When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions. The one solid benefit of the unexpectedly early election seemed to be that it had caught Reform UK on the hop. Nigel Farage was focused on Donald Trump’s campaign – and, in an uncharacteristically clumsy slip, he said so.
Whether that gain justified the rush of last-minute retirements, the rapid-fire policy announcements, the lack of an Autumn statement that might have scrapped inheritance tax, the failure to have concluded trade negotiations with India, and the rows over candidate selection is another matter. But it did, at least, look like an unequivocal boon.
Not any more. Farage’s entry into the race was all the more dramatic because of the delay. Instead of getting lost in the noise of the first week, Reform effectively had a campaign launch all to itself. The prospect that Faragiste voters, concerned about Starmer’s fondness for open borders, might back the Tories for fear of wasting their vote, has receded.
Farage, perhaps more than any other campaigner, grasps how utterly politics has been changed by the spread of smartphones. As our attention-spans have dwindled, we have come to place a higher premium on immediacy and entertainment.
No one cares that Reform’s new leader was ruling himself out as recently as a week ago. Voters neither expect nor reward consistency. Reform was launched as an anti-lockdown party, and a large part of its shtick is to complain about the tax rises and price rises that were an inescapable consequence of the closures.
Does anyone care that, in March 2020, Farage was berating Boris Johnson for being too liberal and demanding that we close our airports? Of course not. Farage has followed the same trajectory as most voters, first clamouring for a stricter lockdown and then complaining about its effects.
Rishi Sunak could hardly be more different. Clever, diligent, and private, he has no gift for oratory. Throughout his time in Downing Street, he has maintained a touchingly naïve belief that being on top of the fine print matters, and that hard work will be rewarded. That, though, is no longer how politics works.
Perhaps the supreme exemplar of how things have changed is Trump. According to the old rules, he could never have become a serious contender. He was a narcissist, brazenly judging people and policies by whether they favoured him personally. He told puerile lies, on everything from how big his inauguration crowds were to whether he had paid off a porn star. He insulted fallen servicemen. He disputed the basis of American democracy itself.
Again and again, pundits and politicians would write him off. This time, they would say, he really has gone too far; this time, not even he can get away with it. Yet here he is, the Republican presidential nominee for the third time, ahead in the polls.
Farage has watched all this up close. He has seen Trump break things and move on, keeping his supporters amused and his enemies unsettled. He has observed that voters don’t mind politicians who talk about themselves, that they enjoy the soap opera. He has noticed, too, that what under the old rules would have come across as authoritarianism is now seen as refreshing strength of purpose.
Above all, he has spotted that no one much cares about detail. In our TikTok age, people vote for candidates who make them harrumph in agreement. Trump did not, in any meaningful sense, build his wall. But he is still the guy to vote for if your issue is immigration.
Immigration goes to the heart of the difference between the Conservatives and Reform – but not in the way that is sometimes supposed. The difference between them does not turn on the desirability of mass immigration. You won’t find a single Tory who thinks that it is OK for people to arrive illegally in Britain by sea.
No, the difference has to do with whether you must deal with the practicalities of office. The whole of Europe is wrestling with an epochal movement of peoples, a Völkerwanderung. You would not think so from the headlines, but that problem is far more serious on the Continent than in Britain, where migration fell by ten per cent last year, partly as a result of unprecedentedly severe laws.
The adoption and operation of those laws divides the Conservatives from Labour and the Liberal Democrats, who opposed them at every stage. Likewise the Rwanda scheme, which Sir Keir Starmer has promised to scrap on taking office – even as many EU countries move towards their own versions of it.
But none of this matters to a party that has no prospect of office. Reform has the luxury of offering slogans rather than solutions. Why can’t you just sort it out? You just don’t get it!
Reform says it would stop the Channel crossings by deploying the Royal Navy to turn dinghies around at sea. Johnson explored that option, but was told emphatically by admirals that doing so would be both impractical and illegal. A party in office needs to pay attention to things like that.
Like Trump, Farage is fortunate in his enemies. Hysterical left-wing attacks on the former president have pushed conservatives, who don’t much care for the man, into backing him on tribal grounds; politicised lawfare even more so.
Farage is similarly boosted; not just by milkshake-throwing idiots, but by sneering interviewers. A hurled milkshake might bring a measure of sympathy. But what solidifies that sympathy is the journalists who treat the episode as a lark, but who would be demanding jail sentences if the same thing happened to, say, Diane Abbott.
Reform says the other parties are indistinguishable. That is not the view of, say, the Spanish government, which is upping its demands over Gibraltar in anticipation of a Labour victory.
Nor of the public-sector unions waiting for big pay rises. Nor of the DEI consultants, nervous in the face Esther McVey’s cull. Nor of the EU, slavering at the prospects of Labour agreeing to follow its rules unilaterally.
Nor, indeed, of the people smugglers, who see Rwanda as a threat to their business model. We shall find out soon enough who is right.