Friday, 21 March 2025

The Brexit reformation

It was always inevitable that once Britain had left the EU it would become more and more difficult to keep tabs on what Brexit means. The consequences are so diffuse, so varied and, often, so technically abstruse as to certainly be beyond the abilities of any one person to catalogue. Many of those consequences are economic, but perhaps the most difficult to chart are the ways Brexit is re-forming British politics [1].

It was also inevitable that Brexit would become bound up with ongoing international politics, as the UK sought a reformation of its relationships not just with the EU but within the international order generally.  What couldn’t have been predicted, even until very recently, was how that international order was going to be so radically upended, making Brexit at once something rather minor and yet recasting it as a moving part within something so major.

Framing events

All of which is a rather longwinded way of saying that it is becoming increasingly difficult to write this blog, and that the ‘beyond’ parts of its ‘Brexit and Beyond’ title increasingly overweigh the narrowly ‘Brexit’ parts. Both nationally and internationally, the ‘beyond’ issues are now inextricably linked with Trump and the new global divide I wrote about in my previous post. There have been any number of news stories about this global divide in the last fortnight, most of which can be framed through four inter-related questions:  

·         To what extent will it lead to closer defence and security integration between the EU and the UK, including integration of military operations, equipment procurement, intelligence sharing etc., and under what terms would/ could these occur?

·         If such EU-UK defence integration happens, will it be accompanied by, and perhaps make more extensive than might otherwise have been envisaged, deeper economic and regulatory integration?

·         Would EU-UK integration in either or both of these senses be precluded by, or go alongside, a divergence in how each partner related to the US, for example and in particular as regards some form of UK-US ‘economic deal’ struck (including perhaps exemption from Trump tariffs) at the same time as the EU-US relationship becomes more hostile (including perhaps a prolonged trade war)?

·         To what extent is the US going to detach itself so far from international norms and constitutional propriety as to make it impossible for the UK to sustain anything resembling a normal relationship with it (whether because US malfeasance becomes too gross for the UK to ignore, or because the US turns decisively and aggressively on the UK)?

At least some answers to these questions are likely to emerge over the next couple of months. Meanwhile, there is, arguably, little point in trying to read the runes of every report of every meeting and statement to try to anticipate what these answers will be.

Looking further ahead, new questions will emerge, some of which by definition cannot be predicted, not least because so many of the key actors, especially Trump, are unpredictable in their very nature. But perhaps the most predictable question (though not its answer) is what would happen, including, especially, how would Trump react, if Putin commits new acts of aggression, and in particular if these are committed against the personnel or territory of a NATO member?

An important sub-set of this question is what would happen if the UK (along with other countries) deploys some form of ‘peace-keeping’ force in Ukraine and it comes under direct Russian attack? At that point, certainly if the US fails to give military backing, then we will be in a dramatically new and dangerous situation, which will make Brexit, even in its most extensive meanings, a triviality.

The Reform fiasco

Meanwhile, and to some extent connected, the effects of Brexit on domestic politics continue to unfold. Of these, currently the most fascinating is the colossal mess that Reform UK has got into. That’s not say it is particularly surprising, for all the reasons which led me to write, immediately after last year’s general election result, that “it would not be absurdly risky to bet on Reform imploding before we get to the next election”. True, it hasn’t imploded yet, but, then again, we are less than a year into the electoral cycle.

The continuing presence of Nigel Farage and a Farageist party is, perhaps first and foremost, a reminder of David Cameron’s disastrously ill-judged attempt to see off the threat of UKIP by holding the referendum in 2016. It is arguable that this was not the sole reason the referendum was held, but it is unarguable that it was high on the list. The failure of that decision was, with bitter irony, a double one: not only did it unleash the disaster of Brexit, it also installed Farage and Farageism as a central part of the political landscape, and it did so to the detriment not just of the Tory Party but of British politics generally.

Farage’s continuing presence is also a reminder of his dishonesty and egotism. After all, he resigned UKIP’s leadership shortly after the referendum, his political ambitions supposedly achieved, only to go on to create the Brexit Party and then Reform. No doubt he would present that as ‘defending Brexit’ from ‘betrayal’, but his decision not to challenge Tory incumbents in the 2019 election opened the door for Boris Johnson to enact Brexit in a form which Farage regards as, precisely, a betrayal and a failure. Lacking even that avowed purpose, Reform exists as a rag-bag of populist complaints, most centrally about immigration, as well as being a fresh vehicle for his ego. British populism did not just bring Brexit about, it was also, itself, changed by Brexit since it lost what had been its defining cause.

