Farage has no plan for power
A government needs blueprints, budgets and policy
It’s been a while since my last post – thank you for your patience. It’s been wonderful finally having capacity for more thinking and writing recently. This is the first essay I’ve written in many months, and it dives into the tensions that exist underneath the confident, perhaps even arrogant, public face of Reform.
After posting this on Bluesky a few days ago, a follower suggested that if Farage were offered the prime ministership by a genie in a bottle, he would take them up on the offer immediately. I think instead that he would be utterly horrified, and use his wish to destroy all evidence that the offer ever was given. He may be extremely serious about Reform doing very well, and using its success to force the two main parties adopt his positions and talking points, but is he serious about anything beyond that?
It’s easy enough to be a radical campaigner against institutions. It’s much harder to run them, let alone building them – and leaving aside building them to last too. Farage’s schtick is beguiling and seductive to his followers, but what will it mean for them in power? Can he move beyond tearing down institutions?
If Nigel Farage were an artist, he would be a celebrated impressionist. He has a refined, seemingly effortless talent for painting the distilled essence of a political movement. What does Reform stand for? Even seasoned politicos might struggle to name or detail a Reform policy, but the party’s “vibe” couldn’t be easier to feel. A trompe-l’œil realist, interested in photographic policy detail, Farage is not and has never been. This becomes clear the moment he is pressed on details — the bread and butter accountability of detailed political interviews is never worth his time. As one of his erstwhile Ukip MEPs, Patrick O’Flynn recently wrote: “Broad brush strokes and killer sound bites are still prioritised over detailed policy work.”
The finesse of how to govern well can wait — for now, Reform can simply ride the wave, propelled by the euphoric high of political momentum. Realism and political temperance comes second to whether “The Establishment” is running scared. The old playbook is simple: identify ruling power structures that feel distant and aloof, be they parties or institutions, and campaign against them in an uncompromising, boisterous fashion — all washed down with an (imperial) pint of blokish bonhomie.
But Farage’s script, refined over a political career spanning decades, is changing: “I’m not mucking about — I’ve got one goal, and that is that Reform wins the next general election,” Farage told assembled party members at the launch of Reform’s local election campaign in late March. That’s quite a shift in political aim: from outsider revolutionary to governor. Thursday’s local elections are being spoken of as a mere staging post, before the march onwards to No. 10. If we are to take Farage’s stated ambition seriously — and we need to, with a recent gold-standard MRP poll putting Reform ahead of Labour and the Tories in seats — then we need to ask what a detail-light party might look to actually implement in power. Policy is harder than it looks…
To read this full article on how Reform is less united than it appears on the surface, visit UnHerd using the link here: https://unherd.com/2025/04/farage-has-no-plan-for-power
He didn't go to Oxbridge , has had a real job and he's run a business, just those three factors alone makes him attractive to a lot of people, the main three parties are one and the same and utterly useless.
No he doesn’t, yet he’s still vastly more popular than the leaders of the other parties. That surely tells us something…