Copying Nigel Farage gives him a credibility he hasn't earned

Since UKIP’s electoral breakthrough in 2014, British politics has been largely defined by the fear of Nigel Farage. His ability to influence the political agenda, regardless of the consequences of his policies or the multiple implosions of the parties he has led, has put him closer than ever to power.

When Farage was mostly leading a Eurosceptic campaign, David Cameron called an EU referendum. Boris Johnson implemented a hard Brexit and opened the doors to a massive wave of migration to compensate for the economic shock.

Then, Farage shifted his focus entirely to migration. True to form, subsequent governments tried all sorts of gimmicks to follow up. They spent £715 million on a failed plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda without processing their applications, enough to hire 10,000 police officers for a year. Or £6,000 a month per head to host them on a barge in Dorset, the price of a luxury flat in the most expensive area of London.

Read more:

• Working class and young people are ditching Labour. ‘Aping Reform’ won’t bring them back
• In Nigel we trust! How I learned to stop worrying and love Reform UK
• The Green Party leadership race comes at a crunch time for net zero – it’s eco-populism or bust

Foreign workers coming to the UK must now earn at least £38,700 a year, and pay thousands of pounds of additional tax, from visa fees to a yearly “NHS surcharge”. Prime minister Keir Starmer is also setting a world-beating minimum of 10 years for these workers to access the benefits their taxes pay for.

All of this is done while claiming the damage done by migration to the country isincalculable, and we risk becoming an “island of strangers“.

But can this be a winning political strategy?

Sometimes, it is. After all, Johnson’s hard Brexit gamble gave him a massive majority in parliament in 2019. Denmark’s centre-left PM Mette Frederiksen won a resounding victory against the far right in 2022 while implementing a “zero asylum seeker” policy. And Nicolas Sarkozy crushed Le Pen’s party to become president in 2007 by talking tough on migration.

Sometimes, it isn’t. Neither Sarkozy nor Johnson managed to stay in power, and both of their parties collapsed in subsequent elections.

Keir Starmer’s hope is that voters to the left of Labour may be tempted by the Greens or other left alternatives but think strategically in a general election and vote for a Labour MP. In the short run, talking and acting tough on migration is a bet that the gains will be higher than the losses.

However, in the longer run, voters do not have fixed ideas.

For instance, you may think that the Brexit vote could be explained by economic factors, or different policy preferences. But newspaper coverage also had a big influence on people’s minds: research shows that areas where voters boycotted The Sun over its Hillsborough coverage voted less for Brexit than politically similar areas with different football loyalties.

Social media, and how it is presented to us, also matters. In the 2016 US election, when CNN showed (and mocked) a Trump tweet to their audience, it made them less likely to vote for him. When Fox News showed (and praised) one, they were more likely to do so.

We also try to understand what the social norm around us is: no one wants to be perceived as an extremist. Research shows for instance that when voters learn that their local area had a high Brexit vote share, they feel more comfortable expressing anti-migrant sentiments.

Farage’s ideas gain traction not only because of their repetition in the media but because voters, guided by the media and local norms, come to perceive them as valid. And since we also base our opinions on what politicians tell us, it makes complete sense for voters to infer that his points are correct when centrist parties repeat them.

This makes the job of someone like Farage an easy one.

Less than a third of voters now think, in hindsight, Brexit was a good idea. Around two-thirds dislike Farage’s American alter ego Donald Trump. Yet, Farage is unscathed by the unpopularity of the things he stood for. No one holds him accountable for Brexit, Trump or the failed policies he inspired.

He can stay on the sidelines for years, doing reality shows, earning millions on side hustles as a TV host or social media influencer, or advertising gold as part of a tax avoidance scheme. It does not matter if his political parties implode one after the other or if the people around him are incompetent. More and more voters will conclude that he must somehow be right if everyone else keeps trying to copy him. After years of chasing Farage’s political wins, mainstream parties may soon find themselves chasing him all the way to Downing Street.

Dr Renaud Foucart is a senior lecturer in the department of economics at Lancaster University.

Promises are easy to break. Sign Big Issue’s petition for a Poverty Zero law and help us make tackling poverty a legal requirement, not just a policy priority.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play