Working for the Far-Right
Keir Starmer, Secret Agent
By Josh White
Six months after winning the UK election, Keir Starmer is off the radar.
The only party leader capturing the headlines is Nigel Farage. The discrepancy is telling.
Making things worse, Elon Musk has started to troll Starmer on social media and blame him for the Rotherham child rape scandal.
This horror story broke over a decade ago, but its devastating impact continues reverberating through British society.
All of this was great news for Nigel Farage. Trump’s right-hand man was campaigning for him already.
So, Elon Musk’s decision to take to X, formerly Twitter, to tell users that Farage should be replaced as the leader of Reform UK was a source of considerable surprise.
“The Reform Party needs a new leader. Farage doesn’t have what it takes,” Musk wrote.
This post followed a Sunday morning interview with the BBC in which Farage called Musk a “hero” for defending freedom of speech and said Musk helps make Reform “look cool”.
When pushed on the SpaceX chief’s recent outrages, Farage tried to distance himself.
“I don’t agree with everything he stands for, but I do believe in free speech,” Farage said carefully.
These mealy-mouthed words reached Musk wherever he spends his mornings. The South African multibillionaire was not pleased and decided Reform needed a new leader.
Think Tommy Robinson or Rupert Lowe.
All of this is less than a month since there were misleading reports Musk might give Reform $100 million.
It should have been perfect: Nigel Farage’s charisma and Elon Musk’s fortune.
It is difficult to say whether this split will last. Musk may support Reform UK even with Farage as leader.
However, this moment is also a chance for right-wing opponents of Farage to take a stand.
Project Populism
Nigel Farage isn’t radical enough for some right-wingers. These guys want the Reform leadership to embrace Identitarian doctrines such as remigration.
This is the old far-right dream given a new gloss: mandatory repatriation, or, more accurately, mass deportation.
The National Front once made this revanchist demand a household issue.
This spiteful fantasy of “send them all back” resonates with many voters, though certainly not a majority.
Farage has ruled out mass deportations because he thinks there aren’t enough votes in it.
He has big ambitions to launch a hostile takeover of the Conservative Party and complete its transformation into a vehicle for a hard-right populism.
This is where the contradictions begin to mount.
Many Reform supporters are animated by fantasies of a conservative revolution. They want to smash the Westminster consensus and reverse decades of mass immigration.
The dream is a dynamic British capitalism rejuvenated by the end of liberal multiculturalism and the return of national sovereignty.
Yet Farage would settle for gammon chauvinism ruling over a diverse country.
Once upon a time, Nigel Farage made the case for a Brexit that would open up to Commonwealth migrants rather than EU nationals.
He argued the British should embrace former colonial subjects over European neighbours.
We are, after all, Global Britain. So, it was meant to be India over Italy and Pakistan over Poland. This was Farage circa 2016.
Of course, he soon changed his tune once Boris Johnson relaxed visa rules and allowed non-EU immigration to surge.
If we skip back further to 2013, we also find Nigel Farage was in favour of allowing Syrian refugees to settle in the UK.
This was when public sympathy was rising following the terrible sight of dead babies on beaches.
During the 2016 election, Farage shifted far-right, backing billboards showing Syrian refugees marching across Europe to reignite fears of a foreign invasion.
His ability to follow the public mood, respond to it, and even shape it should not be underestimated.
So, Nigel Farage may be too much of a natural libertarian to support remigration, but this could change in time.
Reform is still emerging as a real political party, having been spawned as a start-up company with no formal members.
The Reform coalition combines disaffected Tory voters with a mixture of nationalist and conspiracist voters.
The latter constituents would have backed the BNP fifteen years ago – the same people who find Tommy Robinson irresistible.
The problem is Farage’s strategy depends on putting an acceptable face on British nationalism.
Robinson is a threat to this strategy with his incendiary, violent populism.
This is why the Musk story isn’t just a sideshow.
Farage has to keep Reform’s coalition together for the next four years. Otherwise, Reform will fall apart, and he will never get to play kingmaker – let alone play the king himself.
Nowhere in Six Months
Reform UK looks set to overtake the Tories in membership figures.
Reform is also giving the Conservative Party a serious challenge in the polls. The fact that this is happening under the Starmer government is no coincidence.
In six months, the Labour government has built a coalition against itself.
Old-age pensioners, farmers and many small business owners now have good reasons to loathe Kier Starmer’s new regime.
One of Labour’s first moves was to announce cuts to the winter fuel allowance, hitting pensioners hard on heating costs.
Team Starmer soon imposed a National Insurance hike on employers, raising labour costs. These were just two gifts to Reform.
At the same time, Starmer provoked a farmers’ protest outside Parliament with plans to extend a 20% inheritance tax to farm estates with a threshold of £3 million for couples.
Nigel Farage was soon joining the Barbour jacket crowd in Westminster.
But there wasn’t even a honeymoon period for Starmer, thanks to the summer riots. Sparked by the Southport child murders, it was the worst outbreak of racist violence in decades.
Before the end of 2024, Labour MPs were briefing journalists against the leadership.
There has even been talk of ousting Starmer, with Andrew Marr claiming he knows at least two possible challengers.
Never mind Elon Musk’s plans to undermine Sir Keir.
ITV’s Lobby man Robert Peston said he is “literally staggered” by the number of senior Labour figures talking about Starmer not leading the party into the 2029 general election.
This should surprise no one.
No detectable enthusiasm from the public accompanied Labour’s landslide victory in July 2024. The Tories were so unpopular that Labour could have won with a toy car as leader.
Many British journalists have forgotten Labour’s vote share was 33.7%, the lowest margin of any victory in decades.
This was a minority victory which resulted in massive seat gains thanks to the perversity of first-past-the-post.
All of the energy is on the populist right. The Starmer government is a regime of dull-eyed managerialism.
The Labour machine lacks imagination and strategy. Starmer recently confirmed this by asking regulators for ideas.
Meanwhile, Reform is outflanking Labour by calling for the renationalisation of the water industry.
This was an easy win since Labour ruled out such a move, favouring taking railway services into public ownership (though not the rolling stock firms).
It’s quite something when Nigel Farage, the self-described “last Thatcherite”, can outmatch Labour on this front.
Somehow, the former City trader has become enamoured with water communism.
It’s as if Starmer dismantled Corbynism to achieve nothing in government. He mainly holds power rather than wielding it.
The most recent announcement is about social care reform, and it’s no less uninspiring.
Labour claims it will establish a National Care Service. The plan is to start cross-party talks to generate ideas for a draft proposal by 2028.
This comes from the party that legislated the NHS within its first two years of office.
We’ve turned the clock back to when Gordon Brown was in power, having skipped the Cool Britannia hype of the first Blair term.
Starmer embodies decline with his grey rockabilly hairdo. Decline of Labour. Decline of Britain.
Some people expected better. They thought the Starmer project – built on the ashes of the Corbyn era – could deliver real change.
The left’s defeat in 2019 and subsequent fragmentation in the years since has created another opening for nationalism.
It’s an old story for those who are familiar with it. After the left’s downfall, the right rushes forward to fill the void.
Many voters are now eyeing Reform because it is the only anti-Westminster consensus option available.
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Photograph courtesy of Number Ten. Published under a Creative Commons license.