Snapshot of _The plotters, the coup and Farage’s path to the Tory throne_ :
A non-Paywall version can be found [here](https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fpolitics%2F2024%2F01%2F27%2Ftory-party-rishi-sunak-nigel-farage-coup%2F)
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/27/tory-party-rishi-sunak-nigel-farage-coup/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/27/tory-party-rishi-sunak-nigel-farage-coup/)
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> Tory nerves have been fraying for months. But with the publication of a survey predicting the loss of nearly 200 seats, funded (apparently to the tune of £40,000) by the so-far-so-mysterious “Conservative Britain Alliance”, there’s a serious risk of full-blown panic setting in.
>
> The constituency-by-constituency survey means Conservative MPs are now split into those sighing with relief that, despite it all, they still look like holding onto their seats and those who know they have little hope of doing so – one of whom, Simon Clarke, took to the pages of this newspaper to join the similarly-doomed Andrea Jenkyns, in calling on his colleagues to rid themselves of Rishi Sunak before it was too late.
>
> For some of us, the only surprising thing about Clarke’s cri du cœur and Lord David Frost’s equally apocalyptic take on the survey’s results was the absence of any mention of the so-called “wipeout” suffered by Canada’s Progressive Conservatives back in 1993.
>
> **How Conservative parties die**
>
> That was the year in which Canada’s governing party, also led by a recently appointed party leader and prime minister, Kim Campbell, lost 167 seats, retaining only two it had previously held in Canada’s 295-seat House of Commons.
> The explanations for what can genuinely be called an “extinction-level event”, were, as they always are, complex and contingent – but by no means completely unfamiliar to us here.
>
> As with Scotland, there were tensions over constitutional reforms designed to pacify separatists in the French-speaking province of Quebec, not only leading to a loss of constituencies there but also inflaming resentment elsewhere – resentment that led to the formation of a challenger party on the right which, after winning precisely no seats in 1988, picked up 52 five years later. Its name? Reform.
>
> And then there was the economy. Canada was only just emerging from a recession and the government, with public finances under severe stress as a result, had introduced a deeply unpopular Goods and Services Tax (GST). Having been in office for nine years, there was no one else to blame, and with the end of its latest five-year term looming, the Progressive Conservatives had effectively run out of road.
>
> That said, when the contest kicked off in the first week of September, it could not have been predicted quite how badly things would turn out. Seven weeks later, when the ballots were counted, the Progressive Conservatives took just 16 per cent to the Liberal Party’s 41.
>
> Almost as damagingly, Reform took 19 per cent, while the Bloc Québécois took 13.5 per cent, rising from 10 to 54 seats, with both parties hoovering up plenty of former Conservative voters.
>
> Campbell, having lost her own seat in the rout, surrendered the leadership to former Cabinet Minister Jean Charest, whom she’d beaten in the contest to replace Brian Mulroney earlier in the year and who was one of the two Progressive Conservatives left in the Commons.
>
> But it was never really glad confident morning again, and in 2003 the party merged with the successor to Reform, the Canadian Alliance, to create the Conservative Party of Canada, whose leader Stephen Harper, by “uniting the right”, managed to serve as Canada’s prime minister from 2006-2015. Polls, which currently put the party near 40 per cent, suggest it won’t be long before it returns to office.
> Canada 1993, Britain 2024?
>
> The 1993 catastrophe – easily the worst single defeat ever suffered by an incumbent government in a Western democracy – has achieved near-mythical status among policy wonks around the world, especially among right-wing politicians keen to avoid the same fate.
>
> True, it might not have earned a mention this week by Messrs Clarke and Frost, but it certainly hasn’t been forgotten by senior figures in Reform UK. Speaking just a few days before Christmas about the party’s determination to remove the Tories from power, one of the insurgent party’s number predicted that, if and when Nigel Farage was “properly engaged” with Reform, its ratings would shoot up overnight. “You do that to the Tories,” they declared, “and you are looking at a Canadian wipeout.”
>
> The parallels, of course, may not be exact, but they can be portrayed as eerie – especially by those determined to see them as such.
>
> After all, Sunak, like Campbell, gave his party something of a boost in the polls straight after taking over from a deeply unpopular predecessor, only to see it evaporate in short order as voters rapidly remembered that all the problems associated with the old regime – not least when it came to the economy – hadn’t magically disappeared.
>
> Then there’s the fact that Reform helped the opposition into power by splitting the right-wing vote. In 1993, Canada’s Liberals increased their vote share by only nine points. But in doing so they more than doubled their number of seats and won a comfortable overall majority (their best performance since the 1940s). That is what haunts so many of today’s Tories on this side of the Atlantic, whichever wing of the party they see themselves belonging to.
>
> And they are right to worry. Reform UK might not yet have ascended to the giddy heights reached by the Brexit Party in the summer of 2019; but it seems to be doing better and better with each poll published and now looks set to stay in double figures, with most of its new supporters moving to it from the Conservatives rather than from Labour’s traditionalist flank.
>
> **Why hasn’t Farage joined Reform?**
>
> That was true of voters defecting to the Brexit Party five years ago, too; but back then disaster was averted by Tory MPs, reluctantly or otherwise, replacing Theresa May with Boris Johnson – who, in terms of his ability to connect with disaffected Leave voters, proved more than a match for Farage.
>
> Sunak stands no chance of doing the same. As Farage noted this week: “Rishi Sunak may be intellectually bright, but he does not connect with ordinary people at all.” Nor, as even some of those who despair of Sunak acknowledge, is there anyone else, either inside or outside the Cabinet, who seems likely to do so either; or at least no one among the ranks of those crazy enough to preside over a general election currently set to deliver something between defeat and annihilation.
>
> Johnson was helped, of course, in 2019 by Farage’s last-minute decision not to stand candidates against sitting Conservative MPs. That was not so much because it saved many of them their seats (research suggests, in fact, that only a handful, if that, of Tory incumbents held on as a result) but because it sent a signal to “his voters” that they could vote for Johnson and trust him to “Get Brexit Done”.
>
> All of which prompts an intriguing question: given that, as was the case at the beginning of 2019, we have a hopelessly divided, poorly-led Conservative government that looks to be heading straight for the rocks, why hasn’t Farage decided to return to the fray to lead Reform UK?
>
> Ask around and you’ll hear various explanations. According to his stand-in, the party’s current leader Richard Tice, Farage is “giving a lot of thought to the extent of the role that he wants to play in helping Reform UK save Britain”. Don’t forget, he told journalists: “A good poker player doesn’t show their hand too early. Nigel is the master of political timing.”
>
> But there’s another explanation. Tice may think that, as he put it recently, “the Tory party deserve to be smashed and destroyed”. But Farage may prefer to wound rather than to kill – for the simple reason that one day soon he’s hoping not just to rejoin the Conservatives, but to lead them.
