12.12.2024

Blowing in the wind

One poll has Reform UK ahead of Labour, writes Eddie Ford, with talk of Elon Musk giving $100 million to the party in a bid to make Nigel Farage Britain’s Trump

For the first time Reform UK has overtaken Labour in a national poll. Published on December 4 by Find Out Now, it reveals that Nigel Farage’s party is on 24%, one point ahead of Labour, with the Tories ahead on 26%, the Liberal Democrats at 11% and the Greens 9%.¹ This meant that Labour was down two points, compared to last week, with their level of support almost a third lower than in the general election, while Reform was up by two points.

If you are a Reform supporter, it might be a bit premature to crack open the fizz and start measuring the curtains for No10, though that did not stop Zia Yusuf, Reform’s multi-millionaire chair, declaring that it would win the next general election. This poll was an outlier, because it uses a different methodology than most polling companies. It explicitly asks about people’s likelihood to vote before which party they plan to vote for, which is then factored into the final calculation. Polls in recent weeks by BMG, JL Partners, More in Common and others, have shown Labour leading Reform by several points, though generally they show increasing support for Reform, with Labour down a point or two - perhaps vindicating the approach taken by Farage, who has said he is now more focused on winning over voters who currently support Labour, or are not inclined to vote at all, than converting more Tory supporters. In the general election, Reform came second to Labour in 98 constituencies, including many so-called Red Wall seats and in next year’s county council elections it aims to win more than 100 councillors to pose a “credible challenge”.

Sir Keir

Of course, we should not be surprised that soon after Labour gets into government its popularity falls. After all, Keir Starmer is hardly the most dynamic or charismatic of politicians. Then we have just had the mind-numbingly boring relaunch of the party that hardly anyone noticed (but don’t call it a ‘reset’!). Sir Keir merely trotted out a bunch of inane pledges or ‘milestones’, which you could have heard from almost any mainstream politician going back decades - more bobbies on the beat, higher living standards, limiting NHS waiting times, improving early education, etc, etc. Laughably, Starmer said his pledges were “ambitious” and would land with a “thud” on the desks of civil servants - apparently demonstrating that his was a “mission-led government” that will deliver. No wonder people are looking elsewhere only months after Labour’s landslide victory.

However, there is another possible explanation for Reform’s rising popularity at Labour’s expense. Namely, Keir Starmer’s various speeches about solving the ‘problem’ of mass migration, when everyone knows that he will fail to do so, just as Rishi Sunak failed to stop the small boats despite his foolish promises. Therefore you could argue that we had Starmer denouncing the Tories from the right for running an “open border experiment” that “happened by design, not accident” and demanding the British people are “owed an explanation” for this liberal immigration policy (revised figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that net migration for the year to June 2023 reached 906,000 - a big jump on what was previously thought and four times higher than pre-Brexit figures in 2019²).

For Starmer, the Tories “refused to do the hard yards” and plug the UK’s skills gap. But, of course, he will be different and “turn the page” on the issue - promising “graft, not gimmicks” and vowing to crackdown on immigration, both legal and illegal, in order to get the numbers down. But such populist-tinged rhetoric runs the risk of feeding into Reform and further increasing its appeal - they will not let you down, unlike the lying mainstream parties.

Nigel Farage has other reasons to be optimistic. Next month, of course, his best mate, Donald Trump, will be in the White House - opening up near endless possibilities for expansion - and there is talk that his more recent bestie friend, Elon Musk, wants to donate $100 million (£80 million) to Reform in a bid to make Nigel Britain’s Donald.

Now, Musk might have to become a British citizen if he wants to make such a donation - though there is speculation that the multi-billionaire may be able to sidestep overseas donation laws by using the UK branch of Twitter/X. Leaving that aside for the lawyers, he is already a citizen of South Africa, Canada and the US - truly an internationalist! But he has enough family connections and money to buy his way into British citizenship. Speaking on GB News, the dull rightwing propaganda TV channel (unless you enjoy listening to monomaniacs) his father, Errol Musk, pointed out that he was eligible for British citizenship as well.

UnEnglish

Almost touchingly, Errol mused: “If the thing that’s stopping Farage from moving ahead is money”, then “he should get money, so that he can move ahead” - nothing fairer than that. Not so touching, he commented that what has happened in Britain under the Starmer government is “just totally unEnglish”, when you consider England’s historical role as a “parent nation” to many countries around the world.