There’s every reason to think that Farage’s ego, and more specifically his difficult and unpleasant character, is a big part of the current fiasco within Reform. After all, there is a very long list of people he has fallen out with during his political career. It’s true that, looking at some of the names on that list, it isn’t hard to imagine there were, to say the very least, faults on both sides. For that matter his current colleagues, including his fellow MPs, are not exactly the sort of people that anyone half-sane would want to go camping with. Even so, it is hard to deny, and easy to imagine, that Farage is an almost impossible person to work with. Yet, like it or not (and many of his present and former allies are clearly amongst those who do not), his character has a public appeal that no one else on the populist right of British politics enjoys.

Farage’s political strategy

However there has always been more to Farage’s capacity to mobilize significant numbers of voters than his character (or, perhaps more accurately, his persona). Whatever party he has led, he has had a clear strategic sense about the nature of those voters and what appeals to them. He accurately recognized that weirdos like Godfrey Bloom or Gerard Batten did not have that appeal, regardless of their beliefs, but he also recognizes that he himself would not have that appeal if he were openly to embrace far-right politics. Farage’s political skill, and it is a considerable one, is to appear ‘normal’, even genial, and ‘sensible’, even reasonable, in order to appeal to relatively mainstream voters, whilst being convincing to those on the far right who can hear his ‘dog whistles’ (I wish there was a less clichéd term than that).

In this sense, the current blow up should be understood as being about much more than personalities, for all that they are relevant. It is actually about two, related, matters of substance which derive from Farage’s political strategy. One is the autocratic and undemocratic way in which he runs Reform. Whilst this, too, no doubt reflects his character, it also reflects his experience, particularly in UKIP, of a party of what David Cameron in 2006 called “fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists”. It was a jibe which was all too obviously true and, although that didn’t matter in terms of UKIP’s core support, it did put a ceiling on what it could achieve electorally. The hastily created Brexit Party had similar problems. Hence, when creating Reform, Farage wanted to be able to exert much more control over his party and that, too, was partly a consequence of Brexit since, unlike UKIP, Reform can’t make use of proportionally representative European elections to build a power base.

The related issue of substance is his determination to ensure that his party’s ‘dog whistles’ to the far right remain just that. This means, firstly, trying to exclude those who do not have his consummate skill in judging how to pitch messages so that only the dogs hear them (or, at least, that they are deniable when anyone else hears them). Even more importantly, it means excluding those who do not even attempt such subterfuge, and are openly on the far right. That certainly doesn’t mean, as Farage likes to claim, that he is somehow engaged in marginalizing the far right: rather, he has sought to harness the far right without frightening off other, less extreme, voters. It is therefore no coincidence that, just as Farage left UKIP in 2018 (having already stood down as leader) over its links with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) and the far right, so too are those links central to current events within Reform.

The far-right riots

The immediate roots of these events go back to last summer’s far-right riots and, crucially, to Keir Starmer’s robustness in correctly insisting that they were, indeed, “far-right thuggery”. This caused much outrage on the political right which, whilst largely confected, brought to the fore the relationship between the ‘respectable right’ and far-right extremism. The effect was to  expose the two-faced nature of Farage’s entire ‘dog whistle’ strategy of stoking division by, supposedly, ‘just asking questions’ about the causes of the riots whilst insisting that he had never had anything to do with “the Tommy Robinsons and those who genuinely do stir up hatred”.

Shortly afterwards, Robinson was jailed, not in relation to the riots, but for contempt of court and breaking an injunction in relation to his hounding of a Syrian refugee, prompting a far-right rally in his support. Like Farage, Reform Deputy Leader Richard Tice disavowed Robinson, but others, most notably Ben Habib, argued, no doubt correctly, that many of those demonstrating were Reform’s ‘own people’. Habib, already bitter about having been ousted as Co-Deputy Leader (hardly, one would have thought, a job title to excite strong feelings) left Reform in November 2024, citing Farage’s autocracy as his main reason but clearly, as I just suggested, this autocracy and the position on Robinson are linked. At all events, Habib has subsequently been vocal in describing Robinson as “a political prisoner”.

