{"id":199139,"date":"2025-06-20T06:16:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T06:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/199139\/"},"modified":"2025-06-20T06:16:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T06:16:15","slug":"what-exactly-are-nigel-farages-plans-for-northern-ireland-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/199139\/","title":{"rendered":"What exactly are Nigel Farage\u2019s plans for Northern Ireland? \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news that Reform is considering organising in Northern Ireland didn\u2019t come as much of a surprise to me.<\/p>\n

I think Nigel Farage would like to be the first UK party leader to have members elected in Westminster along with the Scottish parliament and the Welsh and NI assemblies.<\/p>\n

If nothing else it would send a message that Reform genuinely was a national party.<\/p>\n

Fair enough, the Conservatives field candidates here, but my cat, dead for three years, has a better chance of victory. And Labour doesn\u2019t even bother fielding, much to the annoyance of its own fully paid-up members here. <\/p>\n

\"Newton<\/a>\"Alex<\/a><\/p>\n

But as with anything to do with Reform, matters are much more complicated than may first appear.<\/p>\n


\n\"Join
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

The party did agree a Memorandum of Understanding with the TUV in March 2024 and Jim Allister said the two parties would announce agreed candidates in the general election.<\/p>\n

That turned out to be the high point of the relationship, because Farage (who wasn\u2019t leader at the time) endorsed Ian Paisley and Sammy Wilson<\/a>, but none of the other TUV candidates.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Reform said on Tuesday that the agreement with the TUV had ended last year and it was currently not aligned with any other party in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

Ben Habib, the party\u2019s former deputy leader and one of the key Reform figures behind the memorandum, has since left the party. He has advised unionists to trust his old party \u201cat your peril\u2026 Farage stuck a knife in the back of the TUV and is also on the record saying the north would inevitably unite with the Republic and Mary Lou McDonald is someone with whom he would share a platform \u2013 both views repugnant to a unionist\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"ReformReform UK\u2019s Ben Habib and TUV leader Jim Allister attempted to form a pact for the 2024 general election, only for Nigel Farage to endorse DUP candidates (David Young\/PA) <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not Farage\u2019s first attempt to gain an electoral foothold in local politics. As a former leader of UKIP, he had approved the formation of an NI branch, and the UUP MLA David McNarry, who had had disciplinary problems with his party, defected to it in October 2012.<\/p>\n

He delivered a higher profile for the branch, helping it to win a few councillors in the 2014 local government elections, as well as 24,584 votes in that year\u2019s Euro election. A handful of unionist councillors, from the DUP, UUP and TUV, defected to UKIP over the next couple of years. <\/p>\n

In an interview with Farage in July 2013, when he was in Belfast to address the AGM of the local branch, I asked him if UKIP would fight every election here and what its unique selling point would be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think non-sectarian politics has a place; or at least I think it should have a place; I\u2019d like to see it have a place. That\u2019s consistent with our thinking\u2026 I think there is a gap in the market for us,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

I also asked him about a possible electoral relationship\/pact with the TUV: <\/p>\n

\u201cI think that whilst UKIP and the TUV would have quite strong agreement on the European question, I also think that on many of the other issues the divide may be too great.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s difficult, but I also think it\u2019s not up to me to intervene too much myself.\u201d (Perhaps he was still thinking that when he more or less ignored the Reform\/TUV electoral arrangement in July 2024).<\/p>\n

\"DavidDavid McNarry (right), pictured with then Ukip party leader Nigel Farage <\/p>\n

Anyway, in October 2021 the formal relationship with the NI branch and the main party disintegrated when local members accused it of \u2018silence\u2019 on the issue of the NI Protocol.<\/p>\n

One of those members told me that the party had gone down the \u201cConservative route\u2026 promising to have our backs in Northern Ireland but never going the extra mile in terms of support\u201d. <\/p>\n

I never had the impression \u2013 and I interviewed him another couple of times after 2013 \u2013 that Farage wanted to get too deep into NI politics.<\/p>\n

New-generation English nationalism was always his priority and I\u2019m fairly sure he was aware that his core electoral base had no particular interest in defending Northern Ireland\u2019s position within the UK<\/p>\n

That said, Reform also says it is \u201cgauging the interest in NI \u2013 the hows, whens and wheres of setting up. We\u2019re exploring the areas we\u2019d be strongest in. It\u2019s all at a very early stage\u201d. <\/p>\n

Former members of UKIP in NI got burned by Farage. The TUV got burned by Farage. How badly burned could NI unionism plc get if Reform does field candidates in supposedly \u2018safe\u2019 seats where the TUV, DUP and UUP might also be standing?<\/p>\n

Which unionist party would even be prepared for tentative talks with him, considering how many former friends and colleagues seem to have been left in his wake?<\/p>\n

At this point, though, the rumours could either be intended to rattle unionism here, or be no more than a cosmetic exercise to keep local Reform members quiet.<\/p>\n

As ever with Farage, you can never be entirely sure what he\u2019s up to. Which suits him very nicely, thank you. <\/p>\n

If you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article and would like to submit a Letter to the Editor<\/a> to be considered for publication, please click here<\/a>Letters to the Editor are invited on any subject. They should be authenticated with a full name, address and a daytime telephone number. Pen names are not allowed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The news that Reform is considering organising in Northern Ireland didn\u2019t come as much of a surprise to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[14235,80644,1144,285,80645,80646,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-199139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-election","9":"tag-general-election-campaign-2024-pa2024","10":"tag-northern-ireland","11":"tag-politics","12":"tag-reppic","13":"tag-tuv","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114714233332895434","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}