First Brexit, then came Trump – and now it’s happening again.
In June 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union.
Now the Brexit mastermind, Nigel Farage, has returned to the forefront of British politics.
He is running in the UK general election next month, but Farage’s aim is not to win a seat in Parliament – it is to replace the Conservative Party with a new populist force of his own making.
The Conservatives fared worse on July 4, the date set by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for the election, the more power Farage gained.
That’s right, it doesn’t matter if he wins his own race.
It is even true that his party, Reform UK, did not win a seat.
Does Farage want to prove just that the Conservatives can’t win without a problem.
Donald Trump is a ballot box success in a way Farage is not.
But Farage is a good long-term planner, and what he does in Britain has implications for the Republican Party here.
He offered a glimpse into the GOP’s post-Trump future – as Farage proved that a right-leaning party that is not a populist party will be questioned in the 21st century.
Before Farage decided to run, Rishi Sunak’s parliamentary majority was on the verge of extinction.
Opinion polls show Labor won big, a historic victory.
But the Conservatives have reason to think that the woes of Farage and Brexit are behind them.
From the 1990s until the implementation of Brexit under Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Conservatives were separated from the EU.
Farage’s previous vehicle, the UK Independence Party, was designed to pressure the Conservatives to the right in Europe by threatening to split the electoral coalition.
The strategy worked – to keep his party alive, David Cameron, the Conservative prime minister who voted to remain in the EU, had to schedule a popular referendum on Brexit, which he lost.
Three years on, the Conservatives are struggling to find a leader who will follow through on Brexit.
When Johnson promised to do so, the party’s Farage problem disappeared, and the Conservatives won the 2019 general election.
But the COVID controversy ended Johnson’s tenure prematurely.
The Conservatives then tried to go back to the future, electing the closest thing to Margaret Thatcher’s free market, Liz Truss, as their next leader and prime minister.
Truss’s leadership lasted barely a month – he was unable to get the support of his own party’s MPs to stay in office.
That’s how the Conservatives are with Sunak, a man who does not have a vision that inspires colleagues or voters, but there are no obvious qualities.
Because he is so little, Sunak’s fall would not mean much – if not for Farage.
But now that Farage is back, there’s another divisive issue Conservatives can’t ignore: immigration.
Brexit is just the beginning.
Farage and Reform UK are set to use the same playbook to push UK politics to the right on immigration.
A stunning YouGov poll last week found Reform UK beating the Conservatives 19% to 18%, with Labor in the lead on 37%.
Experts don’t expect Reform to do well in the general election, but then again they don’t have to: Farage just needs to make the issue important to the right-wing party hoping to win.
He will never become prime minister or even a member of Parliament.
But if he continues to push, Farage will lead the Conservatives to adopt a leadership similar to his own – the only one that can attract voters.
Old-guard Republicans in the US are as eager to get past Trump and Trumpism as British Conservatives are to get past Farage and Brexit.
But immigration is the defining issue of our time on both sides of the Atlantic, not only in America and Britain but also on the European continent, as demonstrated by last week’s EU elections.
Immigration restrictions have popular constituencies across the Western world, and voters are impatient with old center-right parties that refuse to take up the cause.
Trump and Farage both recognize it, and while no one else can be Donald Trump, Farage’s strategy is one that many other politicians, including Republicans after Trump, can use.
Here, Farage’s strategy does not require a new party – the same pressure can be applied to the Republican establishment through primary schools.
Whether or not populist Republicans win the general election, it is only by making other Republicans unable to win without them that they gain Farage-like influence.
The flip side is also true: Populists may not win without immigration-loving, business-oriented Republican or Conservative voters – but populists ultimately care more about issues than the other side does.
Do London financiers want to risk lower taxes for higher immigration?
Brexit and Trump’s election have been eight years in the past. But 2016 is still the present and the future.
Daniel McCarthy is editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review and editor-at-large of The American Conservative.