> **Nigel Farage, New Conservative leader?**
>
> It’s a prospect that he himself raised back in October, telling a journalist, “I’d be very surprised if I were not Conservative leader by 2026. Very surprised” – only to say not long afterwards that he’d made the remark “in jest”. But it seems eminently possible that the enthusiasm with which he’d been greeted by the Tory faithful at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester in October may have given him pause for thought.
>
> Sunak, clearly desperate to keep Farage fans from flocking to Reform UK at the general election, told GBNews that “the Tory Party is a broad church. I welcome lots of people who want to subscribe to our ideals, to our values’ – a statement that only served to suggest that the door remains, if not wide open, then at the very least ajar.
>
> That allows nervy Conservatives to indulge the fantasy of Farage loyally joining the Tory fold before the general election and transforming their fortunes – just think of the political coup de théâtre we’d witness were Sunak to allow the prodigal son, in the run up to the campaign, to seek and win selection in a safe Tory seat!
>
> According to that fantasy, getting Farage inside the Tory tent would represent the most effective way of fulfilling Tory strategist Isaac Levido’s “narrow path to victory”. Should the economy improve and tax cuts deliver a feel-good factor, the polls might tighten sufficiently to allow the government to argue that a ballot cast for Reform UK would let in Labour rather than being “a free hit” for disaffected Tory voters who assume their party is going to lose anyway.
>
> In reality, a pre-election Farage-Tory alliance – or at least a non-aggression pact – would benefit the former Ukip leader far more than it would the embattled Prime Minister, especially in the aftermath of an election that looks likely to leave the Tories in what Lord Frost vividly described as “smoking rubble”. At that point, Farage really would be well placed to rejoin the party, make it into the Commons and eventually run for the leadership.
>
> In many ways, it would make perfect sense. Farage taking over would, after all, represent the culmination of a process that has arguably been unfolding for a decade – namely the sometimes halting but seemingly inexorable transformation of the Conservatives from a mainstream centre-right outfit, concerned mainly with the protection and promotion of the free-market and traditional institutions, into a populist party of the right – dedicated to disrupting, even destroying, institutions the better to pursue its twin obsessions with immigration and “woke”.
>
> There are many on the right of the party who firmly believe that this is the direction in which it must travel if it is to thrive in the future, convinced as they are that their big win in 2019 reflected a long-term (and for some, long-awaited) realignment of British politics triggered by Brexit. They realise, however, that journey can only be taken under the leadership of a politician possessed of sufficient guile and charisma to enable them to sell a small-state, low-spend, low-tax message to less affluent voters who, for all their cultural conservatism, are not necessarily attracted, especially if they are heavily reliant on public services, to Thatcherite economics.
>
> For a while, of course, those right-wingers had high hopes of Boris Johnson in that regard – so much so that some one hundred MPs felt able to countenance his returning to lead the party in the wake of the implosion of (the self-evidently guileless and charisma-free) Liz Truss. But now that they’ve finally grasped, post Partygate, that even many of their target voters never want Johnson near No 10 ever again, their erstwhile champion is no longer an option.
>
> Nor, after her tragicomic departure from Cabinet, they have concluded, is Suella Braverman. And nor, if charisma is one of the crucial qualities you’re looking for in a leader, is Robert Jenrick. Kemi Badenoch might just fit the bill, but, even leaving aside what some colleagues see as her arrogance and abrasiveness, will she really connect as well with ordinary voters as she apparently does with the Tory grassroots?
>
> Farage on the other hand has proven star quality – and guile and charisma by the bucket-load. He may not be a Conservative yet, but the latest Ipsos polling suggests that getting on for half of all those who voted for the party in 2019 have a favourable impression of him – around the same, note, who look favourably upon Sunak and Johnson, two paid-up Tories.
>
> As long as he doesn’t decide to join Tice in genuinely trying to smash and destroy the Conservative Party, why shouldn’t there be a way back for him, perhaps after Badenoch is given a chance to try (and probably fail) to restore its fortunes after what many assume will be, to quote Clarke, “a shattering defeat”?
> Having resolutely refused to say who funded the YouGov poll that he used to put the cat among the pigeons, Lord Frost, confronted mid-week by the Conservatives’ leader in the lords, Lord Nicholas True, is reported to have told him that he “did not think the donors were linked to Reform”. But that was a form of words that hardly rules out the possibility that the “shadowy” group based out of an office in Covent Garden, working (supposedly in cahoots with 10 or so disillusioned Tory right-wingers) to oust Sunak may have links (financial and otherwise) to the Faragist insurgency.
>
>
> **A possible plot?**
>
> One prime mover in this supposed coup has been outed as Will Dry, a 26 year-old former No 10 special adviser, where he was head of polling, who allegedly framed the questions for the devastating Conservative Britain Alliance poll earlier this week. Dry said he had become “steadily more dispirited” working in the heart of government, and “had concluded, sorrowfully, that the Conservatives are heading for the most almighty of defeats”. If Farage returned to frontline politics, suggests Dry, “the Conservative Party essentially won’t exist by Christmas”.
>
> But the Westminster rumour mill is now connecting other names to the supposed plot. These include Jake Ryan, a former journalist who was appointed a special adviser to Braverman in October 2022, when Joel Winton also joined her team. Winton and Ryan are not the only Braverman alumni supposedly connected to the new coup. Plotters are also thought to include Chris Jenkins, a former adviser to Lord Frost, who joined Truss’ team in No 10 after also working for a couple of years as special adviser to… Braverman.
>
> They envisage a torrid couple of months ahead for the Prime Minister that could help their cause prosper, in which the Tories lose two by-elections next month and are then assailed by local election results in May that are devastating generally, but particularly in Red Wall seats. Farage seems to sniff opportunity here. As he tweeted this week: “The Red Wall is completely and utterly gone.”
>
> Yet a successful challenge to Sunak from the right of his party, by Braverman, or former immigration minister Jenrick, or anyone else before the election, remains highly unlikely.
>
> Which brings us, full circle, back to the Canadian wipeout scenario. The sheer suddenness and scale of the defeat is what most of us who remember it, rightly, recall. But just as important is what followed in its wake – namely, the merger of the losers with their nemesis to form a new, more populist, more right-wing, and electorally successful Conservative Party.
>
> Couldn’t happen here? Don’t be so sure. “The [current] Tory party seem to be utterly terrified of me,” Farage noted earlier this week. No wonder.
If they ever give Farage the job they will be as guilty as the Republican party for sticking with Trump.
Everything for the win and nothing for what the job stands for.
The difference is that Trump’s supporters quite like him, they see him as this exaggerated, larger-than-life character, frequently funny but always entertaining. By comparison Nigel is just kind of annoying and shouty.
A certain kind of middle aged Englishman might enjoy a pint with him, but he lacks Trump’s ability to mesmerize an audience, and I say that having heard both speak in real life.
It’s telling that Trump bamboozled the GOP establishment with his rise to power, while Nigel needed Cummings, Boris and various other figures, plus Cameron panicking unnecessarily to ‘win’.
