Last July, concluding his election victory speech after winning in Clacton, Nigel Farage announced that after inflicting grievous damage on the Conservative party that night, Reform UK would now “be coming for Labour”. Since then, on issues such as the nationalisation of Britain’s beleaguered steel industry, Mr Farage has carefully positioned his party as sympathetic to working-class concerns and fears. His heavily-trailed speech on Tuesday, in Westminster, was the most direct attempt yet to present himself as a new spokesperson for Labour’s traditional blue-collar voters.
The most talented and cynical political opportunist of his generation, Mr Farage knows where the openings lie. Labour has tied itself in unedifying knots over its deeply unpopular cuts to the winter fuel allowance, and agonised over reversing the Tories’ two-child benefit cap. Mr Farage simply marched his party into the vacant political space where a centre-left party should be. Even if the government belatedly U-turns on both issues, Reform will be able to claim to have blazed the trail.
