Farage, anti-immigrant icon, could change Britain’s Conservative course

At first, Nigel Farage remained calm. When protesters disrupted an election victory speech by Mr. Farage, Britain’s veteran political disrupter, anti-immigrant activist and ally of former President Donald J. Trump, he ignored them.

But as the chaos at Friday’s press conference continued, Farage began to back down, drowning out critics by shouting “boring!” into the microphone no fewer than nine times.

With Mr Farage around, things are rarely dull, as Britain’s centre-right Conservative Party has recently discovered to its cost.

After 14 years of power, the Conservatives have collapsed in their worst defeat in modern history, a stunning loss that has left the remnants of the party in disarray. By contrast, Mr Farage’s small insurgent party, Reform UK, has been on a roll, elevating him to a central figure in determining the future of Britain’s political right — and perhaps the country’s overall direction.

His presence on the political stage and his tough, anti-immigration rhetoric could have a crucial impact on the course of the Conservatives. The party’s leader, former prime minister Rishi Sunak, said on Friday he would step down once a successor was chosen.

Not only did Reform candidates win five seats in parliament — including Mr. Farage, for the first time in eight attempts — but the party also won about 14 percent of the vote nationwide. By that measure, Reform was the third most successful party in Britain, drawing comparisons with France’s rising right-wing Rassemblement National party.

“Reform has a basis to pose a serious challenge not just to the Conservatives but to Keir Starmer and the Labour Party,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent, referring to Britain’s new Labour prime minister. “The question is: can Nigel Farage build an organisation and a party structure and a professional operation that is able to deliver what he has historically struggled to do with his previous parties?”

Bombastic, pugilistic and charismatic, Mr Farage, 60, is a polarising figure who has long been an irritant to the Conservative Party, which he left in 1992. During that time, he and his allies have been frequently dismissed and ridiculed – including once by David Cameron, a former leader who called supporters of the UK Independence Party, or UKIP, which Mr Farage then led ““fruitcakes, lunatics and closet racists.”

But it was pressure from UKIP that forced Cameron to promise a referendum on Brexit, which he lost in 2016, ending his time in Downing Street.

Mr Farage had recently retired from politics, deciding at the last minute to run in the general election. But his impact was electric, his anti-immigration campaign striking a chord with the Conservatives, whose government has presided over a tripling of legal migration since Britain left the European Union.

“He has that common touch,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “He’s a consummate political communicator and has a charisma that many more mainstream politicians — because they’re dealing with real issues rather than imagined ones — find hard to match.”

Some right-wing Conservatives are keen to have Mr Farage back in their party. Others fear he will alienate their moderate voters.

He suggested that Reform could oust the Conservatives and even engineer a takeover of the party.

But without doing so, he has already proven himself to be a threat.

In 2019, the Brexit Party, then led by Farage, decided not to run candidates against many Conservative lawmakers, avoiding the risk of splitting the right vote and helping Boris Johnson, a former prime minister, to a landslide victory.

Last week, Mr Farage’s new party fought elections across the country, costing the Tories dozens of seats. Professor Goodwin calculated that in around 180 constituencies the vote for reform was bigger than the margin of defeat for the Conservatives.

“They have problems on several sides,” said Professor Goodwin, who noted that the Conservatives had lost votes to Labour and the centrist Liberal Democrats, “but Farage is by far the biggest problem facing the Conservatives.”

The party now faces an important decision: who should lead the party and what policies should it embrace?

One faction wants a shift to the right to fight reforms that wiped out the Conservative vote in Brexit-supporting areas of the north and midlands in the general election, often easing Labour’s path to victory. Professor Goodwin argued that post-Brexit support for the Conservative Party is now more concentrated among voters who are more socially conservative and hostile to Europe.

But the Tories also lost votes to Labour and the small, pro-European and centrist Liberal Democrats, who won 72 seats by concentrating their campaign in Conservative constituencies in the more socially liberal south of England.

“The Conservatives have lost this election on two fronts, but they seem to be far more concerned about one than the other,” Professor Bale said. Conservatives appear to be blaming Reform for their defeat, he said, while ignoring the fact that the right-wing policies they promised to counter the threat from Mr Farage had cost them votes in the political centre.

The ultimate choice of who becomes the leader of the Conservative Party is made by party members who tend to be older and more right-wing than the average Briton. “It is hard to imagine that a more moderate Conservative would be elected by a membership that is so ideologically and demographically unrepresentative of the average voter,” said Professor Bale.

To further complicate matters for the moderates, the pool of credible candidates was reduced when Penny Mordaunt, a senior minister, lost her seat at the election, making her unable to run.

That boosted the prospects of right-wing candidates including Priti Patel, a former home secretary; Kemi Badenoch, a former economy and trade secretary; and Suella Braverman, another former home secretary. Some of her rhetoric echoes that of Mr Farage, and she has described the arrival of asylum seekers in small boats on Britain’s south coast as an “invasion”.

Some Conservatives hope that the scandal-prone but charismatic Mr Johnson – who did not run in the election – could eventually return to combat the threat of reform.

The candidate most open to inviting Mr Farage into the Conservative ranks is Ms Braverman, and analysts rate her chances of becoming leader as slim. Most of her rivals are wary of Mr Farage, feeling he may be well placed to overshadow them.

“I don’t think we’ll see a Conservative Party dealing with Farage for a long time to come; he just doesn’t believe in the Conservative Party,” said Professor Goodwin.

Speaking before the election, Mr Farage told The New York Times that he “really can’t see that the Conservative Party as we know it is in any way fit for purpose: Brexit has highlighted the divisions between the two very clear wings.” Asked if he could rejoin the party, Mr Farage said: “That’s not going to happen.”

If that is true, it will largely depend on whether he can transform the emerging Reform UK, which has only a basic infrastructure, into a party capable of challenging the next general election, which must be held no later than 2029.

That he can do so is far from certain. Reform has done significantly worse than UKIP in local elections, suggesting that its activist base is fragmented and demonstrating that it is what Professor Bale calls an “AstroTurf party, rather than a grassroots party.”

Racist and homophobic comments from some Reform campaigners and candidates have sparked outrage, highlighting the effort it takes to screen key supporters.

And Mr Farage, as leader of Reform, has difficulty delegating or sharing the spotlight. He also has a reputation for feuding with colleagues.

Mr Farage “clearly finds it very difficult to tolerate any form of opposition or alternative direction for the party, as proposed by anyone else,” Professor Bale said.

“He’s the ultimate one-man band.”