By early January, at Reform’s East Midlands Conference, Lee Anderson, the thuggish former Tory MP who is now his new party’s Whip, was repeatedly interrupted by pro-Robinson hecklers. As I wrote on social media at the time, “… the incipient splits within Reform are a big underpriced story of the next few years (see also Habib's recent resignation). There's a very tricky tightrope between being 'respectable' and being more 'radical' than the Tories.”

Immediately afterwards, and just a day after Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk, who for months had been displaying sympathy for the rioters, and, like Habib, forthright in supporting Robinson as a ‘victim’ and a ‘political prisoner’, denounced Farage as unfit to lead Reform, and went on to suggest, at least, that Rupert Lowe would be a preferable leader. This made Lowe a potential personal threat to Farage whilst also establishing him as a standard bearer for the right of the Reform Party, symbolized not just by his praise for Robinson but by his open advocacy of “mass deportations”.

This, Lowe assured people, would apply ‘only’ to ‘illegal immigrants’, but for Farage such a policy is “politically impossible” and such language is politically unwise, precisely because of its connotations of the ‘send them all home’ repatriation policies of the far right. From this has flowed Lowe’s suspension from the party amid allegations of bullying, which have been reported to the police, and an increasingly sour war of words from leading figures in Reform, as well as a running social media battle between its different factions. At the same time, Farage’s pro-Russian, pro-Trump, and anti-Ukraine positions are, as mentioned in my last post, making him increasingly vulnerable to criticism from both within and outside his party.

Farage exposed

Whilst many of these issues are not new, what is new is that, for the first time, Farage is being pulled apart simultaneously along all of the contradictory fault lines which define his politics. To recapitulate these fault lines: first, there is contradiction between his ‘hail fellow, well met’ public shtick and the ruthlessness with which he pursues his personal ambitions. Second, there is the contradiction between his attempt to pitch to the political ‘mainstream’ whilst dog-whistling to the far right. Third, there is the contradiction between his pretensions to patriotism and his apologism for Putin. Fourth, and most recent, there is the contradiction between his admiration for Trump and Musk and the now open contempt in which he is held by, at least, the latter.

The last of these has a significance which goes beyond Farage and Reform. Although Musk is alone amongst the US radical right in his (ongoing) open criticism of Farage, he is very far from alone in his associated criticisms of the UK. In particular, the idea that last summer’s riots represented the righteous grievance of those forced to live in a multi-cultural society, along with the myth that those who received jail sentences for their actions were being penalized simply for exercising the right to free speech, is now standard in Trumpist circles, and it enfolds the UK into their wider critique of Europe (regardless of Brexit). It was even alluded to by JD Vance when Starmer visited the White House, although the Prime Minister pushed back against it. It is a certainly a standard belief amongst the UK far right, and Reform supporters more generally, including in their endless jibes about ‘two-tier Keir’.

Farage, of course, is happy to join in with much of that, but is now exposed, more than ever before, in the ‘no man’s land’ he has always wanted avoid, whereby he is neither respectable enough nor radical enough. The result is that his ability to hold together a coalition of voters is diminished. Reform voters now split almost exactly three equal ways between those who think the party would do better, worse, or no differently (or don’t know) without Farage as leader, and the percentage of those voters with a favourable view of Farage has fallen from 91% to 73% over just the last month. Yet being able to create, sustain, and grow an electoral coalition matters more than it ever has, because it is only since Brexit that Farage finally managed to become an MP and to lead a Westminster party which, implausibly but not quite ludicrously, has pretensions to government.

Wider implications

The issue here isn’t so much whether Reform, with or without Farage as a leader, loses electoral support. In fact, for all the battles going on within the party, there is no sign yet of a fall in its support in the opinion polls, and, as political scientist Professor Tim Bale has pointed out, that is very likely because it is only a very vocal minority who are engaged in, or by, those battles. The more significant issue is whether it puts a hard cap on the level of support Reform can ever expect to achieve. If so, that probably puts an end to the idea of a Reform electoral breakthrough. That would be consistent with the suggestion of another leading political scientist, Professor Ben Ansell, that, largely because of Trump, populism generally, and Reform’s populism in particular, has reached a peak. It is an analysis cautiously endorsed by political commentator Robert Shrimsley in the Financial Times (£).