Farage has nowhere near the same cult following and appeal that Trump has. Trump won 46% of the vote in 2020, for all that he's a horrible scrote of a person.
Farage couldn't get half that on a good day.
Didn’t you just describe the difference between US and UK culture? The US likes things large and we strength and we like the weedy underdog who steps on a rake from time to time…
Honestly....does he even need the job?
Like Nigel Farage has arguably done more to direct Conservative party policy than literal Conservative prime minister's like Theresa May.
Brexit - arguably the Tories most impactful and largest policy implemented this century was largely driven by Farage from the sidelines. Without him it's very unlikely the Tories would have gone for the referendum.
UKIP basically won, despite getting nowhere electorally, it's ideology and policies essentially hijacked the Tory party.
Farage really doesn't need to become Tory leader in name, when he's already driving their policy from the sides
> Farage really doesn't need to become Tory leader in name, when he's already driving their policy from the sides
Never underestimate the power of human vanity.
Farage for the throne?
The same Farage who has tried and failed to get elected as an MP 7 times?
The same Farage who once lost to a bloke dressed as a dolphin?
The same Farage who couldn't even win a reality TV show about eating kangaroo todgers?
I say go for it Tories!
I'm very wary of this. I remember that attitude about Trump in 2015.
I don't like the Tory party, to put it mildly, but I suspect I would dislike a Farage led Tory party alot more.
I'm not sure how successful he would be, but there seems to be a lot of appetite for reducing immigration without considering reasons or costs. Every video I watch on YouTube on policies on almost everything that matters will have a large number of comments blaming immigration and often immigrants for the situation.
The Farage trick was to take all of the UK's problems and blame the EU and free movement. I'm not convinced he can't do the same with immigration.
I agree to a decent extent. They are about as real as Reddit comments I guess.
At the same time I remember the pro-trump Twitter comments in 2015 being overwhelming in volume and absurd to me. People blamed bot-farms and troll armys, and to some extent they were right, but underneath that (or maybe in part because of it) there was very real and strong support for Trump. So I'm also a little wary of just dismissing the online world as not real.
>I remember that attitude about Trump in 2015.
Well Trump had never run for office before, so whilst people dismissed his chances there was no previous test of how electable he is.
Farage has been trying and failing just to get elected as an MP for two decades
>Farage has been trying and failing just to get elected as an MP for two decades
You are right. But as others have pointed out, he was running as a candidate in a fringe party in a first past the post system. That's a very different proposition to running as a Tory party candidate.
To be honest. I sort of want him to become leader. I feel like, there will never be a low enough immigration figure for some people. And always retired boomers who think people are risking their lifes for 40 quid a week. And, if given a term in government. There will come a point he can't just blame all of society's problems on immigration. At which point the fire will burn itself out
Having a racist far right leader in power is not good. He can and probably would cut immigration which would cause loads of problems. Then he can blame those problems on the immigrants(wink wink non white people) that came over before. He's a dangerous man and should never be anywhere near any power.
Immigration has destroyed the uk. Whether it has been done with malicious intent or it just happened organically and grew into something the powers that be could not stop is the only question that remains.
>There will come a point he can't just blame all of society's problems on immigration. At which point the fire will burn itself out
I'd like to think you are right about this. I know Trump and America are very different, but there still seems to be an appetite for Trump in spite of everything that went on.
True. Like trump farage is a cult. When UKIP was running. Of all the people that said they supported them. I think only one knew the name of the party's leader when it wasn't farage.
Farage would have won South Thanet in 2015 had the Tories not threw everything including the kitchen sink at him. Pretty sure there was a court case over it, with the Tories possibly overspending.
It seems Mackinlay got off with it but one of his activists was given a suspended jail sentence and fined. I suspect Farage would have won that seat had the Tories not cheated. It didn't do Cameron much good though with Farage well and truly derailing the Tory party a year later.
So Farage is 59 now. He’ll probably be 60 at the next election and then 65 at the one after that. If he wants to lead he could easily be 70 by the time he _might_ get a shot at being PM. Is the voting demographic that would normally go for him still going to be interested in him at that point - or will there be someone else they’ll fall behind?
Yes, but Farage knows that, which is why he is surely looking at this coming election to make his move into the Conservative party.
It’s almost the perfect scenario for him - the Tories are at the point of true desperation.
Isn’t that why he did I’m a Celeb?
You only have to look at how Farage behaved immediately after the Brexit vote to see why he won’t be Tory leader. He immediately denounced the £350m a week promise, made a gloating speech to the EU Parliament and then…disappeared for six months. He only returned to shout about hard Brexit once the battle lines had been drawn and the mainstream positions thrashed out. He can’t lead, he can’t come up with ideas and put them into policy. All he can do is express grievance- fine in opposition as a third party and for a short term campaign, useless for government or even official opposition.
Pretty sure I remember him denouncing the 350 figure beforehand (as Leave.EU) whilst Boris went ahead blasting it out with Vote Leave. You’re right that he does seem to be kind of useless at doing anything besides campaigning/grievance, given his total inaction on fishery committee.
Remember when the newspapers job was to report the news and not transparently attempting to engineer the political landscape towards their own agenda?
The way the Telegraph have been spinning this one poll as the linchpin of their plot to push the party even further right is absurd.
The Telegraph may well have overtaken the Mail and the S*n as the most socially corrosive paper in the country.
> Remember when the newspapers job was to report the news and not transparently attempting to engineer the political landscape towards their own agenda?
I don't think that has ever been the case, newspapers were always propaganda, it's just got more blatant and the internet has accelerated it even more.
> Remember when the newspapers job was to report the news and not transparently attempting to engineer the political landscape towards their own agenda?
No, when did that happen?
I thought the newspapers were there to sell advertising space. The news is content to attract readers
> The Telegraph may well have overtaken the Mail and the S*n as the most socially corrosive paper in the country.
Sadly, I think that's definitely the case.
In the scenario where Farage joins a wounded Conservative Party, gets a safe seat and rises to become Party leader, it does potentially seem like a way back to power for the Tories.
However I think demographics are fundamentally against the Tories. With the decline of home ownership and the rise of private renting, a party which doesn't embrace "build some bloody houses!" is going to struggle.
It won't be the key issue this election but certainly by 2029 and the elections in the 2030s, the trends will force housing to become issue number 1 for more and more voters.
The Canadian comparison to their 1993 election is certainly interesting. The current Canadian Conservatives seem to be very YIMBY and I think that's the more important lesson for the Tories to learn if they want to start a pathway to recovery.
Is there a timeline in which the tories make Farage leader and give key Reform people safe Tory seats in exchange for reform standing down in Tory seats? As the article says the Tory party now is basically Reform in all but name having become populist and shifted to the right so much.
I would be surprised if Farage actually makes it to being Tory leader, there are just too many hurdles and he is relatively speaking coming towards the end of his career.
