When will Nigel Farage get off the fence?

Nigel Farage’s indecision continues. Despite being hyped in advance as a major unveiling of the rebel party’s programme, Reform UK’s press conference yesterday was something of a damp squib, not least because Farage failed to actually show up. Reform leader Richard Tice said the ex Brexit party leader is ‘still assessing’ the ‘extent of the role he wants to play in helping Reform UK’. It’s about time Farage decided whether he’s in or out.

Since Reform’s forerunner, the Brexit party, helped bring about Theresa May’s downfall and ultimately catapult Boris Johnson to power, Farage has been performing a political striptease: forever promising (or threatening) to get back on the road and again force the Tories to adopt his agenda, but never actually removing the last veil that would reveal him in full frontal attack mode.

Under Boris Johnson, this strategy seemed reasonable enough: Farage stood down the Brexit party during the 2019 election because he said it was time to put the country before his party. His thinking was that running candidates risked splitting the Tory vote and catapulting Labour – and Jeremy Corbyn – into power. But since Boris’s fall from grace, that logic no longer applies: Farage has said the Tories under Rishi Sunak are a ‘total shambles’ and heading for a wipeout. Few would doubt that he is right; but, if so, and Farage really does think, as he said in December, that the Tories are ‘directly to blame’ for falling living standards, have failed disastrously in tackling immigration and ‘never’ actually believed in Brexit, why won’t he put his money where his mouth is and take on the Tories?

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Instead, the nearest we have come to seeing the full Farage was a brief glimpse of his bottom in the jungle during his ritual humiliation on ITV’s ‘I’m a Celebrity…Get me Out of Here!’. His well-remunerated stint Down Under was all part of Farage’s successful second career as a broadcaster since he quit active political campaigning. It’s an attractive gig: Farage had his own programme on LBC radio and is currently on GB News, where he is the TV channel’s most-watched host. But this success has created a problem for Farage: dare he sacrifice his blossoming career as a broadcaster to return to the campaign trail?

Farage’s critics like to joke about his seven failed attempts to become an MP. The mathematics of the first past the post system mean that another bid to become an MP is surely doomed. Perhaps, then, Farage might opt for a backseat role, in which he rallies Reform from behind the scenes as it attempts to damage the Tories’ hopes of winning the next election. Even that seems unattractive: if Labour really is heading for a big win in the election, it’s unlikely that Reform will play the role of kingmaker.

For now, then, Farage is sitting on the fence. Sunak said today that an election will most likely take place in the second half of the year. The Tories will be nervously watching Farage to see which way he jumps. If Farage takes over from the gentlemanly Tice and hits the road in the Red Wall Midlands and North with his familiar rip roaring, rabble rousing brand, he could turn what may be just a mere Tory defeat into a 1997-style rout. At the moment, however, Farage seems to prefer remaining a back seat driver.

Tice said yesterday of Farage that ‘a good poker player doesn’t show their hand too early.’ That may well be right but the clock is ticking. Farage’s bashful modesty is trying the patience of his supporters, who may well ask whether he is all talk and no trousers. Does he prefer his lucrative career shouting from the sidelines to leading the fight to offer British voters something different from technocrats like Keir Starmer and Sunak? It is time for Farage to end the waiting game and make up his mind.