In his three decades in and around politics, Nigel Farage has been like a barometer – gauging Britain’s political climate to pick up on pressure points in the electorate. Now, he is more like the weather itself.
Although his upstart Reform UK party won just four parliamentary seats in last year’s general election, Farage, the maverick architect of Brexit, has since set the terms of Britain’s political debate, hounding the Labour government over its struggles to control illegal immigration.
Since the election, Reform has tried to refashion itself from a protest vote party to one that could govern – untried and inexperienced, but ready to step in if the Labour Party buckles under its own blunders, and the once-mighty Conservatives drift further into political irrelevance.
Reform’s ambition was on full display at its annual party conference in the city of Birmingham this weekend. Hours before Farage, the party’s leader, was set to give his keynote address Friday, news broke of more woes for Prime Minister Keir Starmer: His deputy, Angela Rayner, resigned following a scandal over her failure to pay enough property tax.
Keen to bolster Farage’s image as prime minister-in-waiting, Reform’s chairman, David Bull, shunted Farage’s speech forward by three hours, since “at a time of national crisis… we should hear from our leader.”
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