It is not an insult to say that I have long regarded Nigel Farage as the political equivalent of Clostridium botulinum, the bacterium that produces the deadliest natural substance known to humankind. Taken to excess, the toxin causes muscle weakness, paralysis, vomiting and the inability to speak coherently, all symptoms that are observable in the Reform leader’s enemies.
But taken in small doses, botulinum’s ability to relax constricted muscles has, literally, smoothed millions of furrowed brows; driven largely by the explosion of Botox treatments, the botulinum market is projected to grow to £21 billion by 2033, with nearly 20,000 practitioners administering around a million treatments each year in the UK alone.
The chemical analogue of Farage’s emanations has brought relief to sufferers from cerebral palsy, chronic migraines and clenching of the anus.
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There are few who now doubt that the Reform leader is the single most consequential figure in British politics over the past three decades, outlasting even Tony Blair. He will reap the rewards of his stewardship at this May’s Scottish, Welsh and local elections. Some experts expect Reform to win as many as 2,000 new seats.
But aside from electoral success, the disruptive effects of the Reform bacterium on an ossified body politic are undeniable. For many, even those who abhor his policies, Farage has been a wake-up call for British politics. He is touted by his followers as the antithesis of domination by focus groups, endless political trimming, Blairite third-wayism and Starmerite U-turns.
On the left, his advocacy of the politics of belief has been mimicked successfully by Zack Polanski. Put less pejoratively, the insurgents’ value has been, on the face of it, to restore at least the illusion of conviction in politics.
And it works. In most polls, Reform remains some eight points clear of the chasing pack. In many areas, the Greens are vying for second place, and may even be in the lead in London. Overall, the combined vote of the Labour and Conservative parties has plummeted to less than 40 per cent.
It has been evident for some decades that the configuration of British party politics has fallen out of sync with its social base. The battalions of the labour movement can no longer be marshalled as they were in the 1960s and 70s. And on the centre right, the cultural affinity between Middle Britain and the so-called “natural party of government” is slowly collapsing. With six political parties in contention, the choice before the electorate in next month’s Scottish, Welsh and local elections should be richer than it has been in my lifetime.
That is why Farage’s surrender to the demand from his new lieutenant, Robert Jenrick, that his party fall into line with prevailing political orthodoxy and bow to pensioner pressure by endorsing the unsustainable triple lock on state pensions is not merely baffling to the economically literate; it is a blow to those who hoped to see faith in politics restored.
Far from offering bold leadership, Farage — who clearly still regards the triple lock as a pointless surrender to middle-class opinion — appears to be succumbing to the philosophy of the 1848 French revolutionary Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin: “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”
I have no idea about Farage’s personal faith, if any. But caving in to orthodoxy is an odd thing to do in Holy Week for a party that loudly defends the radical promise of Christianity. Jenrick at least should know that.
Reform’s “shadow” chancellor has noisily affirmed his cultural Christianity since urging the nation to observe what he proclaimed as “Psalm Sunday” in 2025. Perhaps yesterday, he might have been reminded by the Easter reading that the founder of his supposed faith wasn’t one for going with the flow.
On Palm Sunday Christ rode into Jerusalem on an ass, mocking the Romans’ triumphal processions of chariots and warhorses. On Monday, he trashed the merchants’ stalls for their degradation of the Temple precincts. On Friday, he told the colony’s governor, Pontius Pilate, exactly where he could stick Caesar’s secular crypto-coin.
And on Sunday he pulled off the most audacious act of rebellion in western history: when they rolled away the stone from his tomb, the man they’d crucified had gone, leaving his funeral garments neatly folded, just to let everyone know that he wouldn’t be bound by the old rules.
Yesterday was a day of rest from Sunday morning political interviews; the nation no doubt breathed a sigh of relief. But whatever they might say for the benefit of the cameras, every leading politician privately acknowledges the truth about the triple lock, baldly stated by Paul Johnson, the former director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, that we just can’t afford it: “It can’t go on for ever. You’ve got to stop at some point.”
The policy will cost our cash-strapped exchequer £15 billion more in 2030 than would otherwise be the case. Its defenders point out correctly that some pensioners are asset-rich but income-poor. Fair enough. But three quarters of pensioners own their homes outright, mortgage-free. Seven out of ten have private pensions, which, on average, have risen in value over the past two decades from less than £5,000 annually to almost £8,000 a year.
And in an age when Netflix can predict your next viewing preference and even HMRC can spot that you’re a day late filing your return, it surely cannot be beyond the wit of the Department for Work and Pensions to use its £333 billion budget to identify the one in six pensioners who fall below the relative poverty line. We could then cease handing a bung to those, like me, who neither need nor deserve that extra £1,000 in our accounts over the next 12 months.
Yet, it seems that the hint of power — that special odour of Parfum de Numero Dix — has the same dismaying effect on the revolutionaries of Reform that it does on everyone else.
It would be sacrilegious to seriously compare the Reform leader’s capitulation to orthodoxy to anything that is recounted in the Bible. But any student of the New Testament will recall Jesus’s response to Peter’s plea that he should stop banging on about how he was going to die and rise again in three days, lest people think him mad and they squander the fledgling movement’s popularity: “Get thee behind me Satan … you are a stumbling block.”
Farage should have been equally dismissive of his chief disciple’s advice. He will find that the temptation to abandon his radicalism for that extra percentage point on the polls really isn’t worth the sacrifice. Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, lost everything and ended his days marooned up a mountain among the Hittites. And who remembers them now?