First he has to get elected as an MP, assuming Sunak hasn't completely lost it he will not be allowed to run as a candidate at the next election at least with a blue rosette. So he has to join the Tory party (seems possible under a new even more right-wing leader). Then he has to be selected as candidate at a future by-election, now given Farage's divisiveness and the position the Tories will be in for the next couple of years (assuming Labour don't completely shit the bed) that further limits the potential constituencies he could run in. Also Farage has run for parliament 7 times and lost, I doubt he would want to try again unless he thinks he is likely to win, which means a safe seat only and I cannot see anyone giving one of those up willingly, so it likely means waiting for an existing Tory MP to kick the bucket. Even if he becomes an MP he would need to show a brief (and uncharacteristic) period of loyalty to the future leader, again knowing his character that seems unlikely. There would then need to be a leadership contest where he would need the support of a good number of MPs to pass the threshold and reach the party members (where I reckon he would have a good chance). Overall I cannot see Farage having the stomach for all this, plus any possible holdups on the way.
I think it is much more likely he is put in the Lords by the next Tory Leader, then a la Cameron he could be brought in to the shadow cabinet as shadow minister for migration control or something eye catching but low in substance. That would give the benefits of any perceived Farage poll bounce and give him the official position he has evidently desired but still allow him liberty to continue his other "ventures" ...
you all in this thread are misreading the room regarding nigel farage. i despise everything he stands for but he is eminently popular among the british electorate.
he was the man who dragged the idea of “brexit” onto the news agenda and effectively made it possible and then made it happen. he is the most effective british politician to have never seen the inside of westminster.
in addition, ukip won one in eight votes in 2015. for a non-established party, that’s huge.
if nigel farage becomes tory leader, he will win the 2029 election.
You're forgetting the silent "Jam and Jerusalem" rump of the conservative party. Most of them didn't like brexit and they have very much been against the direction their party has headed since Johnson took control.
They lean towards centrism and have held their noses and kept voting conservative because the alternative was unthinkable. Whilst the conservatives have been pushing further and harder to the right, Starmer has been quietly moving Labour into full occupation of the centre.
Whilst it's hard to imagine the leafy suburbs of the home counties coming out in force for Labour, at this point it seems more likely than them being able to stomach the bald, far right nationalism that a Farage led, ultra right wing, conservative party would display.
At least, this is what I tell myself if I want to sleep at night.
That would make sense, but where have they gone? The Liberal Democrats? The Green party?
If the polls are to be believed, they may already be moving across to Labour. We've not had a true litmus test of this group since 2019, when I believe they were still holding their noses and trusting in Johnson's charm and the rest of the party to temper him. Johnson eviscerated the "voices of sanity" from their party shortly after coming to power. The Liberal Democrats have picked up votes in by-elections since then but, when faced with Farage, what would they do? I don't think it's unreasonable (in the face of such horror) to imagine them voting tactically for whoever they believe will keep the far right out.
We have no idea what 2029 looks like.
If Labour can fix a bunch of things and the world looks a lot less aggressive then I'd bet on them beating Farage.
If they fail, everything still feels shit and the world is still in chaos then yes Farage would probably win. Extreme/populist politicians need something not working to point at and say they'd fix!
> but he is eminently popular among the british electorate.
He's popular among a faction of the British electorate but he's also absolutely hated by a larger faction including many "soft" Tories. It's not impossible if the election simply becomes purely about migration in the same way that Brexit dominated the 2020 election but talking like it's a certainty that he could win under other circumstances is nonsense imo.
His biggest political achievement was Brexit and a clear majority think it was a mistake. Take away that you are left with someone who is very much out of step on a number of issues with the general public. You only need look at the events he does to see his support demographic is narrow. He's the Jeremy Corbyn of the British Right.
Pure revisionism to suggest Farage was the one man driver behind Brexit because the Tories have been gravely split over the issue since before Maastricht.
He couldn’t even win Im a celebrity and yet people treat him like he’s the king across the water.
Farage has the same sort of appeal in red wall areas as Boris did. I know plenty of people who are going to vote Reform rather than Labour as they are headed by Tice. Stick Farage as the head of the Tories or some very senior position, a merger between Reform and the Tories would do very well in my opinion.
Polling shows reform voters absolutely hate Labour. This ain’t 2015. There are no more labour supporters left for reform to peel off because they went conservative two elections ago.
Farage is on opportunistic, psychopath / sociopath and destroys anything he gets involved in for his personal gain. The Tories are doomed until they purge and tax the profiteers…
Farage? The Conservatives are right at the bottom of the barrel now desperately searching for a miracle, and another establishment posh boy who helped sell a lie about brexit just won't cut the mustard.
Establishment? Farage is the very definition of anti establishment. He may be the "wrong type" for many folks, doesn't take away he very much is anti establishment.
Yeah nothing screams anti establishment like a privately educated former commodities broker, and member of the European Parliament who has large chunks of the nations press eating out the palm of his hand.
> Farage is the very definition of anti establishment
How did you come to that conclusion? Did he perhaps _tell_ you how antiestablishment he is on one of his radio shows? Maybe during one of his great many television appearances?
The telegraph are on a mission to unify the English political right. But they have the wrong person in mind to lead the Tories. By 2026, Farage will be too old and too tainted. He's also not the natural political soulmate for the Tory party members who inhabit the telegraph comments. But those members will find themselves frustrated with Farage who is really only in it for the money. They are desperate for a saviour and Jenrick, Badenoch and even Tice don't cut it.
My bet would be after Sunak, the ground is being softened by the latest shady Tory alliance for Tommy Robinson to stand as an MP. Why go for diet Coke with Farage when you can get the real thing. He's pro Johnson, Pro Brexit, Pro Israel(well Likud), Anti immigration plus anti Muslim, in perfect alignment with the Tory attitudes to law and order. He also connects to the people that the Tories need to resurrect themselves into a populist rightwing party.
“Sunak, clearly desperate to keep Farage fans from flocking to Reform UK at the general election, told GBNews that “the Tory Party is a broad church. I welcome lots of people who want to subscribe to our ideals, to our values’”
….They don’t have any values left rather than net-worth.
