Reform had a stunning success last week, winning control of ten local authorities, the Greater Lincolnshire mayoralty, and gaining another MP in Runcorn. They took 677 council seats, 41% of those being contested and with 31% of votes cast, were well ahead of all the other parties. The Tories were on 23%, the LibDems 17%. Labour took just 14%. Some polling appeared to show nearly half of Reform voters did so to ‘send a message’ to the government. Sir John Curtice seems to disagree with that analysis. Now comes the real test, can they govern? The “fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists” are now in charge of some sizeable budgets and we’ll soon see how that works out. Reform UK’s victories finally got the seeds of their own destruction firmly planted.
The BBC did one of its usual 'vox pops' in Lincolnshire where Farage did particularly well, winning the council from the Tories as well as the mayoralty (they also won the mayoralty in Hull and East Yorkshire). A reporter spoke to people in Cleethorpes, one of Britain's long-suffering and largely forgotten communities.
Two interviews stood out for me. One woman said Farage's adverts popped up on her Facebook feed 'all the time.' I wonder what the messages were all about? I bet if you lived in Lincolnshire and were a university graduate or in a professional and managerial job, you wouldn't see Reform's ads at all. According to Professor Curtice, you were least likely to vote for Brexit in 2016 and Reform is still finding it just as difficult to do well in places where you and your colleagues are most numerous.
Manipulating the gullible with targeted political ads is the way they work,
Another woman thought the biggest issue facing her at the moment was - wait for it - the "boat people." I am pretty certain no boat people seeking a better life in this country have ever rocked up on any beaches in Cleethorpe, or anywhere nearby either. How is it that a sentient human being on planet Earth right now can believe less than 50,000, mainly poor wretches fleeing violence, can arrive in a population of 67 million (about 0.07%) and be the biggest problem?
We have a lunatic in the White House launching a full-blown global trade war and a hot war being fought on European soil, to say nothing of climate change and serious environmental issues. It makes no sense, unless you have been relentlessly targeted over weeks and months with a lot of pernicious advertising.
This post on Bluesky struck me as being bang on:
The Times letter it refers to asks how the man who created the boat problem and who repeatedly assured voters in 2016 that Brexit would allow us to take back control of our borders, has managed to persuade voters to support him. A good question, eh?
Before Brexit, we could send asylum seekers arriving in small boats back to France under the terms of the Dublin agreement. It was hardly a problem. There were just 9 incidents in 2016. Last year the number had risen to nearly 37,000 all thanks to Nigel Farage.
There is no problem known to mankind that has a Farage-shaped hole in it. Those who believe the opposite, who voted for him and his party last week will be among the first to find out this simple truth.
Amidst all of this let us not forget that the Brexit referendum was Cameron's plan to outflank Reform's predecessor UKIP. Since then the Tory party has essentially become the party that was UKIP fifteen years ago, having absorbed the extremist agenda. Meanwhile, to maintain a differential UKIP (now rebranded as Reform) has moved further to the right.
Farage openly admires Putin and worships Donald Trump. He wants to see a DOGE-like department to cut wasteful spending. He will now have a chance to do that. We'll see how it works out in Staffordshire or Nottingham for his supporters who wanted to protest about Labour cutting the Winter Fuel Allowance of Personal Independence Payments.
His answer to the small boats problem is to deploy the Navy in the English Channel as if repelling an Armada, something that he admits would require us to quit the European Court of Human Rights. He would revel in doing just that. Would it solve the problem? No.
Farage is a dangerous demagogue but he will soon be shown up for what he is.
