UK election: Reform leader Farage’s populist policies gaining steam, but many are unrealistic
Slashing taxation and boosting public spending are among the right-wing party’s suggestions
[LONDON] Nigel Farage, the controversial leader of the UK’s right-wing Reform party, is poised to be the man to scupper the prospects of the ruling Conservative Party at the Jul 4 general election.
Seen by many as a brilliant self-publicist, the 60-year-old is getting significant air time and column inches in the broadcast and print media. Some statistics by TikTok indicate that the Reform party has more social media views than Labour, the main opposition party that is likely to form the new government after the polls. “Britain is broken” is Farage’s campaign slogan. While he has openly said that Labour is “bound to win the election”, he has also emphasised the need for a strong opposition. Three separate polls predict that Farage will win a parliamentary seat in the seaside town of Clacton, in what will be his eighth attempt to become an MP.
Other surveys forecast that four other Reform candidates will also win seats. This would be a rather small return as several studies estimate that the party has a support level of between 15 and 19 per cent nationwide.
Pollster YouGov projects that the Conservatives will end up with only 108 of the 650 seats in parliament, which would be the lowest in the party’s long history.
If this dismal forecast is correct, the party will be a staggering 257 MPs down from former premier Boris Johnson’s 2019 triumph. Johnson and other Conservatives, however, contend that Farage and his followers will split the vote and bring about a bigger Labour majority. Farage, meanwhile, is hoping that his party will reform political debate on both domestic and foreign policies. Over the past few days, he has again hit the airwaves in a big way and made the front pages of many newspapers.
One of the more radical suggestions that Farage has made is that Ukraine should strike a deal with Russia to end the war. That out-of-the-box suggestion made no dent in Reform’s polling numbers as Farage said that reaching such an agreement would save lives.
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In an article published in The Telegraph, Tony Brenton, a former British ambassador to Russia, agreed that the US, UK and European Union should begin negotiations with Russia. The Reform party also wants to slash taxation and boost public spending. But critics such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and Ryan Bourne, an economist at the libertarian Cato Institute, warn that Reform’s manifesto is full of unrealistic promises.
They argue that the manifesto is similar to the failed policies of former prime minister Liz Truss, who stepped down after just 49 days in office. Her unfunded tax and spending pledges in an October 2022 Budget caused a collapse in UK bonds. The pound slumped to a low of 1.03 against the US dollar at the time but has since revived to around 1.27. “(Reform) suggests that they have radical ideas which can realistically make a positive difference, but what they propose is wholly unattainable,” said IFS director Paul Johnson. Farage hopes that Reform’s policies will influence the Conservative Party when the latter is in opposition.
Indeed, during a recent debate, Labour leader Keir Starmer claimed that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s latest promises to lower tax and spending were similar to those of Truss. Sunak countered by saying that Britons would face higher taxes under a Labour-led government. Besides lower individual, company, property and inheritance taxes, the Reform party has also put forth a number of other policies that are widely seen as populist.
These include a promise to slash immigration rates in the UK, with a proposal to impose a tax of 20 per cent on employers for each foreign worker on their payroll.
The party also suggested the nationalisation of half of the country’s energy and water utilities to, in its own words, “stop consumers from being ripped off”.
Other policies include scrapping the interest on student loans, and conducting an overhaul of the UK’s military procurement process to reduce corruption and costs.
Petronella Wyatt and Allison Pearson, two prominent columnists at The Telegraph, summed up the controversies surrounding Farage. “Farage brings out the worst. Perhaps this is because much of his creed plays on fear,” said Wyatt. “The Tories, in their long history, have thrown up some bad apples. But this does not mean we should turn to acrimony and populism.” Said Pearson: “I imagine some of you are as sick as I am of hearing that a vote for Reform is a wasted vote. Let me tell you what a wasted vote is. Casting my ballot in December 2019 with a song in my heart for the Conservatives. Nothing I voted for came to pass.” With Polling Day just around the corner, the key question that still needs answering is whether Reform’s potential MPs will themselves achieve anything of note when they are in parliament, given their likely small numbers.
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