{"id":296360,"date":"2025-07-27T16:59:24","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T16:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/296360\/"},"modified":"2025-07-27T16:59:24","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T16:59:24","slug":"populist-nigel-farage-has-stolen-the-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/296360\/","title":{"rendered":"Populist Nigel Farage has stolen the lead"},"content":{"rendered":"

One long-time Tory donor whom I know \u2013 a prosperous landowner; master of his local hunt, no less \u2013 told me in London recently that if Reform came up with a serious economic policy, he\u2019d probably switch. There are many like him: bred-in-the-bone Conservatives, in mortal fear of Labour\u2019s punitive property taxes and desperate that it not win a second term. When the denizens of the gentlemen\u2019s clubs of St James\u2019s are prepared to hold their noses and throw their support behind Farage, the Tories are in even deeper trouble than their disastrous election result suggests.<\/p>\n

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Meanwhile, disillusionment with Starmer is causing fragmentation on the left. It erupted with the recent resignation of a Labour backbencher, Zarah Sultana, to form a new socialist party<\/a> with the former leader Jeremy Corbyn. The new party \u2013 \u201cYour Party\u201d \u2013 was launched last Thursday. Its manifesto demands \u201ca mass redistribution of wealth and power\u201d, promising \u201ca new kind of political party \u2026 rooted in communities, trade unions and social movements\u201d. One of its main causes will be \u201cthe genocide in Gaza\u201d.<\/p>\n

Corbyn hopes to splinter the left as Farage has shattered the right. He still commands a big following on the far left, mesmerised by his aura as a socialist prophet. The unapologetic antisemitism within the Labour Party under his leadership makes him popular among large sections of the Muslim community \u2013 until now a key Labour constituency. Opinion polls suggest a new party to Labour\u2019s left could take 10 per cent off its vote (which, in Britain\u2019s first-past-the-post system, would not come back as preferences).<\/p>\n

A fortnight ago, after a backbench revolt by 47 MPs forced Starmer to abandon cuts to welfare entitlements, he withdrew the Labour whip from the ringleaders (which means exclusion from the parliamentary party). This brisk discipline against four political nobodies \u2013 \u201cputting a bit of stick about\u201d as the House of Cards villain Francis Urquhart would have said \u2013 raised few eyebrows.<\/p>\n

But then, the following day, Starmer shocked the political world by withdrawing the whip from Diane Abbott. Abbott is a major figure in the Labour Party with a huge following among its activists: the first black woman elected to parliament (in 1987) and now the Mother of the House of Commons, former shadow home secretary, comrade-in-arms of Corbyn and beloved icon of the British left.<\/p>\n

Starmer\u2019s decision to sack her was as horrifying to the party faithful as was Boris Johnson\u2019s decision in 2019 to withdraw the Tory whip from Winston Churchill \u2013 grandson and namesake of the great man. Abbott is hardly a Churchill, but she too has a powerful iconography: for years, she has been Labour\u2019s highest-profile black politician and an important role model for women in a male-dominated party. (Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is also a black woman \u2013 the party\u2019s second consecutive leader from an ethnic minority and the fourth woman. Labour is only ever led by white men.) It remains to be seen whether Abbott will join forces with Corbyn.<\/p>\n

The next UK election is years away. But at the moment, despair among Conservatives and the left\u2019s disillusionment with Starmer are making the prospect of any party holding a majority in the next parliament look increasingly unlikely. The only beneficiary will be Nigel Farage.<\/p>\n

George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK, and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is a professor at the ANU\u2019s National Security College.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One long-time Tory donor whom I know \u2013 a prosperous landowner; master of his local hunt, no less…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-296360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114926266841364572","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296360","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=296360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}