On the evening of the 2019 general election, as it became clear that Boris Johnson had triumphed, Nigel Farage declared: “This victory for Boris was hugely helped by us and is far better than the Marxist Corbyn and a second referendum”.
The description used of Corbyn was a revealing one. Though the former Labour leader is a far less obviously Marxist figure than John McDonnell (once confessing that he had not read “as much of Marx as I should have done”), Farage was happy to place him in this category for political purposes. It signified that his principal objection to Corbyn was his hostility to capitalism.
Five years on, Farage is playing a rather different tune. In an interview with PoliticsJOE this week, the Reform leader highlighted his common ground with Corbyn: “Anti-establishment, obviously. A sense that the giant corporates now dominate the world that we live in, that politics is very much in the pockets of the big corporates,” he said after being told of a former Corbyn supporter who now backed Reform.
“My thinking and Corbyn’s does cross over. I mean, Corbyn was a Eurosceptic right from the very start. He thought that what Brussels would do is be good for big banks and big businesses and bad for everybody else. Well, he was pretty much right.”
Farage – an astute political entrepreneur – has spotted a gap in the political market. In an age of anger, there are votes to be won from railing against big business. “In some ways, my economic narrative against the global corporatists is quite left wing,” he told the New Statesman last year.
While Labour is strengthening workers’ rights and raising taxes on firms, it is seeking consensus, not conflict. “Big business and big government work together,” Farage declared in the manner of Pierre Poujade after Starmer praised BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, on X. “There is nothing about Sir Keir Starmer that represents change.”
The unfilled space in British politics has long been for a party that is both socially conservative and economically populist (“fund the NHS and hang the paedos” as it is sometimes known). In recent weeks there have been signs that Reform is seeking to occupy this territory.
The party has called for the renationalisation of Thames Water and championed domestic steel production (Lee Anderson has urged the UK to “copy China”). Its manifesto argued for a “new model that brings 50 per cent of each [national] utility into public ownership”.
Labour MPs – 86 of who have Reform in second place – have observed this shift and are troubled by it. “Farage senses Labour has left a vacuum in northern working-class communities,” one told me. “In order to take those seats he is reorienting his economic strategy.”
There are limits to Reform’s leftist turn. In some respects the party’s pitch remains classically Thatcherite – championing lower taxes and lower spending. This is not least due to its membership. As a recent poll by Queen Mary University of London and Sussex University found, 56 per cent of Reform members believe that the government should cut taxes and spend less on public services (compared to 44 per cent of Conservative members).
Can Reform manage such ideological contradictions? A natural source of inspiration is Donald Trump. The president-elect has built a political coalition that spans both protectionists and tech-libertarians. This is unstable – witness the early feud between Elon Musk and Maga over high-skill immigration visas – but it was strong enough to deliver a second victory for Trump.
At the next election expect Reform to argue that Labour has been both too interventionist – taxing and spending excessively – and not interventionist enough: failing to safeguard domestic industries and companies. As an economic proposition it is incoherent. But as Trump and other populist leaders have proved, sometimes success lies in embracing contradictions.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
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[See also: Why Labour should learn to love VAT]
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