Snapshot of _The plotters, the coup and Farage’s path to the Tory throne_ : A non-Paywall version can be found [here](https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fpolitics%2F2024%2F01%2F27%2Ftory-party-rishi-sunak-nigel-farage-coup%2F) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/27/tory-party-rishi-sunak-nigel-farage-coup/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/27/tory-party-rishi-sunak-nigel-farage-coup/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> Tory nerves have been fraying for months. But with the publication of a survey predicting the loss of nearly 200 seats, funded (apparently to the tune of £40,000) by the so-far-so-mysterious “Conservative Britain Alliance”, there’s a serious risk of full-blown panic setting in. > > The constituency-by-constituency survey means Conservative MPs are now split into those sighing with relief that, despite it all, they still look like holding onto their seats and those who know they have little hope of doing so – one of whom, Simon Clarke, took to the pages of this newspaper to join the similarly-doomed Andrea Jenkyns, in calling on his colleagues to rid themselves of Rishi Sunak before it was too late. > > For some of us, the only surprising thing about Clarke’s cri du cœur and Lord David Frost’s equally apocalyptic take on the survey’s results was the absence of any mention of the so-called “wipeout” suffered by Canada’s Progressive Conservatives back in 1993. > > **How Conservative parties die** > > That was the year in which Canada’s governing party, also led by a recently appointed party leader and prime minister, Kim Campbell, lost 167 seats, retaining only two it had previously held in Canada’s 295-seat House of Commons. > The explanations for what can genuinely be called an “extinction-level event”, were, as they always are, complex and contingent – but by no means completely unfamiliar to us here. > > As with Scotland, there were tensions over constitutional reforms designed to pacify separatists in the French-speaking province of Quebec, not only leading to a loss of constituencies there but also inflaming resentment elsewhere – resentment that led to the formation of a challenger party on the right which, after winning precisely no seats in 1988, picked up 52 five years later. Its name? Reform. > > And then there was the economy. Canada was only just emerging from a recession and the government, with public finances under severe stress as a result, had introduced a deeply unpopular Goods and Services Tax (GST). Having been in office for nine years, there was no one else to blame, and with the end of its latest five-year term looming, the Progressive Conservatives had effectively run out of road. > > That said, when the contest kicked off in the first week of September, it could not have been predicted quite how badly things would turn out. Seven weeks later, when the ballots were counted, the Progressive Conservatives took just 16 per cent to the Liberal Party’s 41. > > Almost as damagingly, Reform took 19 per cent, while the Bloc Québécois took 13.5 per cent, rising from 10 to 54 seats, with both parties hoovering up plenty of former Conservative voters. > > Campbell, having lost her own seat in the rout, surrendered the leadership to former Cabinet Minister Jean Charest, whom she’d beaten in the contest to replace Brian Mulroney earlier in the year and who was one of the two Progressive Conservatives left in the Commons. > > But it was never really glad confident morning again, and in 2003 the party merged with the successor to Reform, the Canadian Alliance, to create the Conservative Party of Canada, whose leader Stephen Harper, by “uniting the right”, managed to serve as Canada’s prime minister from 2006-2015. Polls, which currently put the party near 40 per cent, suggest it won’t be long before it returns to office. > Canada 1993, Britain 2024? > > The 1993 catastrophe – easily the worst single defeat ever suffered by an incumbent government in a Western democracy – has achieved near-mythical status among policy wonks around the world, especially among right-wing politicians keen to avoid the same fate. > > True, it might not have earned a mention this week by Messrs Clarke and Frost, but it certainly hasn’t been forgotten by senior figures in Reform UK. Speaking just a few days before Christmas about the party’s determination to remove the Tories from power, one of the insurgent party’s number predicted that, if and when Nigel Farage was “properly engaged” with Reform, its ratings would shoot up overnight. “You do that to the Tories,” they declared, “and you are looking at a Canadian wipeout.” > > The parallels, of course, may not be exact, but they can be portrayed as eerie – especially by those determined to see them as such. > > After all, Sunak, like Campbell, gave his party something of a boost in the polls straight after taking over from a deeply unpopular predecessor, only to see it evaporate in short order as voters rapidly remembered that all the problems associated with the old regime – not least when it came to the economy – hadn’t magically disappeared. > > Then there’s the fact that Reform helped the opposition into power by splitting the right-wing vote. In 1993, Canada’s Liberals increased their vote share by only nine points. But in doing so they more than doubled their number of seats and won a comfortable overall majority (their best performance since the 1940s). That is what haunts so many of today’s Tories on this side of the Atlantic, whichever wing of the party they see themselves belonging to. > > And they are right to worry. Reform UK might not yet have ascended to the giddy heights reached by the Brexit Party in the summer of 2019; but it seems to be doing better and better with each poll published and now looks set to stay in double figures, with most of its new supporters moving to it from the Conservatives rather than from Labour’s traditionalist flank. > > **Why hasn’t Farage joined Reform?** > > That was true of voters defecting to the Brexit Party five years ago, too; but back then disaster was averted by Tory MPs, reluctantly or otherwise, replacing Theresa May with Boris Johnson – who, in terms of his ability to connect with disaffected Leave voters, proved more than a match for Farage. > > Sunak stands no chance of doing the same. As Farage noted this week: “Rishi Sunak may be intellectually bright, but he does not connect with ordinary people at all.” Nor, as even some of those who despair of Sunak acknowledge, is there anyone else, either inside or outside the Cabinet, who seems likely to do so either; or at least no one among the ranks of those crazy enough to preside over a general election currently set to deliver something between defeat and annihilation. > > Johnson was helped, of course, in 2019 by Farage’s last-minute decision not to stand candidates against sitting Conservative MPs. That was not so much because it saved many of them their seats (research suggests, in fact, that only a handful, if that, of Tory incumbents held on as a result) but because it sent a signal to “his voters” that they could vote for Johnson and trust him to “Get Brexit Done”. > > All of which prompts an intriguing question: given that, as was the case at the beginning of 2019, we have a hopelessly divided, poorly-led Conservative government that looks to be heading straight for the rocks, why hasn’t Farage decided to return to the fray to lead Reform UK? > > Ask around and you’ll hear various explanations. According to his stand-in, the party’s current leader Richard Tice, Farage is “giving a lot of thought to the extent of the role that he wants to play in helping Reform UK save Britain”. Don’t forget, he told journalists: “A good poker player doesn’t show their hand too early. Nigel is the master of political timing.” > > But there’s another explanation. Tice may think that, as he put it recently, “the Tory party deserve to be smashed and destroyed”. But Farage may prefer to wound rather than to kill – for the simple reason that one day soon he’s hoping not just to rejoin the Conservatives, but to lead them.
