Nigel Farage doesn’t waste any time when limelight is at stake.
At 11.44am on Friday, just seven minutes after news began to filter through that British deputy prime minister Angela Rayner had quit, the Reform UK leader made an unscheduled entrance to his party’s annual conference. He wasn’t about to let Rayner soak up the media’s attention.
Reform was holding its jamboree at the NEC in Birmingham, where Farage wasn’t due to speak until 4.10pm. Shortly before noon, there was a frisson down the back of the main hall. A scrum of frenzied photographers, stressed security guards and star-struck hangers-on rolled by towards the arena. Farage, beaming like a cream-filled cat, was entombed in its core as it moved along.
Two women tried to take photographs of him as this mini-circus swept by The Irish Times. They were aged perhaps in their mid-60s, but cooed at Farage like teenagers.
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“He’s like a rock star,” said one in a faint voice. A bewildered Westminster lobby journalist nearby rolled his eyes. “He is,” sighed the other woman. The NEC was very much the cathedral of the converted, all 6,000 of them.
Farage’s main arena speech was brought forward by three hours to shortly after 1pm, to capitalise on the news about Rayner and ensure his speech and reaction to her exit would be shoehorned into television coverage.
He was introduced to the stage by the Lincolnshire mayor and excitable former Tory Andrea Jenkyns. She was dressed in a sparkly romper suit, like a walking, shrieking disco ball.
“I joined because of you Nigel,” shouted Jenkyns a little too loud for the microphone and the momentarily stunned crowd. It gave the moment an added dash of zaniness. “You will save Britain!” She urged the audience to chant with her: “Reform will save Britain, Nigel will be prime minister!”
The latter prospect was once deemed unthinkable in UK politics. But six months after the party topped polls for the first time, Reform is now entrenched as the most popular party in Britain, on roughly the same 34 per cent of the vote that won Keir Starmer an election landslide last July.
Farage, riding a wave of anti-immigration sentiment and disquiet with the old order, is now the bookies’ clear favourite to be the next prime minister, despite leading a party with just four MPs.
Labour is being squeezed between Reform on its right and a resurgent Green Party and Gaza-supporting independents on its left, soon to be joined by a new party co-led by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Whoever ends up as the eventual loser, Farage looks to be the winner so far.
Can this disruptive and, to many, divisive politician who was once on the fringes of British politics really win control of the bastions of power?
In Birmingham, Farage certainly seemed to think so. He now expects an election two years early in 2027, due to the turmoil engulfing Labour.
“Folks, it’s happening,” he announced from the stage. “We are the party on the rise. Think 2027 – we must be ready for that moment.”
This year’s Reform conference was a physical manifestation of its evolution towards a party with putative designs on power. Last year’s conference at the same venue was restricted to a ring of stalls around the main arena. Apart from Farage, the bars were the main event 12 months ago – they served beer in two-pint cups from 10am. It was more of a rally than a conference.
This year the event was different. The bars were scaled back. There was a focus on political debates, with establishment think tanks such as the Institute for Government hosting talks on how Reform could move “from protest to power” – Gawain Towler, a Farage ally for decades who was last week elected to the party’s governing board, held court on its progression.
There was even a nascent, vaguely corporate feel to this year’s Reform conference, encapsulated in the presence of a Heathrow business lounge, a staple at Labour and Tory party conferences.
Farage’s claim that Reform is now the real party of the right was buttressed on Thursday night when Nadine Dorries, the former Tory minister and acolyte of Boris Johnson, defected to Reform. “The Tory party is dead,” she said. Farage brought her on to the NEC stage on Friday in a flash of pyrotechnics.
Her closeness to Johnson made it unlikely she made the switch without his input. If so, it is a departure from the former prime minister’s past insistence that in his day, the best strategy for dealing with Farage was to ignore him.
What might a Farage-led Reform cabinet look like? Zia Yusuf, the party’s former chairman and now its most high-profile figure after its leader, suggested this week that Reform, were it to win power, would look to appoint much of the cabinet from outside its MP ranks.
Reform’s apparent plan to appoint business people and scientific experts to a UK cabinet could be engineered via a slew of appointments to the House of Lords, allowing them to serve in government.
Yusuf told British media this week that Farage had already lined up appointments, although the party would keep them secret until shortly before the next election: “Some of these people are household names ... this is galactic-level talent that we’d be very proud to have serving our country.”
Privately, Reform officials have also been touting a five-point plan for the party’s push for government. The first step is to assemble the cabinet of supposed big hitters. Alongside this, there would be a parade of high-profile defectors.
The third step is to draft operational plans for its manifesto pledges, such as its recent promise to deport 600,000 illegal migrants and staunch the flow of asylum seekers. Fourth, it would draft ready-to-go legislation that it could seek to pass as soon as it enters government.
Finally, Farage believes Reform needs a plan to circumvent what any frustration of his plans by the embedded Whitehall civil service: he wants to circumvent “the blob”.
Events of recent weeks suggest Reform may be well advanced on the first three steps of its plan.
Reform may not have it all its own way if it wins power. Britain’s economy is in a morass and the cost of servicing its record national debt is spiralling. A prime minister Farage may find empty coffers.
The Irish Times this week visited the new Reform-linked think tank, the Centre for a Better Britain. It is led by Jonathan Brown, Reform’s former chief operating officer. He warned a sovereign debt crisis could soon engulf the UK and the issue will be the subject of the think tank’s first paper.
Would a Reform and Farage-led government risk unpopularity by implementing austerity?
“Reform is evolving in its policy platform,” said Brown. “Nobody wants to campaign on cuts. But there needs to be – dare I say it – an elite consensus on this issue.”
A senior Reform figure privately told The Irish Times that Farage is indeed prepared to talk about fiscal discipline, even if his expensive political promises so far suggest otherwise.
Back at the NEC, the hearty welcome for Farage among the faithful continued. Herbert Crossman, who said he wants to run for Reform as a councillor in Suffolk, drew an amused crowd as he did impressions of a hapless Starmer while wearing a mask of the Labour leader.
Did Crossman believe Farage would make a good prime minister? Of course he did: “He’s the man of the people. He knows what the people want.”
Dubliner Paul MacDonnell, the party’s branch chairman in the Somerset constituency of Wells and Mendip Hills, pointed to a recent evolution in the party’s make-up under Farage.
“I think things are beginning to crystallise now. There are a lot of middle-class people moving over to Reform now. It’s not just a bunch of guys from Essex with tattoos, as some would have you believe.”
Meanwhile, Farage couldn’t resist more of the precious NEC limelight. Even though he had his surprise turn earlier on Friday, the word was that he would do yet another stage slot on Saturday.
If he wins the next race to Downing Street, he will have Britain’s biggest political stage of all.
