The left-wing blueprint that could be Farage’s undoing

Nigel Farage and Reform UK seemed unstoppable. The party was inexorably building mass support; the supreme leader was lavishly praised. Even adversaries pronounced him a political mastermind. Then the last few months happened. On top of that, a new poll conducted by YouGov showed that 69 per cent have an unfavourable opinion of the Reform leader. He is as unpopular as Keir Starmer was before he stepped down. There was Reform’s chaotic and, at times, uncivilised party conference. Farage has become less smooth and more tetchy. Channel 4’s investigation alleged that party bigwigs – including a Cambridge academic – had breached political donation rules, though both men involved deny this. Now there’s the £72m donation to the party, half from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne who has a second Thai name and passport, and the other half from Ben Delo, who, Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice told Sky News, has “moved back or is literally moving back” from Hong Kong. People like that don’t hand over piles without expecting returns. That’s what this cynic thinks. Others too. The men themselves have said they expect “nothing”. Not everyone finds that reassuring. I believe increasing numbers of voters see the party operating unethically and unfairly. Fairness is a deeply held British value. As a volunteer for a charity, I go to see a family living in an old housing estate every week. I meet other residents, some of whom have watched me on daytime TV. We chat. Some worry about big money buying everything, including democracy. Many fear they will never break out of poverty and feel Britain is becoming more unequal and unfair. Surprisingly, none so far have blamed migrants. Roger B, 80, an ex-hospital porter, has a very old mobility scooter. He waits for me to come by. Last week he went down memory lane: “We got free milk, orange juice in school. When I left school, there were jobs. Could see the doctor. Council houses had playgrounds. Look at this place. They left us to rot and looked after the rich”. Who’s “they”? I asked. “Thatcher, then Blair and them lot after. They crashed all that post-war rebuilding”. We understandably remember the world wars and honour the dead. But there is no national memorialisation of the remarkable Britons who created a good and fair society after the war. Margaret Thatcher was a neoliberal fanatic. That distorted and voracious form of capitalism atomised Britain. Tony Blair she reportedly said, was her biggest success because he kept the model going. Today profiteers are swarming in children’s care homes. This tribe owns us. The Liberal economist William Beveridge wrote a report in 1942, while Britain was still at war. He believed a new Britain for all could emerge if governments tackled “five giants – want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness”. Citizens queued to buy the publication, over 600,000 copies were sold. Aneurin “Nye” Bevan, the Welsh Labour Party politician, gave us the National Health Service. Though the country was depleted by years of war, these idealistic believers in social connectivity took huge economic risks, and reshaped Great Britain. (Admittedly immigrants of colour who joined the workforces building the new nation were not included in the communality. But over the years most of us were served well by the post-war institutions ) I’ve just seen a film titled The Man with the Plan, made by independent filmmakers at Sands Films Studio in Rotherhithe in London. Simon Callow plays Beveridge, whose own words are used in the script: “Prevention of ill health may begin with health centres, but spreads into problems of sanitation, housing, nutrition. One of the main efforts should be directed to improving housing – there lies the scope for raising standards of living and improving health and defeating the giant squalor… A satisfactory scheme of social insurance also assumes the maintenance of employment and the prevention of mass unemployment: the giant idleness.” The heroine Flea, a young female student who is researching that epoch wonders if it could be recreated. Low tax, high profit ideologues warn the ingénue that such measures would cause unemployment and inflation and cost too much. In other words, neoliberalism for ever. But look at the figures. Columnist and political economist Will Hutton wrote last week about the “baleful” state of the economy, where long-term growth has fallen from an average of 3 per cent in the 60s to around 1 per cent today. He blamed Brexit, austerity, underinvestment, inequalities, influence exerted by the wealthiest, and “disregard for fairness”. The Labour conference approaches. Burnham has vowed to end neoliberalism which has enriched bosses and shareholders, but still treads too nervously. He needs to go full Beveridge. Egalitarians would back him. As the epidemiologist Sir Michael Marmot says in the film: “We have to address the causes of the causes – and they reside in those five giants of Beveridge.” Or as Mary, my housing estate acquaintance puts it: “If they want our votes, let them treat us right and fair. We have been pushed around for too long”.