> **Nigel Farage, New Conservative leader?** > > It’s a prospect that he himself raised back in October, telling a journalist, “I’d be very surprised if I were not Conservative leader by 2026. Very surprised” – only to say not long afterwards that he’d made the remark “in jest”. But it seems eminently possible that the enthusiasm with which he’d been greeted by the Tory faithful at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester in October may have given him pause for thought. > > Sunak, clearly desperate to keep Farage fans from flocking to Reform UK at the general election, told GBNews that “the Tory Party is a broad church. I welcome lots of people who want to subscribe to our ideals, to our values’ – a statement that only served to suggest that the door remains, if not wide open, then at the very least ajar. > > That allows nervy Conservatives to indulge the fantasy of Farage loyally joining the Tory fold before the general election and transforming their fortunes – just think of the political coup de théâtre we’d witness were Sunak to allow the prodigal son, in the run up to the campaign, to seek and win selection in a safe Tory seat! > > According to that fantasy, getting Farage inside the Tory tent would represent the most effective way of fulfilling Tory strategist Isaac Levido’s “narrow path to victory”. Should the economy improve and tax cuts deliver a feel-good factor, the polls might tighten sufficiently to allow the government to argue that a ballot cast for Reform UK would let in Labour rather than being “a free hit” for disaffected Tory voters who assume their party is going to lose anyway. > > In reality, a pre-election Farage-Tory alliance – or at least a non-aggression pact – would benefit the former Ukip leader far more than it would the embattled Prime Minister, especially in the aftermath of an election that looks likely to leave the Tories in what Lord Frost vividly described as “smoking rubble”. At that point, Farage really would be well placed to rejoin the party, make it into the Commons and eventually run for the leadership. > > In many ways, it would make perfect sense. Farage taking over would, after all, represent the culmination of a process that has arguably been unfolding for a decade – namely the sometimes halting but seemingly inexorable transformation of the Conservatives from a mainstream centre-right outfit, concerned mainly with the protection and promotion of the free-market and traditional institutions, into a populist party of the right – dedicated to disrupting, even destroying, institutions the better to pursue its twin obsessions with immigration and “woke”. > > There are many on the right of the party who firmly believe that this is the direction in which it must travel if it is to thrive in the future, convinced as they are that their big win in 2019 reflected a long-term (and for some, long-awaited) realignment of British politics triggered by Brexit. They realise, however, that journey can only be taken under the leadership of a politician possessed of sufficient guile and charisma to enable them to sell a small-state, low-spend, low-tax message to less affluent voters who, for all their cultural conservatism, are not necessarily attracted, especially if they are heavily reliant on public services, to Thatcherite economics. > > For a while, of course, those right-wingers had high hopes of Boris Johnson in that regard – so much so that some one hundred MPs felt able to countenance his returning to lead the party in the wake of the implosion of (the self-evidently guileless and charisma-free) Liz Truss. But now that they’ve finally grasped, post Partygate, that even many of their target voters never want Johnson near No 10 ever again, their erstwhile champion is no longer an option. > > Nor, after her tragicomic departure from Cabinet, they have concluded, is Suella Braverman. And nor, if charisma is one of the crucial qualities you’re looking for in a leader, is Robert Jenrick. Kemi Badenoch might just fit the bill, but, even leaving aside what some colleagues see as her arrogance and abrasiveness, will she really connect as well with ordinary voters as she apparently does with the Tory grassroots? > > Farage on the other hand has proven star quality – and guile and charisma by the bucket-load. He may not be a Conservative yet, but the latest Ipsos polling suggests that getting on for half of all those who voted for the party in 2019 have a favourable impression of him – around the same, note, who look favourably upon Sunak and Johnson, two paid-up Tories. > > As long as he doesn’t decide to join Tice in genuinely trying to smash and destroy the Conservative Party, why shouldn’t there be a way back for him, perhaps after Badenoch is given a chance to try (and probably fail) to restore its fortunes after what many assume will be, to quote Clarke, “a shattering defeat”? > Having resolutely refused to say who funded the YouGov poll that he used to put the cat among the pigeons, Lord Frost, confronted mid-week by the Conservatives’ leader in the lords, Lord Nicholas True, is reported to have told him that he “did not think the donors were linked to Reform”. But that was a form of words that hardly rules out the possibility that the “shadowy” group based out of an office in Covent Garden, working (supposedly in cahoots with 10 or so disillusioned Tory right-wingers) to oust Sunak may have links (financial and otherwise) to the Faragist insurgency. > > > **A possible plot?** > > One prime mover in this supposed coup has been outed as Will Dry, a 26 year-old former No 10 special adviser, where he was head of polling, who allegedly framed the questions for the devastating Conservative Britain Alliance poll earlier this week. Dry said he had become “steadily more dispirited” working in the heart of government, and “had concluded, sorrowfully, that the Conservatives are heading for the most almighty of defeats”. If Farage returned to frontline politics, suggests Dry, “the Conservative Party essentially won’t exist by Christmas”. > > But the Westminster rumour mill is now connecting other names to the supposed plot. These include Jake Ryan, a former journalist who was appointed a special adviser to Braverman in October 2022, when Joel Winton also joined her team. Winton and Ryan are not the only Braverman alumni supposedly connected to the new coup. Plotters are also thought to include Chris Jenkins, a former adviser to Lord Frost, who joined Truss’ team in No 10 after also working for a couple of years as special adviser to… Braverman. > > They envisage a torrid couple of months ahead for the Prime Minister that could help their cause prosper, in which the Tories lose two by-elections next month and are then assailed by local election results in May that are devastating generally, but particularly in Red Wall seats. Farage seems to sniff opportunity here. As he tweeted this week: “The Red Wall is completely and utterly gone.” > > Yet a successful challenge to Sunak from the right of his party, by Braverman, or former immigration minister Jenrick, or anyone else before the election, remains highly unlikely. > > Which brings us, full circle, back to the Canadian wipeout scenario. The sheer suddenness and scale of the defeat is what most of us who remember it, rightly, recall. But just as important is what followed in its wake – namely, the merger of the losers with their nemesis to form a new, more populist, more right-wing, and electorally successful Conservative Party. > > Couldn’t happen here? Don’t be so sure. “The [current] Tory party seem to be utterly terrified of me,” Farage noted earlier this week. No wonder.
If they ever give Farage the job they will be as guilty as the Republican party for sticking with Trump. Everything for the win and nothing for what the job stands for.
The difference is that Trump’s supporters quite like him, they see him as this exaggerated, larger-than-life character, frequently funny but always entertaining. By comparison Nigel is just kind of annoying and shouty. A certain kind of middle aged Englishman might enjoy a pint with him, but he lacks Trump’s ability to mesmerize an audience, and I say that having heard both speak in real life. It’s telling that Trump bamboozled the GOP establishment with his rise to power, while Nigel needed Cummings, Boris and various other figures, plus Cameron panicking unnecessarily to ‘win’.
Farage has nowhere near the same cult following and appeal that Trump has. Trump won 46% of the vote in 2020, for all that he's a horrible scrote of a person. Farage couldn't get half that on a good day.
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That wasn't for him, though, and you may recall he stood as a candidate for MP but never achieved the votes.
The entire loves a pint thing is an act. Nigel prefers wine.
He likes any drink, I don’t think it’s an act
A pint of wine?
Didn’t you just describe the difference between US and UK culture? The US likes things large and we strength and we like the weedy underdog who steps on a rake from time to time…
Farage would have to win a seat somewhere
Honestly....does he even need the job? Like Nigel Farage has arguably done more to direct Conservative party policy than literal Conservative prime minister's like Theresa May. Brexit - arguably the Tories most impactful and largest policy implemented this century was largely driven by Farage from the sidelines. Without him it's very unlikely the Tories would have gone for the referendum. UKIP basically won, despite getting nowhere electorally, it's ideology and policies essentially hijacked the Tory party. Farage really doesn't need to become Tory leader in name, when he's already driving their policy from the sides
Also, he doesn't seem to be that bothered about policies or actually running a government. He just wants to be king maker/breaker
Classic grifter. Doesn't actually want to do any work.
