THE BIG READ: Nigel Farage has been throwing haymakers all campaign but now he has been jolted by a heavy punch.
The Reform party leader can close out a truly remarkable election performance by getting back to his core winning messages on immigration, tax and energy prices
WHEN Rishi Sunak called the election, the Tories were averaging a terrible 23 per cent in the polls. Labour was averaging 44 per cent. Reform was averaging 11 per cent. The Liberal Democrats were averaging 10 per cent.
I took these figures from the BBC Poll Tracker, but unsurprisingly all the poll aggregator sites show a similar picture.
Fast-forward a month and the averages right now are as follows: Labour 40 per cent (-4), Conservatives 20 per cent (-3), Reform 17 per cent (+6), Lib Dems 11 per cent (+1).
So do tell me, who has “won” the general election campaign thus far? I put it to you that there is only one credible answer: Nigel Farage has easily had the best of the first month of campaigning. If Farage and his party can keep an upward trend rolling on in the last week or so and turn out their vote on the day, then Reform is going to win at least a handful of parliamentary seats and possibly more than a dozen.
But these are both big “ifs”. For Farage has finally caught a crab, to use a rowing analogy, by sticking his oar into the choppy waters of public attitudes towards Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin thug whose chemical attack in Salisbury killed a British citizen (oh and by the way he also invaded the sovereign neighbouring country of Ukraine).
Might there be something in what Farage said about the West’s geo-politics involving the eastwards expansion of NATO and the EU having “provoked” Putin? I think provoked is the wrong word – pretext, which Farage also used, would be less rash - but yes of course there is a thoughtful case that can be made. But why make it when its popularity with the British public is uncertain at best and very probably trends heavily negative?
Especially when so many other Farage talking points and policies – on net zero, taxation, law and order and in particular immigration – have been scoring bullseyes with the public?
In other words, after a run of sensational hits Nigel has finally served up a booby and given the establishment hope that it can put the lid on the rise of Reform by polling day. Now not every shot can be a winner (tennis analogy now) and we don’t know whether potential Reform voters are much motivated by foreign policy anyway. But when a champion hits one out while trying something different, the best response is to revert immediately to the previous winning game plan. Farage did this over the weekend by getting back on to the issues of legal and illegal immigration.
But he has also doubled down on the Putin issue by arguing in an interview with ITV News that the West should be opening peace talks with him because the war in Ukraine is in a stalemate that is killing horrific numbers on both sides. This to me smacks of the Donald Trump outlook – Trump has said he will do a deal with Putin to end the war if he is re-elected. That may be what happens in the end, but right now in a UK political context it keeps a talking point which is probably not doing Reform much good at the top of the news.
The other “if” I raised – if Reform can turn its potential vote out on the day – is probably an even bigger impediment but not one it has any discretion over. It simply does not have the resources and infrastructure to compete on level terms with the big boys here. So there hangs Reform, on the cusp of an astonishing breakthrough but not yet guaranteed to achieve it.
There are however some countervailing new positive factors that can come into play for the insurgent right-wing party. For starters, Marine Le Pen’s probable victory in
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