Farage: Fit, Feared, and Here to Stay
The Reform leader breaks his silence on health rumours.
The establishment is trying to kill off Nigel. For weeks now, rumours have been swirling about his health, to the point that the Reform leader has today felt the need to set the record straight. In an interview with the Times [1], he declares that he’s fit and well, saying that when he compares himself to his old school friends, he looks pretty good.
It’s quite obvious what is going on here. Reform UK has now been leading the polls for months. Indeed, it has topped the last 80 consecutive polls. According to the latest YouGov tracker, the party has a solid seven-point lead over Labour, polling at 29% versus Keir Starmer’s 22%, the Tories having slumped to just 17%.
Much to their horror, the two so-called “main parties” are having to accept that this success is not a flash in the pan. Slowly but surely, they are coming to a sickening realisation: the game they have long played, passing political power back and forth between them every eight to 12 years, is almost certainly over.
What to do? With the economy flatlining, asylum seekers continuing to pour across the Channel, the country in the grip of a petty crime wave, and taxes reaching ruinous levels, the fundamental drivers for Reform’s extraordinary popularity are not going away.
Even more alarmingly for parties losing votes, Farage is personally popular with voters in a way that few political observers thought possible before he became an MP. After a year of tight discipline and highly skilful political positioning, the man himself is far less divisive than he was once considered. Indeed, a growing number of people now actually like him. According to the latest YouGov political favourability ratings, almost a third of voters (30%) now have a positive view of the Reform leader (versus 23% for Keir Starmer and 19% for Tory leader Kemi Badenoch). For someone who has spent the last 25 years as a political outsider, the target of relentless smear campaigns, these numbers are quite astonishing.
Cue ill-concealed panic in both the Tory and Labour parties. For the Conservatives, the turquoise surge is existential. And Labour? Having thought Farage was a “Tory problem,” their strategists now realise he poses at least as much of a threat to their seats as he does to the beleaguered Badenoch.
As they survey this very new landscape, trying to figure out what the hell to do, they have one big hope: that the Reform leader will fall under a bus. At 61, he still smokes and drinks, and works insanely hard, routinely rising before 5 am. Virtually never off duty, having risen before dawn, he regularly attends fundraising dinners that stretch late into the evening. This is a man who has twice cheated death – once many decades ago, in a near-fatal car accident, and then miraculously surviving a plane crash. They don’t quite dare say it, but the truth is that his opponents are desperately hoping his luck may run out. Privately, they point out that the four years to the next election is a very long time, and whether he gets sick, exhausted, or just fed up, he may not stay the distance.
Well, bad news, folks. This is a man on a mission, and he’s here to stay. So sorry to disappoint, but there’s nowt wrong with Nigel.
The second blow for Labour and the Tories? Were the worst to happen, and for whatever reason, Farage were unable to continue as party leader, Reform UK will not suddenly implode or just melt away. There is now such a political head of steam; such a groundswell of support behind what Reform stands for, that it is hopelessly naïve to imagine that without him, it will all evaporate.
Yes, he is still Reform’s single biggest asset, and he intends to be Prime Minister. However, he is more than aware that success or failure cannot hinge on the performance or health of one man. That’s why he’s bringing in new talent, building a movement packed with talented figures. Some day, one or other of these people will become his successor. But as Tom Cruise says in Top Gun: Maverick, when top brass try to write him off, “not today.”
All this is nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of the terrified and increasingly desperate beneficiaries of what was once the status quo.
Come what may, Reform UK is here to stay.