Farage, fireworks and the forgotten majority

‘It’s been a day of some considerable news’, joked Nigel Farage, as he took to the stage at Reform UK’s conference in Birmingham at lunchtime. He was having some fun at Labour’s expense, as well he might. The Reform leader’s speech was brought forward by three hours so he could get some digs in at Angela Rayner, who had just resigned as deputy prime minister over her stamp-duty dodge. He praised her as ‘an accomplished property developer and speculator’, before telling the party faithful to prepare for an election as soon as 2027, predicting a Labour civil war. ‘Folks, it’s happening.’

Farage’s message, in essence, was that Reform, between 10 and 15 points ahead in the polls, is here to bury Keir Starmer’s Labour. Not only for its hapless, authoritarian return to government, but also for its decades-long betrayal of the working class: ‘We are the patriotic party, we are the party that stands up for decent working people, and we are the party on the rise.’ Where the Tories are concerned, Farage seems to think they’re already six feet under: ‘It’s all well and good for Kemi Badenoch… you’ve heard of her, haven’t you?’

After a brief cameo from Nadine Dorries, Reform’s latest Tory defector, Farage punched through the policies, and made a few promises he may live to regret. ‘We will stop the boats within two weeks of winning government’, he said, perhaps with an eye on the headline writers. Net Zero lunacy got a good shoeing, too – ‘ridiculous, harmful, wasteful’. ‘We will start producing our own oil and gas. We will end the full subsidies for renewable energy… We will bring cheap energy and we will do our utmost to reindustrialise Britain’, Farage thundered. Rarely has a leader’s line on energy policy received such whooping applause.

I’d say populism is back, but it never really left. And Reform could be riding it into the history books. The first party in with a chance of displacing the old, knackered Labour-Conservative duopoly for a century. And the first party for many years to realise that doing what voters want might just be a route to electoral success. Farage certainly enthused Reform supporters in Birmingham – waving flags; donning the party’s new line of teal-blue football shirts; faintly exhilarated to see a prominent politician say things that have somehow become unsayable, despite commanding majority support.

‘Our country is in a very bad place. It’s a mixture between anger and despair’, Farage said. And yet, something is stirring. There is ‘barely a lamppost’, he added, without an England or Union flag on it, nodding to the Operation Raise the Colours campaign: ‘British people are sticking two fingers up with every flag they place, to an establishment that doesn’t believe in Britain.’ Reform is clearly keen to be seen as the political wing of these grassroots patriotic protests.

Farage ended his speech just as he started it, amid a blast of smoke machines, music and fireworks. SW1 types may scoff at the pyrotechnics – at Reform’s trademark, very American staging. Just as they scoff at the concerns that have led thousands of people to this conference, and almost a quarter of a million to sign up as Reformers. But the excitement here obviously isn’t down to the sound system. Reform has tapped into a vein of anger at the way we have been governed, but also a cautious optimism about better days maybe being ahead. While Rayner’s ‘considerable news’ will steal much of the media’s attention for today, Reform will remain the story for as long as that deafening cry for something different persists – and Reform remains willing and able to listen to it.

Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater