Last year's Reform manifesto was fantabulously fantastical.... £90 billion of tax cuts, the income tax threshold up to £20k, stamp duty gone on anything under £750k.
Fast-forward to November, and Farage - in a surprise burst of fiscal sobriety now says none of this is possible. Debt is too high, the economy too sluggish, the markets too twitchy.
He's gone from Farage the cheeky contrarian to Farage the accountant from Croydon.
This seems to be Farage switching from his migrant bashing, beer swilling populism into a more serious character mode, and about time if Reform is going to stand any realistic chance of competing with Labour next election.
Farage needs to do more homework!
Farage seems to be offering Thatcherism without the homework: tough talk about spending cuts, but with no explanation of how to avoid spooking the bond markets like Liz Truss did in 2022. As the Financial Times noted in its post-mortem of the Truss mini-budget, markets don't take kindly to magical thinking.
And of course those most likely to be hurt the most by Reform's proposed cuts live in the very areas Farage depends on.
According to Polly Toynbee, Reform wants £9 billion in welfare cuts in constituencies where welfare dependency is sky-high. In Clacton, Farage’s own seaside fiefdom, almost 60% of adults claim some form of benefit.
So, the plan is essentially:
- Win votes in economically struggling areas
- Immediately take more money away from those same areas
- Hope they don’t notice
To my mind this shows utter contempt for the British poor - obviously Reform knows about the above stats, they're just working on the basis that people are too stupid too realise,.
Final Thoughts...
Farage is making an attempt to look more serious, grown-up and sober: a leader who can steer the country back to prosperity. He's trying to shift from fringe performer to responsible conservative.
But the problem is that Farage's whole political persona is the performance. Take away the theatrics and the EU-bashing, and what you're left with is a sort of Thatcher cosplay act with none of the infrastructure behind it.