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This may seem an unusual boast for a political journalist, but I do not have any inside information about Nigel Farage’s intentions. Some of my colleagues have spoken to people around him, who deny that he is “close to throwing in the towel”, but they would say that, wouldn’t they?
I can only observe Farage’s demeanour in public, and his record, and judge that there is a chance that he will walk away.
He seems genuinely upset about the intrusion into his family’s privacy. Again, I do not know all the details, but he talks about it a lot, including yesterday. He is also concerned about his own safety, and after the killing of Ann Widdecombe no one can say that he is being unreasonable.
I think it is terrible that any public figure should feel so threatened, and hope that the police take their responsibility for protecting him and his family seriously. Some people made fun of Farage yesterday for wrongly claiming that the delay to his appearance on stage at the Reform conference in Birmingham was because he had been advised by counter-terrorism police of a threat to him. The police said that they had given him no such advice, but it is perfectly understandable if the private security people around the Reform leader are jumpy.
The repeated interruptions of Farage’s speech by demonstrators confirmed that many people who have no interest in his wellbeing had gained access to the hall.
Farage’s fears are the subtext of the £5m secret gift story. The story makes sense only if we understand how reluctant Farage was to re-enter politics at the 2024 election. It wasn’t just the intrusion and the danger; it was the loss of earnings, particularly in America, and the sheer belly-aching grind of politics – the long hours, the travel, the managing of egos.
Christopher Harborne, the Thailand-based crypto investor, is a great admirer of Farage and had already donated to Reform. He thought Farage could be prime minister if he could be persuaded to return to the leadership of the party and to stand (again) for parliament. He and Farage discussed it. Harborne judged that £5m would do the trick. He was correct.
Rishi Sunak tried to catch Farage off-guard by calling an early election, and nearly succeeded. Farage ruled out a return but then changed his mind. It is rare in politics to put a precise price on a personal decision, but in this case Farage was so reluctant to return to the fray that it took £5m to persuade him.
In all the hoo-ha about whether he was required to declare the gift under the rules for new MPs – of course he was – the true significance of the money has been overlooked. It is a measure of how much Farage really doesn’t want to be where he is.
So will he quit? I think there is a 33 per cent chance that he will, but that probability is based not just on his £5m reluctance – it includes an element of forecasting the movement of at least three other cogs in our five-party system.
The first cog is Kemi Badenoch. We journalists got ahead of ourselves when one opinion poll showed the Tories overtaking Reform. But we were probably early rather than wrong. Reform support has been slipping and Badenoch’s personal ratings have been rising. If the Tories become the leading party of the right, Reform will slip back to what it was at the last general election: an irritant to the Tories rather than a replacement of them. They could stop the Tories winning, while being unable to win themselves.
The second cog is Andy Burnham, uniting the left and even stealing some of the northern working-class support that Reform regards as its own. The third cog is Zack Polanski, whose personal ratings have declined as many Green voters have returned to Labour.
If that is how politics looks over the next year, and assuming that Burnham is never so popular that he is foolish enough to call the early election that Farage predicted, then I think Farage might decide that two more years of telling Zia Yusuf off for his intemperate tweets is not worth it for the prize of another fourth-place finish.
Without Farage, I think Reform will shrivel into insignificance.
However, Farage’s departure is at one end of a range of possibilities. At the other end, Reform could recover, brushing aside what Farage called the “little local difficulty” of appearing to solicit illegal donations, powered by the one issue above all that mobilises the party’s support: immigration.
The protocole d’accord agreed with Jordan Bardella, who could be prime minister of France next year, would be a momentous shift in the attitude of the French government. If the French would agree to take back migrants intercepted in the Channel – the protocole says they would “ordinarily” be accepted – it would end the crossings.
If Bardella becomes prime minister, and if Farage can convince British voters that only he could secure the deal – and that the rest of his programme is not too ridiculous – then Farage could make his fourth (or would it be fifth?) comeback from the political dead.
If not, Badenoch will be the winner. There is an asymmetry in our five-party system. As Sam Freedman points out in his Comment is Freed blog, Labour and the Liberal Democrats are not in competition with one another, and their voters will happily opt for whichever party has a better chance of winning. The Conservatives and Reform, on the other hand, are fighting for the same seats, and their voters are much less likely to vote tactically for the other party.
One of them must crush the other. If Farage quits, it will be Badenoch who does the crushing.
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