Nigel Farage said on Friday that widespread discontent with established politics offered a unique opportunity for a new party to make a real breakthrough.
Speaking at the summer conference of Reform UK, the party he founded and which has now handed over control of the party to its members, Brexit campaign leader Nigel Farage called for hard work and determination while promising the potential for big rewards.
While Farage's speech began with a very familiar theme, repeating the old pattern he used in his street speeches during the general election, the theme of the conference was the transformation of the party from a centralised organisation under Farage's direct control to a national alliance of organisations owned and controlled by its members, a move that party leaders say is crucial to putting it in fighting shape against the rapidly approaching challenges.
Farage said the 2025 English parliamentary election in May would be the “first big test” and that a “coming of age” Reform UK party should learn from the established Liberal Democrats, who have decades of experience of punching above their weight with mature and effective grassroots organisation.
Reflecting on the current state of British politics and the opportunity for insurgents to break onto the stage and even take control of the British government, as right-wing populists have done in Europe in recent years, Nigel Farage told delegates: “I don't think there has ever been a time when there has been more disillusionment with the two major parties that have dominated politics for the last 100 years. Labour didn't win on love, so we have a chance. That's why we must go into next year's English elections.” [seriously]”
Mr Farage said that if the party tackled the challenge head on, the rewards could be “truly extraordinary”, adding that there was a “huge opportunity”.
Explaining his reason for giving up control of the party now, rather than before when he was the majority shareholder and faced criticism for running it like a business, Farage said the party was now large enough, with around 80,000 paying members, to resist entryism.Farage did not mention his former party UKIP by name, which suffered from a poorly drafted constitution, was essentially ungovernable and was hit by a wave of entryism shortly after he left, but he did refer to Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party's experience of far-left entryism.
He said the party was in the process of hiring “full-time regional managers and regional coordinators.” “We will rigorously vet candidates at all levels going forward, I promise you that. We have no time or capacity for a few extremists to undermine the work of a party with 80,000 members and growing by hundreds every day.”
“…there is a danger that any new or emerging political party can be taken over by extremist groups or bad actors, and that could never happen while I was in power, because we don't want extremists, we don't want bigots, we don't want people who think like that, because we represent the silent majority of decent people in this great country that we live in.”
Farage spoke of ongoing efforts to win “hundreds” of councillors in next May's local elections and to set up a national grassroots organisation to further consolidate the party's position at local level and prepare for the next general election, citing the model of the Liberal Democrats, who have performed very well in UK elections despite a relatively small electorate.
He continued, “…it's about team-building, it's about unity. It's through the branches that we create these organisations. It's through the branches that we raise funds. It's through the branches that we find the candidates that we need for elections. It's through the branches that we become part of the community, not just part of a national political party. There is actually a template for this, and I never thought I'd say this, but we have to model ourselves after the Liberal Democrats.”
“The Lib Dems will build branches and win seats at district, county and unitary authority level. The Lib Dems will use their strengths to repeatedly distribute literature and leaflets in targeted areas.”
