Nigel Farage, the ‘F-word’ that’s tearing Westminster apart

Despite talk of cross-party pacts, Kemi Badenoch does not want to strike a deal with the Reform UK leader – nor he with her, writes Andrew Grice. But any nervousness she might feel will be shared by Labour as we near the by-elections next week

“I suspect there’s going to be a big, seismic shock in British politics,” Nigel Farage said at a party at London’s Ritz hotel to mark his 25 years in politics. That was in 2016 – five months after the initial shock of the Brexit referendum.

Farage has waited a long time for his seismic moment in party politics. It might have come at last year’s general election, when his Reform UK won 14 per cent of the vote. But it landed only five seats, and its breakthrough was eclipsed by Keir Starmer’s landslide.

Farage hopes the political tectonic plates will shift next Thursday, when Reform hopes to seize the safe Labour seat of Runcorn and Helsby in a parliamentary by-election, and make gains in council and metro mayoral elections in England. Farage’s party is ahead in the opinion polls, but now needs to translate that to the ballot box to maintain the momentum it needs like oxygen.

My other memory of the 2016 party is the display of giant photographs of Farage and Donald Trump in the golden lift in Trump Tower in New York. Farage had just visited Trump, one of the first politicians to do so since his first presidential election victory that month.

Today, Farage is less keen to play up his Trump links amid the fallout from his damaging tariffs and his stance on the Ukraine-Russia war. Indeed, rival parties tell me that Farage’s Trump links are playing badly on the doorsteps. “It is hurting him,” one senior Labour figure claimed. Pollsters have picked up the same in focus groups.

Significantly, Farage has distanced himself from the US president, saying the tariffs were “too much, too soon”, that Trump risked turning Vladimir Putin into a winner and the US peace plan for Ukraine is unacceptable.

Yet the Trump connection – and a typically explosive internal row with his exiled MP Rupert Lowe – are unlikely to stop the beaming Farage having the last laugh next Thursday. Both the Conservatives and Labour approach these elections nervously – not because they fear each other, but Farage.

He has become the F-word of British politics, as figures in both parts of the now broken duopoly fret that they “don’t know what the f*** to do” about him.

Tory losses are inevitable because the 1,600 council seats up for grabs were last contested in 2021, when Boris Johnson was enjoying his “vaccine bounce”. The Tories could easily lose half of the almost 1,000 seats they are defending. Although many might fall to the Liberal Democrats, headlines about Tory losses and Reform gains would deepen Kemi Badenoch’s woes.

The job of leader of the opposition is hard enough after a crushing election defeat. Badenoch is in an even more unenviable position: she is not even seen as the real leader of the opposition because Farage is. There is no escaping his shadow.

That was illustrated when Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, fuelled the intense Tory debate about whether the party should do a deal with the devil Farage to “unite the right”. In a leaked recording, which emerged this week, Jenrick told a student dinner last month he would “bring this coalition together” to head off the “nightmare scenario” of Keir Starmer winning a second term because of a split on the right. Although Jenrick’s allies insist he was not talking about a coalition of the two parties but their voters, the damage was done.

The timing of the leak to Sky News was convenient for Labour, coming ahead of prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, when Starmer was bound to be on the defensive over the Supreme Court ruling that the legal definition of “woman” relies on biological sex.

This is Badenoch’s signature issue and Tory MPs hailed her performance as her best at PMQs, but Starmer was able to limit the damage by quoting Jenrick’s remarks. (My theory about leaks is that the enemy is usually involved in disseminating them).

Badenoch opposes a deal with Farage. While her team played down Jenrick’s words, they made the Tories look needy and weak, and were a reminder of Badenoch’s insecure position only five months after beating Jenrick to the leadership. The ambitious, energetic Jenrick seems to be still running for it. Colleagues grumble privately that the Tory grassroots favourite is not a team player.

Bad results next Thursday will fuel the Tories’ already intense debate about whether Badenoch should lead the party into the next general election. But it’s hard to see how she can make progress while Farage sets the political agenda.

I think the Tories’ best shot would be to battle it out with Reform for leadership of the right rather than obsess about a deal, which makes it look like they have already lost.

In any case, there’s a limit to what a Con-Reform deal could achieve. Voters are not a bloc which can be directed into another party’s column; they will make up their own minds. Tory and Reform voters are different, according to pollsters More in Common. They might agree on immigration, criminal justice and gender identity, but differ on redistribution and Trump. Reform supporters are right-wing on social issues but lean left on economics.

That is why Farage declares his tanks are on Labour’s lawn, called for the nationalisation of British Steel before the government and discovered a long-standing admiration for his new brothers in arms in the trade unions (which is not reciprocated). His “economically left, socially right” pitch is similar to Johnson’s at the 2019 election, which won over the red wall in the north and Midlands now targeted by Reform.

It is one reason Farage is not interested in a Tory pact – for now, at least. He wants to replace Badenoch’s party. “The red wall feels badly let down by Boris, so why on earth would we do a deal with the Tories?” one Reform insider told me.

Labour hopes Tory losses next Thursday will overshadow its own unpopularity. But Starmer’s party can't escape Farage’s shadow either. Labour’s weakness will be exposed if Reform’s army captures Runcorn and makes inroads in the north and Midlands. That would be ominous for Starmer, whose strategists believe the red wall will decide the next general election.