BITE SIZE: Reform's Achilles heel has been spotted by Labour

The insurgent party - and especially its leader Nigel Farage - has got the mood music around healthcare provision and funding all wrong

Photo by Matthew Waring on Unsplash

THE leadership of Reform UK has spent the last few months feeling nervous about the impact of ultra-hardline rhetoric on immigration.

The party high-ups have a view that they have already “bagged” the migration-sceptic vote, given the terrible records in office of Labour and the Tories, and that drifting into ever more alarmist language on the subject will prevent the insurgent party from cracking the 30 per cent opinion poll barrier.

This was certainly an important contributory factor in the schism with Rupert Lowe, who had started to turn his guns on the party machine for not coming out with stronger and more worked-through plans on immigration control and deportations.

And yet, scour the big, frontbench names of Labour and the Conservatives as I might, I cannot find any major figure close to the leaderships who decided to attack Reform for being “racist” or “extremist” on immigration matters.

This suggest to me that the collective leaderships of both major parties understand that popping up on the airwaves to complain Reform is too tough on foreigners would be a suicidal strategy, reminding voters of their own betrayals.

Now, it does not follow from this that there is zero risk of Reform scaring off some potential voters by talking about “remigration” or Enoch Powell being right etc. It is not only the other political parties that help create the climate of opinion and determine the positioning of the Overton Window of acceptable views. The media also plays a huge role in this, with the BBC retaining a massively dominant market share in the UK.

Nigel Farage is surely correct if he thinks that for him to start emphasising plans for mass deportations of people already in the country would see him pilloried by dominant left broadcasters as a bigot, extremist of fascist.

And yet, Farage seems far more relaxed about venturing into territory that his Labour opponents in particular view as a major weak point for him. On healthcare policy, Nigel goes into interviews in expansive, talking-off-the-top-of-the-head mode.

The last exchange I heard him have with Nick Robinson of the BBC, just last week, saw him suggesting that people “who can afford it” should pay an insurance top-up for their treatment. Yet Farage had no definition of what he meant by people who could afford it and no detailed parallel insurance scheme to unveil. Why should someone who is just moderately well off after a lifetime of hard graft be expected to cover their own healthcare costs when neighbours who have never worked will continue to get it all free? And while voters may instinctively trust Farage to get a grip on excessive immigration, given his political record, how many will instinctively trust him with the future of British healthcare?

I would have thought the classic target Reform voter – an older, blue collar person living in a red wall seat, who has paid his national insurance stamps for decades, would be in the vanguard of those opposing such a “co-payment” system.

So it comes as no surprise to see Labour Health Secretary Wes Streeting hone in on healthcare for a strongly-worded attack on Farage.

“Fancy forking out over £20k for a hip replacement? Being asked for your credit card details as a deposit in A&E? Me neither. Nigel Farage is a threat to the NHS. Insurance premiums might be OK for Mr Moneybags, but it’s not the Labour way or the NHS way,” said Streeting.

The Labour party itself has reinforced the attack with a post on X declaring: “Farage and his mates want to make you pay for healthcare. It’s as simple as that. A vote for Reform will just embolden him to go further.”

Committed Reform supporters may well roll their eyes as this and claim it is all