Westminster is dancing to Nigel Farage’s tune
Whether it’s Keir Starmer’s welfare U-turns or Robert Jenrick’s viral videos, parties of the left and right are scrabbling to respond to Farage’s Reform onslaught, says Emma Revell
Spending time away from the office when you work in Westminster is a strange experience. Either you keep watching the news and doomscrolling on social media, in which case you might as well still be in the office. Or you do manage to disconnect – but find that when you get back to your desk, the entire political landscape has changed.
Case in point: I recently took a short break in Cornwall followed by a work trip to Brussels, choosing option B of trying to actually disconnect. And in the week or so my attention was elsewhere, Nigel Farage appears to have become Prime Minister.
OK, not quite. But for a man who’s never been within 200 yards of Downing Street and leads a parliamentary party who could still all fit in one black cab, Farage is certainly more than capable of setting the political agenda.
Keir Starmer has opened the door to or actually announced U-turns on a couple of key policies, clearly driven by Reform’s phenomenal performance at the local elections, and subsequent polling leads.
First, well-off pensioners might be getting their Winter Fuel Allowance back. We don’t know how many or whether that will be in time for this coming winter, but the Prime Minister stood at the dispatch box and announced that the thresholds would be changed so “more pensioners” would receive the benefit.
The government would of course deny anything it does is a response to a surging Reform party, but me thinks they doth protest too much
Second, the two-child benefit cap might be for the chopping block, if Rachel Reeves can be persuaded to find the money for it. In an interview with the BBC, Deputy PM Angela Rayner seemed to confirm that reviewing the policy was “one part” of the government’s plans to tackle child poverty.
What do these two policies have in common? Well, as part of a suite of welfare-focused measures designed to support families, Farage had announced that the abolition of both policies would be part of his next manifesto. The government would of course deny anything it does is a response to a surging Reform party, but me thinks they doth protest too much.
Robert Jenrick vs the fare dodgers
The other thing generating headlines around about the time I was tuning back into Westminster was a series of videos put out by Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick showing him tackling fare dodgers on the London Underground.
Jenrick’s actions aren’t as obvious a response to Farage and Reform as Starmer’s. For one thing, Jenrick has long been ahead of his Conservative colleagues when it comes to success in the digital space. Generally, the party’s online efforts fall between the embarrassing and the outdated. But Jenrick’s videos are the exception. As one journalist pointed out the day after, 15m views (and counting) and a segment on Newsnight isn’t a bad return on investment for two videos both less than a minute long.
But part of the reason Jenrick and some of his colleagues seem so determined to up their digital game is that Reform are so very good at it. Five Tiktok videos posted by MPs have over one million views so far this year, and all of them have come from Nigel Farage. Analysis by The Guardian found that Reform’s Tiktok content was receiving almost 14 times the engagement of any other British political party.
That engagement is also organic, Labour massively outspent Reform during the last election when it came to social media and other online advertising. But in terms of cut-through, Farage and co are the only people in British politics who seem to actually be speaking the right language online.
Lefties on social media were quick to mock, branding Jenrick’s videos ‘bizarre’, comparing Jenrick to Alan Partridge, and pointing out that he didn’t have TfL’s permission to film in their stations. But the video wasn’t for them. It was for the millions of Brits, especially Londoners, who feel like every day anti-social behaviour and low-level rule breaking has been legalised. Mobile phones are stolen, Tube barriers are forced open, drugs are sold, windows are smashed – and no one cares.
The problem for Jenrick is that the voters who prioritise law and order in many cases no longer see the Conservatives as able to deliver. They also happen to be the same voters Starmer is trying to build bridges with, after his first year in office hasn’t been as well received as he would have hoped. And the same voters who polls suggest are flocking to Reform in droves.
Nigel Farage may only have his hands on a few local councils. But his grip on Westminster appears to be tightening by the day.
Emma Revell is external affairs director at the Centre for Policy Studies