Nigel Farage repairs his right flank - but what's next? On the latest announcements in the battle for the British right Matt Goodwin Apr 25
It was another big day in British politics yesterday, with Nigel Farage and Reform heading to Dover to set out a number of policies and positions that are designed to shore up their right flank ahead of crunch elections next week.
And there’s doubt the announcement was significant.
Under a future Reform government —which polling released yesterday suggests is entirely plausible—there will be a new ‘Minister for Deportations’, who as the name implies will oversee the deportation of Britain’s rising number of illegal immigrants.
There was also confirmation from Nigel Farage that Reform still intends to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), something we have also called for, alongside repealing the Human Rights Act (HRA), clamping down on asylum claims and “no longer allowing illegal migrants to stay in the United Kingdom”.
All this puts clear turquoise water between Reform and the established parties, and shows how Farage and his team plan to keep a very strong focus on their core issue of immigration between today and the next general election, in 2029.
Clearly, much of this also marks a response to the Nigel Farage-Rupert Lowe fallout last month, during which more than a few people suggested Farage and Reform have “gone soft” on immigration and can no longer be trusted to break the elite consensus.
Yet, as I wrote at the time, this was always a misread of the situation.
Both Reform and Farage, who I know well, have always been fully committed to leaving the ECHR and reforming if not repealing the Blairite legislative legacy so that the British people can deport illegal migrants, including those arriving on the small boats, and remove an estimated 11,000 foreign criminals in our prisons.
So, Farage’s announcement this week, alongside his recent speech in Birmingham, is clearly an attempt to neutralise this criticism and repair his right-wing flank.
But it’s also about more than this.
EXCLUSIVE: Reform's Roadmap to Power EXCLUSIVE: Reform's Roadmap to Power Matt Goodwin · Jan 31 Read full story Inside Team Reform, there’s an awareness that setting out and maintaining strong opposition to mass immigration is now absolutely central to cutting across the traditional left-right divide that has long structured British politics.
Much like Brexit before it, which was powered just as much by disillusioned voters in Labour-held seats as Tory-held ones, mass immigration, Reformers point out, cuts across not only the Tory electorate but the Labour electorate, too, which, in turn, will allow Farage to build a much broader and more ‘geographically efficient’ coalition.
It will not only allow Reform to outflank Kemi Badenoch and the Tories, who remain unwilling to campaign to leave the ECHR and overturn the Blairite legacy, but will also allow Reform to reach deep into traditional Labour territory —including the increasingly fragile Red Wall across northern England and Wales.
New data: the golden opportunity for Nigel Farage and Reform New data: the golden opportunity for Nigel Farage and Reform Apr 15 Read full story Look across the country, Reformers point out, and the public mood on immigration is now moving firmly in Reform’s favour. And they have a point.
As I highlighted on X this week, according to YouGov’s regular tracker, the British people have never been as negative about immigration as they are today.
Overall, close to half the country now think immigration has “been mostly bad for Britain” —the largest share since YouGov began asking the question in 2019.
Over the last six years, as net migration soared and the ‘Boriswave’ flooded into the country, the percentage of Brits who think immigration is bad for Britain rocketed from 29 to 47 per cent, meaning close to one in two Brits now think this way.
And today, this figure of 47 per cent rockets to 67 per cent among Tory voters and 73 per cent among Brexit voters, all of whom are now Farage’s core electorate. The Right, in other words, has moved further to the right on immigration while the Tory brand has simultaneously gone bust on this issue, creating even more space for Farage.
Yet Labour voters, too, are also becoming more sceptical about how immigration is changing the country —a trend Reformers have also noticed and helps to explain why Farage is now turning up the volume on this issue, especially in Labour areas.
Since 2019, the percentage of Labour voters who think immigration has been bad for Britain has nearly quadrupled, surging from just 8 per cent to nearly one-third of the entire Labour electorate.
This too represents a huge opportunity for Farage, who can use immigration and the borders to cut across the Labour Party’s vote, much like the campaign to Leave the European Union caused complete chaos in the Labour heartlands, in 2016.
“If it’s like this now”, said one Reformer, speaking to me over a pint in Westminster this week, “then what the hell will it be like after another few long hot summers with even larger numbers of illegals crossing in the boats?”
Again, they have a point.
With no credible plan to stop the small boats, with no serious reforms to slash net migration, and with spiralling public concern on both the Left and Right about how all this, in the eyes of a rising number of voters, is changing Britain for the worse, it’s hard to see how the space for Reform does not keep getting larger and larger.
Furthermore, it’s also worth pointing out that while you won’t hear this on BBC Verify and Radio 4 Today, the same polling shows that, today, only 19% of British people —not even one in five—think immigration has been “mostly good” for Britain.
While the elite class spent yesterday laughing at Farage’s speech in Dover, trying to paint him as the spokesman for a fringe minority, they have failed to grasp a fundamental point —it is they, not Farage, who represent the fringe minority.
Pro-immigration is now the fringe position in modern British politics, and one that is largely confined to an elite minority in London, Oxford, Cambridge, and Brighton who are increasingly at odds with the rest of the country, in a world of their own.
With more than two-thirds of all British people now openly supporting a push to increase the deportation of illegal migrants, on this issue it is the elite class, not Farage and Reform, who are adrift from the British people —a people who are now also becoming far more sceptical about mass immigration than they used to be.
“What we want to do over the next few years”, said that Reformer, “is turn the issues of mass immigration, ECHR membership and the border crisis into the new Brexit. The only difference is this time it won’t be 52-48; it will be more like 80-20. When you really push voters to take a view on these issues, 80 per cent of them will side with us”.
Clearly, the key question facing Reform is whether the party can now produce the detailed policy that will be required to turn these positions into practical action should, or even when, they find themselves entering public office.
Who, for example, is drafting the ‘Great Repeal Bill’ that will be needed to repeal or reform the Blairite legacy, addressing not just the Human Rights Act and the ECHR but also the Equalities Act?
Will it be ready ahead of the next general election, much like Donald Trump’s legislative activity was prepared long in advance of his arrival in the Oval Office?
What is Reform’s position on not just the ECHR but also the UN Refugee Convention, which is just as important to controlling our borders?
Where does Reform stand on not just extending but potentially scrapping Indefinite Leave to Remain and the right of millions of mainly low-skill ‘Boriswave’ migrants to stay in Britain indefinitely, and bring their relatives?
While Farage is talking about deporting people who arrive illegally on the small boats, what is his view of the estimated 1.2 million illegal migrants who arrived in Britain over the past two decades?
What will be Reform’s Rwanda-style deterrent? And how, exactly, through what means, would a Reform government slash net migration to the low tens of thousands?
These are just some of the questions that many people in Westminster are starting to ask out loud. And so make no mistake —while Reform might have repaired its right-wing flank this week these are also the questions the party will have to answer in the near future if it is going to maintain its current trajectory and fill all of the space that now exists for it in British politics.