Nigel Farage’s big tent is full of holes: We deconstruct the Reform leader's latest speech

Reform UK wants you to believe it’s on the side of working people. In reality, it serves one master.

Don’t go to a festival with Farage, you might end up a bit damp.

Beware of false prophets who come to you in tweed suits but inwardly want tax cuts and donor dinners. Now is the perfect moment for one to appear.

For the Labour government, these are grim times: the national conversation flits between immigration and the economy like a weary refrain with no resolution. Mid-term, mid-crisis, Budget month – everyone in Westminster gets itchy feet and an end-of-year malaise, and the public starts fuming or tuning out entirely.

Enter the populist: Nigel Farage, who has easy solutions to the country’s hardened problems. His speech on Monday was a sprawling grievance tour, hitting every GB news talking point: immigrants, net-zero, lefty lawyers; all responsible for our economic woes and declining living standards.

He predicted a recession, accused the government of incompetence, and declared Brexit “squandered.” He accused the Labour frontbench of being out of touch, claiming what Britain needs is more risk-taking businessmen in government – an extraordinary comment from a man who made nearly £200,000 last year promoting gold bullion.

Mostly, though, it was a Farage reset: a chance to seize the news agenda under the guise of policy. He’s “realistic” now, ready for No.10, and prepared to make the “difficult choices” of spending cuts and tax tweaks to win favour with the electorate.

In truth, the speech was less a reality check, more a chorus of hypocrisies. He told working people that Reform UK was the “party of alarm clock Britain,” yet his economic vision was straight out of a Thatcherite daydream: lower benefits, weaker worker protections, and even a lower minimum wage for young people. He says he wants to help those “who get up and go to work,” but that idea seemed to involve stripping away safeguards, removing incentives, and handing more power to their bosses.

Farage, of course, has always thrived on resentment: of Brussels, of migrants, of the “liberal elite.” But now, as Reform UK’s would-be prime minister, his anger has curdled into incoherence. Faragism is a confusing thread to follow: he must unite a working-class base fed up with declining living standards while keeping his rich mates onside. Compromise is not his style, so scapegoats are easier. He claimed Brexit’s promise of deregulation has been wasted, that the country is “worse off” than in 2016, that immigration is to blame for nearly everything, and that those claiming benefits are bankrupting the state. It is far easier to pick on the voiceless than to face the real sources of Britain’s problems: decades of underinvestment, austerity, Brexit and short-term political decision making.

While punching down, it’s clear Farage isn’t fighting for those struggling to pay rent or put food on the table, but for hedge funders and non-doms whose absence might make his dinner parties less lively. His version of “fiscal realism” – some tax cuts, but not as many as he’d like – is just as self-serving. Sweeping cuts, he says, aren’t possible given the debt. Except, of course, when it comes to inheritance tax on farms or raising thresholds for high earners. Austerity for the many, relief for the few.

Even when pressed on his own team, Farage dodged. Reform isn’t a one-man band, but a “work in progress”, he claims. And yet the spotlight remains fixed squarely on him. For all the talk of building a movement, the party is still a stage for one man’s ego: the endless performance of Nigel Farage, political outsider, City insider, the people’s millionaire.

This is the essence of Farageism: hypocrisy as policy, politics that bends to every audience. It only works if you don’t look too closely, if you accept contradiction as part of the deal. Workers hear rhetoric about fairness; bosses get promises of deregulation. Young people are told they’ve been written off by politicians, then told that their pay is too high. The country is too poor for public investment, yet somehow must be made more comfortable for the rich.

Farage is trying to be all things to all people. In the end, he only cares about himself. His contradictions can catch up with him, but only if the media, and the public, keep pointing them out.

Populism thrives in silence. The job now, for journalists, for citizens, for anyone tired of being sold another false prophet, is to keep talking, keep questioning, and keep reminding people who Nigel Farage really is.■

About the author: Zoë Grünewald is Westminster Editor at The Lead and a freelance political journalist and broadcaster. Zoë then worked as a policy and politics reporter at the New Statesman, before joining the Independent as a political correspondent. When not writing about politics and policy, she is a regular commentator on TV and radio and a panellist on the Oh God What Now podcast.

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