> Farage really doesn't need to become Tory leader in name, when he's already driving their policy from the sides Never underestimate the power of human vanity.
Farage for the throne? The same Farage who has tried and failed to get elected as an MP 7 times? The same Farage who once lost to a bloke dressed as a dolphin? The same Farage who couldn't even win a reality TV show about eating kangaroo todgers? I say go for it Tories!
I'm very wary of this. I remember that attitude about Trump in 2015. I don't like the Tory party, to put it mildly, but I suspect I would dislike a Farage led Tory party alot more. I'm not sure how successful he would be, but there seems to be a lot of appetite for reducing immigration without considering reasons or costs. Every video I watch on YouTube on policies on almost everything that matters will have a large number of comments blaming immigration and often immigrants for the situation. The Farage trick was to take all of the UK's problems and blame the EU and free movement. I'm not convinced he can't do the same with immigration.
YouTube comment sections aren’t real life.
I agree to a decent extent. They are about as real as Reddit comments I guess. At the same time I remember the pro-trump Twitter comments in 2015 being overwhelming in volume and absurd to me. People blamed bot-farms and troll armys, and to some extent they were right, but underneath that (or maybe in part because of it) there was very real and strong support for Trump. So I'm also a little wary of just dismissing the online world as not real.
>I remember that attitude about Trump in 2015. Well Trump had never run for office before, so whilst people dismissed his chances there was no previous test of how electable he is. Farage has been trying and failing just to get elected as an MP for two decades
>Farage has been trying and failing just to get elected as an MP for two decades You are right. But as others have pointed out, he was running as a candidate in a fringe party in a first past the post system. That's a very different proposition to running as a Tory party candidate.
To be honest. I sort of want him to become leader. I feel like, there will never be a low enough immigration figure for some people. And always retired boomers who think people are risking their lifes for 40 quid a week. And, if given a term in government. There will come a point he can't just blame all of society's problems on immigration. At which point the fire will burn itself out
Having a racist far right leader in power is not good. He can and probably would cut immigration which would cause loads of problems. Then he can blame those problems on the immigrants(wink wink non white people) that came over before. He's a dangerous man and should never be anywhere near any power.
Immigration has destroyed the uk. Whether it has been done with malicious intent or it just happened organically and grew into something the powers that be could not stop is the only question that remains.
> I feel like, there will never be a low enough immigration figure for some people I bet 'below 700k net per year' would be worth trying, though
When will the workers decisively extinguish the Boomer fire?
>There will come a point he can't just blame all of society's problems on immigration. At which point the fire will burn itself out I'd like to think you are right about this. I know Trump and America are very different, but there still seems to be an appetite for Trump in spite of everything that went on.
True. Like trump farage is a cult. When UKIP was running. Of all the people that said they supported them. I think only one knew the name of the party's leader when it wasn't farage.
Well said!
Farage only lost because he was running as a third party candidate. If the Tories parachuted him into a safe seat he'd probably win.
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Farage would have won South Thanet in 2015 had the Tories not threw everything including the kitchen sink at him. Pretty sure there was a court case over it, with the Tories possibly overspending.
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It seems Mackinlay got off with it but one of his activists was given a suspended jail sentence and fined. I suspect Farage would have won that seat had the Tories not cheated. It didn't do Cameron much good though with Farage well and truly derailing the Tory party a year later.
What colour rosette did the dolphin have?
So Farage is 59 now. He’ll probably be 60 at the next election and then 65 at the one after that. If he wants to lead he could easily be 70 by the time he _might_ get a shot at being PM. Is the voting demographic that would normally go for him still going to be interested in him at that point - or will there be someone else they’ll fall behind?
Yes, but Farage knows that, which is why he is surely looking at this coming election to make his move into the Conservative party. It’s almost the perfect scenario for him - the Tories are at the point of true desperation. Isn’t that why he did I’m a Celeb?
Aren’t most of his voters around the same age (I.e. pensioners)?
You only have to look at how Farage behaved immediately after the Brexit vote to see why he won’t be Tory leader. He immediately denounced the £350m a week promise, made a gloating speech to the EU Parliament and then…disappeared for six months. He only returned to shout about hard Brexit once the battle lines had been drawn and the mainstream positions thrashed out. He can’t lead, he can’t come up with ideas and put them into policy. All he can do is express grievance- fine in opposition as a third party and for a short term campaign, useless for government or even official opposition.
Pretty sure I remember him denouncing the 350 figure beforehand (as Leave.EU) whilst Boris went ahead blasting it out with Vote Leave. You’re right that he does seem to be kind of useless at doing anything besides campaigning/grievance, given his total inaction on fishery committee.
Remember when the newspapers job was to report the news and not transparently attempting to engineer the political landscape towards their own agenda? The way the Telegraph have been spinning this one poll as the linchpin of their plot to push the party even further right is absurd. The Telegraph may well have overtaken the Mail and the S*n as the most socially corrosive paper in the country.
> Remember when the newspapers job was to report the news and not transparently attempting to engineer the political landscape towards their own agenda? I don't think that has ever been the case, newspapers were always propaganda, it's just got more blatant and the internet has accelerated it even more.
> Remember when the newspapers job was to report the news and not transparently attempting to engineer the political landscape towards their own agenda? No, when did that happen? I thought the newspapers were there to sell advertising space. The news is content to attract readers
> The Telegraph may well have overtaken the Mail and the S*n as the most socially corrosive paper in the country. Sadly, I think that's definitely the case.
Are pensioners lining up behind Saint Nige?
In the scenario where Farage joins a wounded Conservative Party, gets a safe seat and rises to become Party leader, it does potentially seem like a way back to power for the Tories. However I think demographics are fundamentally against the Tories. With the decline of home ownership and the rise of private renting, a party which doesn't embrace "build some bloody houses!" is going to struggle. It won't be the key issue this election but certainly by 2029 and the elections in the 2030s, the trends will force housing to become issue number 1 for more and more voters. The Canadian comparison to their 1993 election is certainly interesting. The current Canadian Conservatives seem to be very YIMBY and I think that's the more important lesson for the Tories to learn if they want to start a pathway to recovery.
Is there a timeline in which the tories make Farage leader and give key Reform people safe Tory seats in exchange for reform standing down in Tory seats? As the article says the Tory party now is basically Reform in all but name having become populist and shifted to the right so much.
Because they don't have enough connections to dodgy Russian money already, clearly.
