Despite having been an MP for only two years, Nigel Farage can claim to be the most consequential British politician of this century. His capacity to shift the political debate in his direction was exemplified not so much by the result of the Brexit referendum (in which Farage did not join the official Leave campaign but led his own, Leave.EU) as the staging of the vote in the first place.
Often forgotten now is that the most decisive step towards that vote was David Cameron’s 2013 Bloomberg speech in which he promised a referendum on the UK leaving the EU in the event of the Conservatives winning a majority in the 2015 general election. And one of the primary reasons for that pledge was the electoral pressure being placed on his party by Farage’s then-vehicle, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), to which two of his MPs would defect.
Having surprised most people by winning the aforementioned 2015 election, Cameron bounced into a hasty attempted renegotiation of the UK’s EU membership in the hope of getting his promised in/out referendum out of the way early, with a mandate for the UK to remain in the bloc.
But his ability to secure an advantageous deal from his EU counterparts was fatally weakened by decades of escalating Euro-bashing from him and his party, and specific actions like the withdrawal of his MEPs from the mainstream centre-right grouping in the European Parliament. All can be to some extent linked to Farage’s ability to shift the Overton window in a rightward direction.
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Best-laid plans in politics always go awry to some extent, and nearly always because of unexpected contingencies and unimagined events. Peter Chappell, a London Times reporter, has attempted to do something novel: imagine a near future in which Farage’s political vehicle, Reform UK, wins a majority in the next general election. The result is an enjoyable but horrifying read.
Though the political climate has evolved since the publication of the book, in part because Labour MPs have reacted to the prospect outlined in the book by replacing Keir Starmer with Andy Burnham, a Farage premiership remains a more than live prospect.
What would he do? This book proceeds as pacy faux-reportage of a Farage premiership, starting from where most British governments start in earnest: the broadcasters’ exit polls on election night.
Chappell’s scenario is richly imagined and made real with the detail he envisions: Rishi Sunak losing his seat narrowly; some senior Labour figures losing theirs while others hold on; Tory leader Kemi Badenoch checking her phone incessantly for a call from Farage’s team to begin coalition talks. But the call never comes because Reform have won enough seats not to need Conservatives to partner with them.
Chappell’s book is also interesting because it avoids falling into one of two lazy traps common for writers of political fiction. First, he does not assume that all political actors are solely venal (though Farage is clearly extremely venal) to the extent that their political ideology or values are irrelevant other than as vehicles for personal ambition.
Many Reform figures are plainly grifters, with deeply objectionable views (at least to me), but in most cases they seem to believe at least some of what they say. An exception to this may be Robert Jenrick, who was a prominent Conservative minister for many years before defecting, including overseeing an immigration system his new party now declaims angrily. Fittingly, Chappell imagines the craven and ambitious Jenrick as one of the first Reform MPs to publicly question the future of Farage as prime minister when the latter’s political difficulties begin.
The second hazard Chappell avoids is that he not only speculates about the things Reform will do; at least as importantly, he imagines how others will react. This is important because all political action in democracies is contingent on a range of other actors.
After wrangling with the House of the Lords and the brief prospect of a constitutional crisis, Chappell’s Farage government succeeds in beginning the process of withdrawing Britain from the European Convention on Human Rights. But the EU reacts by suspending its trade agreement with the UK, the Trade and Co-operation Agreement signed after the UK left the bloc, prompting chaos in Westminster.
A Reform minister enacts plans to drill for oil in UK waters near the Falkland Islands; isolationist US president JD Vance blocks the plans and humiliates Farage’s government by promptly recognising Las Malvinas as Argentinian territory.
If such reactions prompt some Schadenfreude in readers worried about a Reform government on the island next door (and sadly on part of this island), the book also vividly imagines the probable losers in an administration intent on vast deportation freed from the strictures of human rights constraints. And the personal tragedies that would undoubtedly unfold.
There is nothing certain about a Reform government. The events of the last couple of months, with two extraordinary by-elections, one in effect placing Burnham in Downing Street and the second called by Farage against himself, illustrate just how unpredictable politics has become in the decade since the referendum delivered by Farage.
Though Ireland features only passingly in this book, it would be prudent for people on this island to start preparing for all eventualities, especially the most unpalatable ones.
Matthew O’Toole is leader of the Opposition in the Northern Ireland Assembly
