Reform UK has no future without Nigel Farage, but how long can he keep convincing voters he’s the anti-Establishment voice of angry Britain?
So far, Reform’s base has given the privately-educated former commodities trader the benefit of the doubt. Yes, Farage was a member of the European Parliament for more than 20 years. Yes, he is now leader of a party with eight parliamentary and over 2,300 council seats. But he is the figurehead of the Brexit movement who captured the public anger over immigration. So far, so outsider.
In the US, senators and congressmen dislike being called “politicians” because of the negative connotations. And in the UK the whole idea of the Establishment – the BBC, the Civil Service, the Remain campaign – is now reviled by the right.
But that’s only part of the story. The term Establishment also now means something different. In its new and unaccountable form, it comprises the extraordinarily wealthy that working people can only read about. Networks of elite moneymen which sprawl the world via private islands and Eastern Europe, fingers in cryptocurrency and gambling, waving unimaginable sums of money. The sort of people who make their lawyers search for their name in the Epstein files.