However, if the party continues to poll even close to the mid-twenties it will continue to exert unpredictable effects within our electoral system, including potentially significant gains in by-elections, local elections, and the Welsh Senedd and Scottish parliament elections. That will mean a continuing temptation for both Tory and Labour parties to pander to the sensibilities of actual or potential Reform voters, anchoring mainstream political debate around their agenda. Moreover, the fact that Reform has, in effect, its own TV channel in GB News, and the puniness of its regulation, gives the party an influence well beyond that of formal political representation. Certainly my suggestion at the time of the riots that they could pave the way for a new and better conversation about immigration has proved hopelessly optimistic.

So none of this makes for a neat picture of the shape of post-Brexit politics, and still less is it the basis for a prediction of the shape of things to come. It doesn’t even tell us much about what Farage’s personal fate will be. But the recent buffeting he has received does show the vulnerabilities of post-Brexit populism in Britain and that Trump’s re-election is proving to pose significant problems for it, rather than, as might have been expected, providing a new confidence. And that isn’t just affecting Farage and Reform. Brexiter Atlanticists like Daniel Hannan are suddenly having to recalibrate to a world in which the US is no longer a trustworthy ally (£) although, of course, being Hannan, he draws the fatuous conclusion that the solution is to revive his CANZUK fantasy.

Ultimately, then, there is less of a disconnect between ‘Brexit’ and ‘Beyond’ than I suggested at the beginning of this post. Brexit was always going to leave a long trail of effects on the British polity, including on advocates like Farage, and on the UK’s relations with the wider world. But that was never going to happen in a vacuum; the world was not going to remain static. As it has turned out, not only has the world changed, but it has done so in ways which have shown Brexit and its advocates to be even more adrift and riven by contradictions than they were in 2016.

 

Note

[1] Vital as these ‘beyond Brexit’ political consequences are, I do think it is also important to keep at least trying to record the ways in which the dull empirical thud of Brexit, in its most basic meaning, keeps punching the bruises it has already created (especially as Brexit apologists continue to trot out bogus arguments try to downplay its damage). That, too, is more difficult than it used to be as media reporting of the basics has become much sparser. It just isn’t newsworthy any more, unless there is some major anniversary. Nevertheless, some stories make it through, including the report from the Food and Drink Federation that British exports of food and drink to the EU have fallen by a whopping 34.1% since 2019. Circuitously related is the growing awareness of the possibility of food shortages when ‘Phase 3’ labelling rules come into force in Northern Ireland in July under the Windsor Framework (with a concomitant extension of ‘Not for Sale in the EU’ labelling in Great Britain). And circuitously related to that are concerns about impending shortages of animal medicines in Northern Ireland. This is a particularly arcane issue, reaching deep back into the Brexit process, and relating to the way that parts of the original Northern Ireland Protocol were made subject to ‘grace periods’ for implementation. Animal medicines were one product area where implementation was deferred but, unlike human medicines, they were not included in the subsequent Windsor Framework agreement. Now, the already extended grace period is due to expire at the end of the year and, as yet, there is no agreement in place. It is yet another reminder of the consequences of the rush to ‘get Brexit done’, and the many loose ends which are still hanging as a result. As I mentioned in last week’s post, the situation of Gibraltar is another, even bigger, example of that.

5 comments:

  1. Another excellent thought provoking piece as ever Professor! Many thanks! 😊

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  2. Keep up the good work Chris - I'm still furious about Brexit

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  3. Starmer should show some courage and make use of his huge majority, admittedly on 34% of the vote. Does he not realise that about 75% of Labour supporters want to rejoin the EU? Otherwise, vote Lib Dem, on the grounds that they seem to have a little more intelligence. It may be that the debate in parliament on Monday will give our idiotic and spineless politicians the kick up the backside they so clearly need.

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  4. There's a lot more mileage left in Brexit and Beyond. Great post and long may it continue, Chris. Who could possibly have predicted back in 2016 that the UK would be dragged back towards Europe less than 10 years later in such extraordinary circumstances. Who best to chronicle these tumultuous events than Professor Grey. A bonus is watching and reading the Brexiteers turn somersaults to try and stay relevant.

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  5. Rather like waking up, hungover in a strange house after failing to leave a party the night before, 'beyond' offers little interest. In the light of day, one yearns to get back to normality and the familiar. The embarrassing things you said and did just hours ago now eagerly forgotten. A clean slate. As global and local conditions buffet us towards increased consensus and coalescence with Europe, the urge to 'move on' from Brexit will persist even if the direction switches to rejoining. It's just the 'debate' that no one wants now. We've entered the room marked 'Beyond' and found it has only the one door. Perhaps 'Brexit and Back' is a more workable (and succinct) title.

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