The welfare state is Nigel Farage’s new battleground

What, if anything, can stop Nigel Farage? That’s the question many in Westminster are asking as they try to reconcile themselves to the rise of Reform UK. The party has soared to 30 per cent in the polls – and is now seeking further gains. Farage’s speech this morning was his attempt to make hay from Labour’s woes on welfare. Reform, he pledged, would scrap both the winter fuel cut and the two-child benefit cap, while introducing a new tax allowance to reward married couples.

It was all part of Farage’s pitch to frame himself as the defender of the welfare state, besieged by cuts at home and invaders from abroad. He argues that, currently, social services are a perverse inversion, offering little to British voters while generously subsidising foreign citizens. Illegal migrants get free hotels while aspirational families must suffer. It is an argument with obvious appeal to many of the 9.7 million who voted Labour last time.

All political parties seek to mould the welfare state to their tastes and preferences: Farage clearly senses electoral value now in trying ‘to make the family a more important element in British life’. Long-time Reform-watchers have noted, with interest, how the ex-Ukip leader seems to pepper his speeches these days with a few lines that evoke faith and family. Strategists are happy to talk up the Clacton MP’s own role as a grandfather. His speech today contained a nice reference to his time on I’m a Celebrity… when he was greeted in the jungle by his daughter, Isabelle.

Of course, it is one thing to talk about pro-family policies; paying for it is quite another. The cost of scrapping the winter fuel allowance and two-child benefit cap is likely to be £1.3 billion and £3.5 billion respectively. The IFS, meanwhile, estimates Farage’s plan to raise the threshold for paying income tax to £20,000 would cost between £50 billion and £80 billion. To this, the Reform leader retorted that ‘we are going to make big savings’, citing a study which claimed that net zero is costing the UK £40 billion a year. He touted a total of £350 billion which he thought Reform could save – a sum that will come under scrutiny in the coming days.

Cutting back the scope of the state’s responsibilities would seem both more popular and more plausible than simply pruning its capabilities, austerity-style. The alternative is offered by the flailing Keir Starmer as he and his ministers try, desperately, to find a politically sellable way to cut back on welfare. Perhaps, one day, it will be Farage in that invidious position. But for now, he can watch happily from afar as he moves his tanks onto Labour’s turf and claims the virgin territory for Reform.