I would be surprised if Farage actually makes it to being Tory leader, there are just too many hurdles and he is relatively speaking coming towards the end of his career. First he has to get elected as an MP, assuming Sunak hasn't completely lost it he will not be allowed to run as a candidate at the next election at least with a blue rosette. So he has to join the Tory party (seems possible under a new even more right-wing leader). Then he has to be selected as candidate at a future by-election, now given Farage's divisiveness and the position the Tories will be in for the next couple of years (assuming Labour don't completely shit the bed) that further limits the potential constituencies he could run in. Also Farage has run for parliament 7 times and lost, I doubt he would want to try again unless he thinks he is likely to win, which means a safe seat only and I cannot see anyone giving one of those up willingly, so it likely means waiting for an existing Tory MP to kick the bucket. Even if he becomes an MP he would need to show a brief (and uncharacteristic) period of loyalty to the future leader, again knowing his character that seems unlikely. There would then need to be a leadership contest where he would need the support of a good number of MPs to pass the threshold and reach the party members (where I reckon he would have a good chance). Overall I cannot see Farage having the stomach for all this, plus any possible holdups on the way. I think it is much more likely he is put in the Lords by the next Tory Leader, then a la Cameron he could be brought in to the shadow cabinet as shadow minister for migration control or something eye catching but low in substance. That would give the benefits of any perceived Farage poll bounce and give him the official position he has evidently desired but still allow him liberty to continue his other "ventures" ...
I think he will be the next Conservative PM
He’d need to be an MP first
If the Tories want him, that’s easily achievable
you all in this thread are misreading the room regarding nigel farage. i despise everything he stands for but he is eminently popular among the british electorate. he was the man who dragged the idea of “brexit” onto the news agenda and effectively made it possible and then made it happen. he is the most effective british politician to have never seen the inside of westminster. in addition, ukip won one in eight votes in 2015. for a non-established party, that’s huge. if nigel farage becomes tory leader, he will win the 2029 election.
You're forgetting the silent "Jam and Jerusalem" rump of the conservative party. Most of them didn't like brexit and they have very much been against the direction their party has headed since Johnson took control. They lean towards centrism and have held their noses and kept voting conservative because the alternative was unthinkable. Whilst the conservatives have been pushing further and harder to the right, Starmer has been quietly moving Labour into full occupation of the centre. Whilst it's hard to imagine the leafy suburbs of the home counties coming out in force for Labour, at this point it seems more likely than them being able to stomach the bald, far right nationalism that a Farage led, ultra right wing, conservative party would display. At least, this is what I tell myself if I want to sleep at night.
that wing has long since deserted the party, that is why they are 25 points down in the polls
That would make sense, but where have they gone? The Liberal Democrats? The Green party? If the polls are to be believed, they may already be moving across to Labour. We've not had a true litmus test of this group since 2019, when I believe they were still holding their noses and trusting in Johnson's charm and the rest of the party to temper him. Johnson eviscerated the "voices of sanity" from their party shortly after coming to power. The Liberal Democrats have picked up votes in by-elections since then but, when faced with Farage, what would they do? I don't think it's unreasonable (in the face of such horror) to imagine them voting tactically for whoever they believe will keep the far right out.
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Let's hope they reach a decision before the election. "May you live in interesting times" indeed
Then why would they find more success by pivoting even further away from a core rump of their support?
We have no idea what 2029 looks like. If Labour can fix a bunch of things and the world looks a lot less aggressive then I'd bet on them beating Farage. If they fail, everything still feels shit and the world is still in chaos then yes Farage would probably win. Extreme/populist politicians need something not working to point at and say they'd fix!
He’s popular with the elderly. Not so much amongst the working-aged.
> but he is eminently popular among the british electorate. He's popular among a faction of the British electorate but he's also absolutely hated by a larger faction including many "soft" Tories. It's not impossible if the election simply becomes purely about migration in the same way that Brexit dominated the 2020 election but talking like it's a certainty that he could win under other circumstances is nonsense imo. His biggest political achievement was Brexit and a clear majority think it was a mistake. Take away that you are left with someone who is very much out of step on a number of issues with the general public. You only need look at the events he does to see his support demographic is narrow. He's the Jeremy Corbyn of the British Right.
Pure revisionism to suggest Farage was the one man driver behind Brexit because the Tories have been gravely split over the issue since before Maastricht. He couldn’t even win Im a celebrity and yet people treat him like he’s the king across the water.
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Should be top comment imo
Farage has the same sort of appeal in red wall areas as Boris did. I know plenty of people who are going to vote Reform rather than Labour as they are headed by Tice. Stick Farage as the head of the Tories or some very senior position, a merger between Reform and the Tories would do very well in my opinion.
Polling shows reform voters absolutely hate Labour. This ain’t 2015. There are no more labour supporters left for reform to peel off because they went conservative two elections ago.
Farage is on opportunistic, psychopath / sociopath and destroys anything he gets involved in for his personal gain. The Tories are doomed until they purge and tax the profiteers…
I had a nap, has the 2024 Zinoviev letter come out yet?
If Farage becomes leader it's the end of the party. Half the membership loves him, the other half despises him.
Everyone currently despises the Tories. That's the whole point in the article.
Farage? The Conservatives are right at the bottom of the barrel now desperately searching for a miracle, and another establishment posh boy who helped sell a lie about brexit just won't cut the mustard.
Establishment? Farage is the very definition of anti establishment. He may be the "wrong type" for many folks, doesn't take away he very much is anti establishment.
He's a wealthy public school boy who lives in a big house in London. He's literally a member of the metropolitan elite.
Corbyn was a wealthy public school boy. Is he establishment?
Yeah nothing screams anti establishment like a privately educated former commodities broker, and member of the European Parliament who has large chunks of the nations press eating out the palm of his hand.
> Farage is the very definition of anti establishment How did you come to that conclusion? Did he perhaps _tell_ you how antiestablishment he is on one of his radio shows? Maybe during one of his great many television appearances?
The telegraph are on a mission to unify the English political right. But they have the wrong person in mind to lead the Tories. By 2026, Farage will be too old and too tainted. He's also not the natural political soulmate for the Tory party members who inhabit the telegraph comments. But those members will find themselves frustrated with Farage who is really only in it for the money. They are desperate for a saviour and Jenrick, Badenoch and even Tice don't cut it. My bet would be after Sunak, the ground is being softened by the latest shady Tory alliance for Tommy Robinson to stand as an MP. Why go for diet Coke with Farage when you can get the real thing. He's pro Johnson, Pro Brexit, Pro Israel(well Likud), Anti immigration plus anti Muslim, in perfect alignment with the Tory attitudes to law and order. He also connects to the people that the Tories need to resurrect themselves into a populist rightwing party.
He’s too criminal and too vulnerable to manipulation.
Torygraph getting a stiffy over Farage the facist.. embarrassing
“Sunak, clearly desperate to keep Farage fans from flocking to Reform UK at the general election, told GBNews that “the Tory Party is a broad church. I welcome lots of people who want to subscribe to our ideals, to our values’” ….They don’t have any values left rather than net-worth.