Nigel farage

The man from Reform had barely sat down at our table at the French bistro when he leant forward conspiratorially and asked: ‘What’s Boris up to?’ The suspicion that Boris Johnson, Britain’s 55th premier, must be up to something is a familiar one. For the first time in several years, however, the question is interesting. And the fact that Reform is raising it gives a small insight into the current state of politics. The query came just hours after Johnson had taken to Instagram to mark the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum, the defining moment of his career and of our politics since. The 17.4 million voters who backed the Leave campaign were right to do so, he said, before going on to hail the freedoms of Brexit.

Every twist in the winding road of our politics brings a latest thing to say. These wisdoms usually survive a season or two before succumbing to the new thing to say, which often asserts the opposite. This summer we have ‘Britain is moving into an era of multi-party politics’. Allow me, therefore, to leap ahead with my candidate for its successor: ‘Reports of the death of two-party politics are greatly exaggerated.’ I don’t say our current governing party and principal opposition must always be the two parties in question. Labour may be dying. The Tories may be showing signs of life. In both cases I fervently hope so. But whether or not these remain our two options in elections to come, the tendency will always be for the choice to boil down to two.

Sydney For three decades, Australia’s political Establishment has been predicting Pauline Hanson’s demise. But whenever critics tried to administer the kiss of death to the flame-haired firebrand, it somehow functioned as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Today her One Nation party is polling at levels once thought unimaginable. In recent polls, it even surpasses support for Australia’s centre-left Labor government and centre-right Liberal-National party opposition. Last month, One Nation won its first lower-house seat. Whatever happens next, Hanson has become one of the most consequential figures in modern Australian politics. To British readers, Hanson is often described as Australia’s answer to Nigel Farage. The reverse is closer to the truth.

There was a moment backstage, before I interviewed Kemi Badenoch for a Spectator event this week, when I felt like John Sergeant with Margaret Thatcher bearing down on him as he pronounced her leadership in difficulty. I suggested to Badenoch that she was a rare example of a politician I had changed my mind about. ‘You mean you were very negative before?’ she said, fixing me with the full alpha female glare. I muttered something placatory, but the truth is that a year ago I thought she was rubbish – and that was the mainstream view in her own party. She was arrogant, flat-footed, absenting herself from a stage that was being dominated by Nigel Farage, resistant to advice, convinced she was great at PMQs when even Keir Starmer was wiping the floor with her.

The loudest man in politics knows when to keep his silence. Nigel Farage held his tongue on Monday as Keir Starmer’s premiership floundered. Aside from a few PFLs – proper f***ing lunches – to celebrate the local election results, the Reform UK leader was already looking to the next challenge. Like a shark, Farage keeps moving forward, into new waters, hungry for more. One ally sums up his approach to politics in a single word: ‘Momentum’. For the past few months, Farage has had one goal: destroying the Tories. The figure ‘1,453’ was the total of gains proudly pumped out on Reform’s Instagram. For Farage, 7 May was the political equivalent of the fall of Constantinople – the point when the Conservatives ceased to be a national party.

Dear wannabe leaders of Britain. What a lot of you there are! I’ve been writing about leadership and the craft of politics for 25 years and I’m sick of watching the same mistakes repeated. I’m keen to help. So listen up Nigel, Kemi, Zack, Ed, Ed, Andy, Angela and Wes – and you Keir, it’s never too late to learn. 1) TL;DR: If you have no time for impertinent journalists, here’s the executive summary. You need a plan, plus strategy and tactics to deliver it. You need a narrative to explain it to voters. You need the charisma and application to take your party, the civil service and the country with you. And you need to build a team to do the bits that you cannot accomplish alone.

“We have an elite who have been in power for at least the last 40 years, who fundamentally don’t like western civilization and they wanna destroy it,” said Liz Truss, who was prime minister for 49 days in 2022, as she spoke to a half-full room at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas. It was her third such speech. The Liz Truss who addresses American audiences bears little resemblance to the awkward, growth-obsessed economics nerd who somehow ascended the greasy pole of British politics, only to slide back down at staggering speed. She’s changed her vocabulary – and her talking points. The few attendees of her panel, snappily titled “Europestan: Can Europe Survive?” could hear Truss lambasting “grooming gangs” and “transgender ideology.