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Reform UK leader Nigel Farage speaking during the party's annual conference at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, September 20, 2024
THE shadow of Nigel Farage hangs heavy over the Tory conference in Birmingham. Uniting the right is the theme of endless formal and informal debates.
That is scarcely surprising. The Tories’ huge defeat in July owed little to Conservative voters shifting to Labour, and far more to ex-Tory voters turning to Farage’s Reform UK party, or simply sitting the election out in disgust at their failures in office.
This a phenomenon reproduced elsewhere as mass centre-right parties find themselves hamstrung between their commitment to capitalist globalisation and a surging national populism.
Once derided by Farage as a ‘fraud,’ Jenrick has defected to Reform, bringing experience and political ruthlessness to the populist right — and raising the unsettling prospect of a Farage-led movement with a seasoned operative pulling the strings, says ANDREW MURRAY
Farage and other Reform-ers keep pointing to Dubai’s immigration policy – but there migrants make up most of the population and do all the work without any rights, muses SOLOMON HUGHES
Every Starmer boast about removing asylum-seekers probably wins Reform another seat while Labour loses more voters to Lib Dems, Greens and nationalists than to the far right — the disaster facing Labour is the leadership’s fault, writes DIANE ABBOTT MP