Trump victory gives UK’s Nigel Farage scent of power

LONDON — While much of the world sees the resurgence of Donald Trump with trepidation, it’s nothing but good news for Nigel Farage.

The godfather of Brexit has already staged a remarkable comeback this year — and this week’s shock U.S. election result will bolster his conviction he can go even further.

Farage, who leads the upstart, right-wing Reform UK, won a seat in the U.K. parliament for the first time at the general election in July, helping to erode the Conservative vote as the party was booted out of office.

He is now setting his sights on winning votes from Labour, which took over in government following that rout, with a mission to cut short Keir Starmer’s time in office as Trump has done by limiting Democrat rule in the U.S. to one term.

Farage’s fellow Reform MP, Richard Tice, wrote in the wake of Trump’s victory that it had been a “comprehensive rejection of the status quo” and voters “have had enough of classic, smooth wafflers who talk a good game but fail to deliver.”

Despite having won a thumping victory in July, Labour politicians are looking nervously over their shoulders at the prospect of an election fought on immigration and the cost of living — the same issues which fueled Trump’s return to the White House.

Starmer and his top team are well aware of the threat they face, but it’s not yet clear if that will be enough to stop Reform from snapping at their heels.

Claire Ainsley, a former adviser to Starmer now based in Washington, said “the populist right sees that there is a vacancy” when centrist parties do not communicate their impact and that Labour “has the opportunity now to prove that wrong.”

Gathering clouds

While Starmer was quick to congratulate Trump on his victory, his army of Labour MPs were far more gloomy about the events of Tuesday night. 

Some even voiced it aloud, with foreign affairs committee chair Emily Thornberry standing by her previous description of Trump as a “racist, sexual predator.”

One new MP, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said Trump’s success was “obviously relevant” to Labour’s quest to keep voters onside between now and the next election. 

Labour is “on notice” when it comes to demonstrating the party has made improvements to public services and living standards, they said, and warned the party could easily be turfed out if it’s found wanting.

Ben Ansell, professor of politics at Oxford University, said: “Labour have already internalized two messages from this election — that people really care about inflation and quality of economic life, and also that people really care about illegal immigration.”

He added: “It’s a terrible year to be an incumbent — and there’s an argument that you can make that’s become harder to be an incumbent party over the past two decades.”

Farage’s Reform would be well-placed to benefit both from general anti-incumbent feeling and from a demand for tougher action on immigration. 

Scarlett Maguire, director at polling firm JL Partners, one of the few pollsters to predict a clear Trump victory, said Reform would be able to say to voters: “You’ve tried the same old Conservative government, you’ve tried a Labour majority, now try us. We are actual change.”

Reform and its predecessor, the Brexit Party, were hampered in the past by a somewhat slipshod organization and a rag-tag band of candidates prone to making racist and extremist remarks.

In recent months, however, the party has been taking steps to professionalize its operation, building on its breakthrough at the last election when it won five seats at Westminster — the first they had won outright rather than from defections.

Zia Yusuf, Reform’s chairman, said: “We have the wind in our sails … and we’re going to continue with this momentum, continue to build a really effective ground campaign capability.”

He claimed membership had surged to nearly 100,000 members from 15,000 this time last year, with “people from all sorts of backgrounds” putting themselves forward as potential candidates. 

He confirmed Reform had set its sights on local and devolved assembly elections, hoping to make significant inroads in Wales and Scotland, before the next national poll. 

The Lib Dem model

A Reform resurgence is nonetheless a tall order, with the U.K.’s first-past-the-post electoral system normally acting as a barrier to smaller parties. 

Ansell said he was not convinced there were many “shy Reform voters” on a par with underreported Trump support, meaning it was not obvious how the party would make further gains. 

Maguire added that it was not yet clear how Kemi Badenoch’s election as the new Tory leader this month would affect that party’s fortunes, and predicted she could yet win back votes from Reform. 

In addition, Labour is nothing if not clear-eyed about the danger posed by Reform. 

A Cabinet minister stressed that in the battle for the next election “it’s not just about migration,” an area Reform has claimed as its own, and that, as in the U.S. living standards would be a key measure of showing working-class voters the party had delivered.

They highlighted that the recent budget delivered by Chancellor Rachel Reeves was deliberately scattered with “pocket-book policies,” including a minimum wage boost and changes to carers’ allowances. 

What now seems key to Reform’s chances is whether they can organize themselves more efficiently, adopting the strategy closely associated with the Liberal Democrats, which itself won its greatest number of seats for 100 years in July, of building up strength in specific areas of the country. 

Luke Tryl, director of More In Common polling consultancy, said “if they got sort of Lib Dem-style efficiency they could gain around 50 seats.”

This would not be anywhere near enough to form the government — but it could be enough to rob Labour of power if other parties also make gains.