There are a range of entertaining theories as to why Elon Musk is eager to intervene in British politics, including the notion that he has come to view the country as the centre of what he has described as the “woke mind virus”, which he blames for the gender transition of his estranged daughter and the ‘takeover of universities by neo-Marxists’, where it is a situation of “full-on communism”. We should not forget that during the racist riots this year in various towns and cities, Musk claimed that “civil war is inevitable” - so why not give it a nudge in the right direction? - and labelled the British prime minister as “two-tier Keir” in an echo of the argument promulgated by the likes of Suella Braverman, the former Tory home secretary, that the police were treating white far-right “protestors” more harshly than minority groups.

Anyway, Nigel Farage has denied all knowledge of Musk’s millions - telling the BBC that he has not solicited a donation from him and one has never been offered. When pressed on whether he would accept such a donation, Farage said, “Of course I would accept money”, but pointed out - though not with any great relevancy - that James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party spent £25 million on the 1997 election, yet only “got 3%” of the vote, sagely adding, “Money isn’t everything”.

Given that in a British general election the parties spend no more £20 million, it is a bit hard to know what Reform would do with £80 million. The danger is that the government would simply legislate and outlaw such sizeable donations either way.

But, whether Reform gets the donation from Musk or not, it is hoping to rake in the money anyway. The party’s new treasurer, billionaire property developer and former staunch Tory Nick Candy - the latest billionaire to join the ‘party of the people’ - wants to raise more than £40 million, after having previously donated £1 million. He told GB news that on that very morning he had taken calls from people who had never donated before to a political party, but were now offering millions of pounds. However, he said, “it’s not just about getting rich donors and billionaire people or millionaire people” - today “we need the guys that have got £1, £5, £10, £25 to be a member of Reform”. He said the party would overtake the Conservative Party in terms of membership over the next six months (something also boasted about by Nigel Farage) and that would be a “gamechanger”. Reform has 100,000 members now, he explained, and the Tories currently have 130,000 - though ageing and mainly on paper, so that number will rapidly decline through a process of ‘natural wastage’ (ie, death).

Candy also revealed that he spoke to Elon Musk immediately after his appointment as treasurer on December 10, but remained tight-lipped about what they discussed, except for joking: “If people offer us money legally, we’ll take it.”

A string

Bringing more good news for Nigel Farage, there have been a string of defections to Reform recently and more are expected. In a surprise move to many, Tim Montgomerie, frequent guest on the mainstream media and the founder of Conservative Home (influential among Tory circles and conservative thinking in general) switched to Reform after 33 years as a loyal Tory member.

Then again, that should not have been too much of a surprise. In June, he said that if he lived in certain constituencies, such as Clacton or Boston and Skegness, he would have voted for the Reform candidate there. The final straw for him was the revised immigration figures - like many on the right, he is fed up with hearing the Tories say they were “controlling” immigration. What is particularly significant about Montgomerie was that after the general election he spoke about building a “unite-the-right movement”. Philosophically, he will be at home in Reform, believing that in the 20th century what we saw was “far from an overwhelming victory for the right”, because, “though revolutionary Marxism died, its fellow traveller - cultural Marxism - prospered”. That will doubtlessly endear him to Elon Musk.

This move by Montgomerie followed the defection of former Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, at the end of November. It has to be said that she does have a turbulent history with what is now her party, having previously engaged in a bitter public row with Reform after claiming she was wooed by a pro-Brexit businessman who she said had offered her various jobs to defect. In July she accused the deputy leader of Reform, Richard Tice (yet another multi-millionaire), of trying to bribe her Reform general election rival in the constituency of Leeds South West and Morley. They appear to have kissed and made up. According to gossip in the rightwing media, there are eight other Tory MPs contemplating jumping the ship to Reform including Victoria Atkins, Alex Burghart and the obnoxious Mark Francois.

We can see from all this that Reform is becoming a viable fighting force that has the potential to make serious inroads into the political process - especially as it seems to be slowly transitioning into a more acceptable mainstream party. Nigel Farage has said that he wants to “relinquish” control of Reform UK by giving up his majority shareholder position. Reform is a private limited company, unlike other political parties, that had previously registered as the Brexit Party from 2018-21 - with Farage effectively acting as dictator over the organisation with no democratic structures or input from below.³

Now, it is groping towards some sort of organisation based on individual membership and a degree of formal accountability.