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2019 will be Nigel Farage's year - and the Tories' annus horribilis
Matthew Goodwin 22 April 2019 • 6:00am
Nigel Farage visits a museum in Shoreham, Kent this weekend. His Brexit party is already surging in the polls Credit: Andrew Matthews
Mrs May's failures have allowed populism to flourish in Britain
Nigel Farage is back. Less than three years after Britain voted for Brexit and Farage left politics to 'get his life back', the former leader of UKIP and now leader of the Brexit Party has been forced to return to the ring. Angered by the 'betrayal of Brexit', Farage looks anything but the ageing prize-fighter. I've known him for seven years and today he is as energetic, ambitious and confident as he's ever been. And he is cutting through.
Though only launched a week ago, the Brexit Party is already surging in the polls, can claim more than 100,000 registered supporters and is tearing large chunks off the Conservative Party's electorate. Farage's political instincts and timing were always underestimated. Now, he is tapping direct into a reservoir of frustration among Leavers who feel utterly cut adrift from Mrs May's vision of Brexit, her failure to keep 'no deal' on the table and decision to lend credence to Jeremy Corbyn, a man who they were only recently asked to believe posed a major threat to their national security.
This rebooted revolt on the right could yet have profound consequences. If anything there is more space for Farage today than there ever was before. What started as a campaign against the EU is morphing into a campaign against Westminster. Last week, one survey suggested that one in two of Britain's Leavers plan to vote for Farage. As Sir John Curtice noted recently in the Telegraph, Leavers are no longer leaving the Conservative Party in a trickle but a flood. This is deeply problematic for a party that relies far more on Leavers than Remainers. In general election polls this past week the Brexit Party is in the 12 to 14 per cent range, more than enough to put the Conservatives into opposition and Jeremy Corbyn into Number 10. Make no mistake: 2019 could be the Conservative Party's annus horribilis.
Shortly after Mrs May unveiled her Chequers Brexit, I warned that Leavers, who want a meaningful and clean Brexit, would soon abandon the party in droves. This is now happening. There is also evidence to suggest that something deeper is going on. The Brexit Party is as popular among the working-class as Labour, both of whom are ahead of the Conservatives. As elsewhere in Europe, national populism is becoming the new home of the working-class.
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Meanwhile, in some European election polls, Farage and the Brexit party have already leap-frogged the two main parties into first place and look set to win the contest outright, emulating Farage's feat in 2014. Instead of being populist-free, Britain will now join the Austrians, Dutch Estonians, French, Germans, Hungarians, Italians, Poles, Spanish and Swedes in delivering yet another populist backlash against the EU, and against established mainstream elites. In this respect, the process of exiting the EU has made Britain a little more European.
None of this was supposed to happen. After 52 per cent of the country voted for Brexit, and David Cameron made way for Theresa May, Britain was supposed to put populism back in the box. The mainstream Conservative government was supposed to devise a competent negotiation strategy, trigger Article 50, lead Britain out of the EU and then go back to the country with the offer of a radical new settlement that would address the other drivers of Brexit, from reforming immigration to tackling regional inequality, from devolving more powers to the regions, to doing more for left behind and left out Britain. In some other universe Mrs May is using the remaining months of 2019 to prepare for a general election in 2020, with an ambitious policy platform that resonates among workers and leaves scant room for Mr Corbyn.
Except, as we now know, none of that happened. What did happen is that Mrs May's premiership turned from one of great promise into one of great disappointment. Future historians will likely only make note of Mrs May when debating contenders for the title of Britain's worst Prime Minister or, perhaps, when explaining what pushed the Conservatives into a serious split and a prolonged period in opposition. The Prime Minister and her team have brought their party to a point where, last week, it reached just 23 per cent in the polls. If this were replicated at an election it would be the worst result in the entire history of the party.
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Britain used to be known around the globe for being immune to populism. Unlike the Austrians, French or Italians, we Brits never had much appetite for populist politics. Our politics were different, or so we thought. In the 1960s, long before our referendums on the Europe question, the academics Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba said that Britain was the quintessential 'civic culture'; its people were sceptical of their politicians but were deferential to authority; and they trusted their institutions and those who had been elected to represent them. But now all that has changed.
Instead of diluting populism, somehow Mrs May and the Conservative Party have found a way of putting it back on steroids. The fervently pro-Brexit Conservative electorate that Mrs May inherited from the 2017 general election always backed a harder and more meaningful vision of Brexit than that shared by their Conservative MPs. Conservative voters were sincere when they said they wanted a no-deal Brexit on the table and, if necessary, would follow it through. Most Conservative MPs were not.
Britain might have once been known for being immune to populism but from hereon it will be known as a textbook case in how not to manage populism. Farage is back and he now seems to have more potential than ever before.
Matthew Goodwin is author of National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (Pelican)
Conservative Party,
Nigel Farage,
Brexit Party
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