Reform UK is now comfortably Britain’s biggest affiliated political party with more than 270,000 members.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Nigel Farage and Reform UK can now rightfully claim to be the flag bearers of the British political right. Yesterday’s defection of Suella Braverman from the Tories had the feel of a tipping point.
The former Home Secretary said after eloping: “I feel like I’ve come home.” And that is why Reform, the pop-up party founded in 2018, continues to rip up the rulebook.
It is now comfortably Britain’s largest party in terms of membership with some 270,000 signing up.
And like him or not what Mr Farage says is striking a chord daily with voters disheartened and disenfranchised with the traditional choices.
Immediately after Braverman jumped ship he went on the offensive, hitting the sweet spot for Reform voters.
Mr Farage promised his party would “put our own people first”.
It was unashamedly plagiarised from his pal Donald Trump‘s America First agenda.
But it is simple, it is effective, and for the vast majority sick to the back teeth of feeling like second class citizens in their own country, it hit a nerve.
Nigel Farage has vowed to ‘put Britain first’ (Image: Getty Images)
Like it or not the Tories are still unmatched on economic competence, but that hardly matters right now as Mr Farage continues to hit the target on familiar territory.
The Brexit vote might have been about the UK’s divorce from the European Union but it was really won on the issue of immigration.
In the decade since Mr Farage’s fears have come true as the Conservatives and then Labour ducked the issue of our time.
During his Trump-style rally in front of an audience of veterans he declared it “outrageous that illegal migrants are given priority for housing over our own veterans”.
And with every utterance Reform’s live membership ticker rotated like a car milometer.
Mr Farage stormed: “How can it be that somebody who enters our country illegally having destroyed their identity documents is a higher priority for housing than a former serviceman or woman who has fallen on hard times? It’s outrageous, it’s wrong, and it’s time to start putting our own people and our own veterans first. We must do that and we will do that.”
It’s hardly rocket science. Yet these are questions inexplicably unanswered by this feeble excuse for a government which continues to lavish those with no legal right to be here with warm and comfortable lodgings and three square meals a day, all at the expense of taxpayers.
Braverman, who has been MP for Fareham and Waterlooville in Hampshire since 2015, ditched the Tories accusing them of possessing “no courage, no backbone, no resolve”.
It was a bitchy swipe, but we’re now in gloves off territory.
Britain under the Conservatives drifted on the breeze in a haze of entitlement. Britain under Labour is fast becoming a socialist utopia where the strivers are taxed and the shirkers rewarded.
Millions of voters just want their government to down a large slug of reality and to talk straight, to see things through the lens of the forgotten majority.
And if neither the Tories or Labour realise that then is it really any wonder Mr Farage is riding high in the polls and now almost certain to get the keys to Number 10?
Many wonder how he has gone from whistling in the wind in the political wilderness, to single handedly delivering Brexit, to being on the verge of becoming prime minister?
His political rivals detest him with the words polarising and divisive just two of the more printable descriptions.
But do you know why he possesses the Midas touch? He speaks fluent common sense.
And in politics, as duplicitous Sir Keir Starmer is fast finding out, that is a priceless gift.
