What does Farage want?

Does Farage want to save the Tories, take them over or destroy them and build from the ashes? And do he and his colleagues want the same thing?

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If you stopped 100 people in the street and asked them who the leader of Reform is, I would be willing to bet that the majority would tell you it’s Nigel Farage. That he isn’t (though he is the majority shareholder of the party that is actually a company) is one of the things that raises a question mark over how the party will act in the coming year.

Reform is, in fact, run by Richard Tice. Tice doesn’t have anything like the star power of Farage (and I know my readers might flinch at that description of Farage, but I am afraid it is undeniably true that his charisma is a lot of what has propelled his extraordinary political career). But he and his party have risen steadily in the polls even as the Tories have declined with a recent YouGov poll putting them only eight points apart with the Tories on just 20 per cent and Reform on 12 per cent.

Another poll, this time showing seat-by-seat results (which was clearly commissioned and designed to try to influence Rishi Sunak to do the bidding of his right wing over the Rwanda bill) showed scores of Tories losing their seats, with all of the ‘Red Wall’ falling and other inroads into Tory heartlands by Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

This was splashed exclusively in the Telegraph and came with Telegraph analysis that bit was the Reform vote that was making a significant difference. This was fairly quickly debunked by You Gov themselves (in what seemed like quite an unusual move) but the fact that this is a narrative that is building on the right shows the place that Reform is occupying in the Tory debate simply by existing. They were not predicted to win any seats in that MRP poll but most of the ensuing debate was about them.

Just before Christmas, Tice offered senior members of his party a ‘cast iron’ guarantee that he would not repeat Farage’s move in 2019 of standing down Reform MPs running against incumbent Tories. Today, Tice has claimed that he is in talks with “multiple” Tory MPs to defect to Reform.

As we head towards an election that seems like it will have a slightly inevitable conclusion (the poll that had the Tories on 20 per cent had Labout at 47 per cent), eyes are turning to Farage and Reform to see what they will do to inject their own brand of mischief into the election.

I don’t know - and have never met - either man. I can’t claim to look inside their hearts and souls. So, instead of claiming either insider knowledge of clairvoyance, I thought it would be better to think about what the considerations look like for Farage and for Reform and how those might play out for the Tories.