Why greater scrutiny of Reform UK will benefit Nigel Farage

Reform UK’s responses to increase scrutiny of the party will highlight just how badly the establishment has failed this country

Alarm bells are ringing, klaxons are sounding the alert – Nigel Farage has visited Scotland and, cor blimey, he proved more popular than his opponents expected. There is a great deal of lazy thinking about why Farage and his Reform UK party is proving attractive to a growing number of the electorate.

Some opponents think all they need to do is ‘other’ him and the party’s supporters as being “hard” or “far” right or “racist” and voters will return dutifully to their pens like the good sheep they should be, to then be shepherded to vote for the various brands of the uniparty – like lambs going to slaughter.

Unsurprisingly this misplaced strategy has not worked, but has infuriated many who believe their own opinions have not changed over the last few decades while the centrist parties have accelerated their gradual drift to the statist left. Such people find the parties they once trusted to represent them are now the very people who have betrayed them.

READ MORE: Two more Scottish councillors defect to Reform as Nigel Farage doubles down on 'sectarian' claims

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage speaks at a press conference in Aberdeen ahead of the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election (Picture: Peter Summers) | Getty Images

Political common sense

Industrial workers, people on assembly lines, tradesfolk, entrepreneurs, the self-employed and inventors in their garden sheds – all have found it more difficult to make their hard work, resilience and grounded reality be recognised and rewarded by our technocratic and managerially dominated political class.

Mothers and fathers raising their children, young couples starting out, students simply wanting to learn the skills or knowledge to further themselves are often at their wits end trying to pay the bills, make ends meet and have something left over to save up for a deposit on their first property or their forever home.

Where has the common sense gone of keeping taxes modest so people can use their own finances to make the judgment calls best suited to their circumstances? Where has the common sense gone of children learning how to read, write and count to a high minimum standard in a safe classroom before prioritising learning about birds and bees or what constitutes a woman?

When are governments going to have the common sense to live within their means, something people understand in their own lives and forget at their peril? The British government has never banked a budget surplus since 2001 when Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown was still working to the spending commitments of his Tory predecessor.

Taxing our children

Nowadays the answer to every problem is to hose public money at it, with a quango created for good measure so decisions can be taken without democratic accountability. We often talk about taxpayers’ money being spent badly, but it is more accurately borrowed money being spent badly – which means taxing the future earnings of our children and their children for spending to be made on us living now.

All the while many of our elected politicians deflect and distract voters from those genuine concerns by focusing on their own hobbyhorses and seeking to alarm us about various threats from or to the environment and about international living conditions over which we have little control and even less understanding about.

Along come some politicians who ask for the common sense that served us well in the past and they are condemned for being “populist” – as if being unpopular should be the gold standard of democratic representation.

There is no fixed position called the “centre ground” in politics, the centre is always shifting because influential politicians and parties pull the centre over to where they stand, leaving everyone else further to the left or right when they have not moved at all.

Common ground

The current gaggle of centrist geese decrying politicians like Farage as far-right or populist have not recognised that standing there with him are millions of ordinary British people who have also not changed their once common opinions towards progressives living on borrowed money.

What does exist is the “common ground” – the space where people of different parties or philosophies can find they share certain values or policy approaches. It should come as no surprise when politicians and institutions become detached from everyday realities and the priorities of ordinary people, many of whom once voted SNP, Labour, Conservative – and even Liberal Democrat – that they can find common ground with Farage whose message reflects their shared views.

Another lazy criticism being put about around Farage and Reform UK is they will not be able to make their sums add up; that before the next general election they will be undone by the detail because they have little expertise of political delivery.

This approach only underlines just how out of touch our political class is with a growing number of people who believe our governments have sought to do too much and taking us back to pre-pandemic public spending levels of 2019 or even those of 2016 would not unleash a plague of locusts or bring about a collapse of the NHS.

It also does not take account of the savings from millions spent on invented equality-based unmeritocratic jobs that collapse our productivity levels by their mere existence – or billions spent on recently invented institutions we previously got by without having. This will bring not just one-off but annual savings.

Crazed detachment from reality

The real challenge is not in finding where savings can be made but in laying the ground to convince the public that trimming back on the size of our state is the right way to make us more prosperous and then having the political will to overcome the many elephant traps the establishment will leave behind as the electorate forces its retreat.

I fully expect Reform’s response to the coming scrutiny will be to present a range of savings highlighting the establishment’s unpopular failures and crazed detachment from reality – empowering a more popular Farage in the process.

Underestimating Farage’s political judgment has been the undoing of many of his opponents – and repeating that mistake in Scotland or at Westminster simply invites the same outcome.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and editor of ThinkScotland.org