{"id":245467,"date":"2025-11-05T14:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T14:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/245467\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T14:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T14:50:09","slug":"economic-policy-is-one-thing-nigel-farage-cant-crib-from-the-donald-trump-playbook-rafael-behr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/245467\/","title":{"rendered":"Economic policy is one thing Nigel Farage can\u2019t crib from the Donald Trump playbook | Rafael Behr"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nigel Farage loves a gamble. In his 2015 memoir<\/a>, The Purple Revolution, a whole chapter is dedicated to the then Ukip leader\u2019s appetite for risk, how he indulged it in the City and how that prepared him for a career in politics.<\/p>\n

He boasts of the time he \u201clost a seven-figure sum of money in the course of a morning on the zinc market\u201d before breezing off to the pub. He waxes nostalgic about the halcyon days of freewheeling finance, before \u201cghastly regulators\u201d spoiled the fun; when \u201cterrible cock-ups\u201d could be written off because \u201cdecimal points and all those zeros can be tricky after a three-hour lunch\u201d.<\/p>\n

Farage the commodities trader was not a details guy. Farage the politician isn\u2019t famously punctilious either, but the stakes are higher. He\u2019s backing himself to be prime minister and it isn\u2019t going to happen if voters see him as the kind of gambler who might blow the nation\u2019s budget on a boozy bet.<\/p>\n

Dispelling that notion was the purpose of a speech<\/a> by the Reform UK leader on Monday. Farage disposed of his party\u2019s 2024 election manifesto and its promise of tax cuts worth \u00a390bn<\/a> because it was a tissue of fiscal fantasy. He didn\u2019t put it quite like that. He observed that Britain\u2019s sluggish growth and high debt demand sober management of public finances. He hinted that Treasury savings could one day be made by unpicking the sacred \u201ctriple lock\u201d that guarantees perpetual real-terms rises in the state pension.<\/p>\n

Liz Truss was not named, but the new, parsimonious Farageonomics has been formulated to silence comparisons between Reform\u2019s agenda and the budget misadventure<\/a> of the Tory prime minister whose unfunded tax giveaway incinerated the nation\u2019s financial credibility.<\/p>\n

By dabbling in macroeconomics, Farage also wants to show that he has range; that the policy repertoire extends beyond complaining about migrants. He can also complain about the Bank of England (too cautious over cryptocurrencies), the Financial Conduct Authority (captured by a \u201cdiversity agenda\u201d), public sector pensions (\u201ca massive liability\u201d) and net zero (a burden on energy bills).<\/p>\n

Europe can\u2019t be the scapegoat it once was, but the old moan can be retuned to a post-Brexit key: the opportunity of deregulation from Brussels red tape has been \u201csquandered\u201d. Killjoy regulators tame the animal spirits of the market. The bureaucratic state lavishes welfare on work-shy malingerers and banishes enterprising wealth-creators. The remedy is to slash disability benefits and use tax breaks to entice self-exiled non-doms back from Dubai. The fiscal details of how that might all add up \u2013 the decimal points and zeros \u2013 remain shrouded in post-prandial haze.<\/p>\n

Nigel Farage and Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House, 4 September 2025. Photograph: Twitter<\/p>\n

The trademark colour and name of Farage\u2019s party has changed since The Purple Revolution, but the argument hasn\u2019t evolved. The biggest difference is in his delivery, which has become less hectoring, more weary. Maybe Farage was deliberately sounding leaden to emphasise his commitment to fiscal responsibility, but he came across as a man who is boring even himself with the usual shtick.<\/p>\n

This may be why he regularly asserts that the next general election will come in 2027. There is no reason why Keir Starmer would choose to go to the country two years before the constitutional deadline, but Farage needs the vote to come as soon as possible. To complete the transition from protest vehicle to plausible prime minister, the Reform leader needs to woo uncertain voters who think he could be dangerous. That reassurance has a cost in radicalism.<\/p>\n

Momentum depends on the keenest supporters staying whipped up in a state of visceral outrage, while respectability means keeping a lid on Reform MPs\u2019 and councillors\u2019 most luridly racist<\/a>, outlandish and violent opinions. Affecting mainstream seriousness and cultivating insurrection at the same time is a chore. The strain is showing.<\/p>\n

Economic policy poses a particular challenge because the US rightwing populist model, Farage\u2019s inspiration in most areas, resists adaptation to British financial circumstances. Not that it hasn\u2019t been tried. Kent county council, Reform UK\u2019s flagship local authority, promised to implement<\/a> Doge-style cuts to administrative waste, inspired by Elon Musk\u2019s maverick assault on the US federal budgets. The result was a chaotic display<\/a> of unprofessional political dysfunction.<\/p>\n

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Doge was no triumph in Washington either, but the US context is very different. Normal rules of fiscal rectitude don\u2019t apply \u2013 at least, not yet<\/a> \u2013 to the country that issues the planet\u2019s reserve currency and can always find buyers for its debt.<\/p>\n

This \u201cexorbitant privilege<\/a>\u201d extended to the world\u2019s richest and most powerful state is what allowed Donald Trump earlier this year to implement tax cuts<\/a> that will drive the US deficit up into the region of $3tn-$4tn by the end of the decade. The White House claims the budget will be self-repairing with money generated by newly stimulated growth. That\u2019s also what Truss said. The bond market was not convinced.<\/p>\n

Trump also thinks tariffs imposed on other countries will be a substitute for domestic tax revenue. He\u2019s wrong both conceptually and arithmetically. Tariffs are an import tax paid ultimately by US consumers, not foreigners, and the Treasury income hardly dents the deficit. But for now the absurdity of it just hangs in the air, defying economic gravity.<\/p>\n

That trick is not available to a UK prime minister. Nor is Trump\u2019s habit of shaking down<\/a> US corporate giants for equity and cash<\/a>. If Reform so much as flirted with Trumponomics in an election manifesto, markets would convulse at every opinion poll putting it in the lead. Labour would correctly warn that a vote for Reform is a vote to bankrupt Britain.<\/p>\n

Farage is a gambler, not a fool. He knows he has to moderate his tone and get across some budget details. But attention to detail has never been his thing and responsibility bores him. Maybe he can win without it. He might fancy the odds on Labour<\/a> continuing to flounder, the Tories failing to get their act together and that combination being enough to put him in Downing Street. And yet it is revealing how vulnerable the Reform leader obviously feels on the economy. His old script is stale, and without the Maga playbook to crib from, he really has nothing new to say \u2013 and a long time to be exposed not saying it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nigel Farage loves a gamble. In his 2015 memoir, The Purple Revolution, a whole chapter is dedicated to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-245467","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}