights, showing how far the conversation has moved over the past few months.
Labour has an instinctive fear of questioning big international institutions, but its voters don’t. Until it is able to think in the way those voters do, it will always find itself following Farage, rather than setting the agenda as the Government.
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