{"id":71947,"date":"2025-05-03T19:35:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-03T19:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/71947\/"},"modified":"2025-05-03T19:35:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T19:35:12","slug":"how-nigel-farage-keeps-bouncing-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/71947\/","title":{"rendered":"how Nigel Farage keeps bouncing back"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barely a year ago, Nigel Farage appeared willing to stay on the sidelines of British politics. \u201cDo I want to be an MP? Do I want to spend every Friday for the next five years in Clacton?\u201d the former Brexit campaigner mused. <\/p>\n

Soon after, he announced that he would not stand in the UK general election because he was too busy helping Donald Trump win the US presidency.<\/p>\n

But Farage, as so often, reversed course. He ended up winning the seat of Clacton in Essex in 2024. The astonishing performance of his Reform UK party in Thursday\u2019s local elections<\/a> now suggests that he may go further \u2014 ending up as Britain\u2019s leader of the opposition or even prime minister. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"On the campaign trail: Nigel Farage greets voters in a fish and chip shop in Ramsgate \u00a9 AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

No other modern British politician can match Farage\u2019s knack for regeneration. While other Trump allies, such as Canada\u2019s Pierre Poilievre<\/a> and Australia\u2019s Peter Dutton<\/a>, have been undone by their closeness to the US president, Farage is thriving. A heavy smoker and drinker with a penchant for three-bottle lunches, the 61-year old is somehow the great survivor.<\/p>\n

Fifteen years ago this week, Farage nearly died in a plane crash, when the tail of a light aircraft he was using for a campaign stunt became wrapped up in a UK Independence party banner that it was pulling. The accident left him in severe pain for years.<\/p>\n

Politically, Farage survived various internal battles and attempts by six Conservative leaders to destroy him. Yet, even as Ukip\u2019s cause gained ground, the former metals trader was frustrated by \u201chaving to deal with low-grade people every day\u201d and the impossibility of making decent money.<\/p>\n

He retired from party politics on several occasions, including after the Brexit referendum in 2016 (\u201cI want my life back\u201d) and again in 2021 when Britain officially left the EU (\u201cIt\u2019s over\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009I\u2019ve achieved the one thing I set out to do: to achieve the independence of the UK.\u201d)<\/p>\n

He found new vehicles: after leaving Ukip, he set up the Brexit party, then Reform. Recently, he shrugged off a call from Elon Musk to replace him as Reform leader, and won an internal battle with one of its other MPs, Rupert Lowe. He has also withstood fallout from his support for Trump, who is deeply unpopular in Britain.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Farage\u2019s electoral career would have been truly over had the Conservative party wooed him after the Brexit referendum. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest political mistake made by the establishment in the last 20 years was not to give him a peerage in 2016,\u201d said Gawain Towler, a former adviser to Farage. <\/p>\n

\"\"Nigel Farage has suffered severe pain since a plane crash in 2010 \u00a9 Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cHe couldn\u2019t have set up the Brexit party if he was in the House of Lords\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009Because of their own spite and short-sightedness, they left him free. Oh boy, do they regret it now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farage\u2019s resilience owes something to national circumstances, something to his opponents and something to his own gifts.<\/p>\n

He has an ability to speak directly and engagingly, sometimes with blokeish humour<\/a>. He often manages to look like he is having fun. At a victory rally in Kent on Friday, he joked about whether, given Reform\u2019s previous lack of female candidates, he had a woman problem: \u201cI\u2019ve been having that problem all my life!\u201d <\/p>\n

His charisma has been particularly notable since the departure from front-line politics of Boris Johnson, the former Tory prime minister, and, to a lesser extent, Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, who both had the ability to draw crowds. Neither Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, nor Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch have Farage\u2019s ease in front of the camera. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s very, very lucky in his opponents,\u201d said Towler. In the 2024 election, \u201cpart of the reason we did so well is that the press were so thankful they had something fun to write about, instead of [Rishi] Sunak versus Starmer\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sluggish growth and rising immigration have broadened the audience for Farage\u2019s radical message. His estrangement from the Tory party (of which he was a member under Margaret Thatcher) has allowed him to evade blame for the chaotic reality of Brexit. <\/p>\n

One paradox of Britain\u2019s party system today is that a large majority of voters say that Brexit was a mistake, but Farage\u2019s pro-Brexit Reform leads the polls.<\/p>\n

The changing media environment also benefits the fringes. For years, Farage\u2019s critics bemoaned the attention paid to him by the BBC. But he now has other outlets: he is a primetime presenter on GB News, the upstart news channel that reaches 3mn viewers a month, and has a strong presence on TikTok, where his videos on immigration and grooming gangs can rack up more than 300,000 views.<\/p>\n

\"\"With Donald Trump during his first presidential campaign in 2016 \u00a9 AP<\/p>\n

After years of trying, Farage seems to have reconciled his political and financial ambitions. Since his election last July, he has declared \u00a3864,000 in payments for outside work \u2014 including \u00a3331,400 for presenting on GB News and \u00a3280,500 for promoting a gold dealing company.<\/p>\n

Moderate politicians have found it difficult to portray Farage as an out-of-touch Thatcherite. With the fallout from Brexit and Trump, such critics at least have new material. Starmer has mocked Farage for travelling to the US so often that he should show up \u201con the immigration statistics\u201d. <\/p>\n

In the past, Farage has been alive to the risks of international allies. He did not, for instance, sit with France\u2019s far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the European parliament.<\/p>\n

His current strategy is to disagree with Trump on foreign policy issues, such as Ukraine, but to embrace the domestic agenda, which may resonate with angry British voters. \u201cLet\u2019s have a British Doge!\u201d he told Friday\u2019s rally, referring to Musk\u2019s cost-cutting team.<\/p>\n

His rhetoric remains divisive. Recently he criticised politicians for celebrating Muslim festivals, but not Easter: \u201cNo one seems to want to stand up and say this is a Christian holiday. Well, I\u2019m saying it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"Speaking in the House of Commons. Much of his political momentum has been built away from Westminster \u00a9 House of Commons\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

He remains among the most unpopular British politicians overall: 27 per cent of voters have a favourable opinion of him, and 65 per cent unfavourable, according to pollsters YouGov. <\/p>\n

If the results of Thursday\u2019s elections were extrapolated nationwide, Reform would have won about 30 per cent of the vote, compared with Labour on 20 per cent, the Liberal Democrats on 17, Conservatives on 15 and Greens on 11, the BBC projected.\u00a0At that level of support, the first-past-the-post voting system that has historically held Farage back could propel him into power. <\/p>\n

Farage is a year younger than Starmer and a year older than Boris Johnson. If the next election were held in mid-2029, the latest possible date, Farage would be 65. <\/p>\n

Should he win, he would be the oldest incoming prime minister since Winston Churchill in 1951. He would also have been a member of the Westminster parliament for a shorter period than any prime minister in recent times. It would all be highly improbable \u2014 just like many other parts of Farage\u2019s CV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barely a year ago, Nigel Farage appeared willing to stay on the sidelines of British politics. \u201cDo I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-71947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114445584080730676","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71947","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=71947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}