Nigel Farage’s tactics are to play up the anxiety and resentment that people feel. Labour’s job is simple: to offer hope and change
Despite the energised start Andy Burnham has made as prime minister, plenty of his party’s MPs and hardcore activists are still haunted by a familiar sense of insecurity. Underpinned by a political version of impostor syndrome, it runs deep – and, bar the odd spell of Labour optimism, it always has. So it is with the battle between Labour and Reform UK that will define an election that could arrive much sooner than some people think, and a widely held ambivalence on the left about the possibility of Nigel Farage’s party taking power. Reform is apparently in deep trouble, yet also still in with a serious chance. How come?
Investigations into the party and its leadership’s finances by both the Metropolitan police and parliament’s standards commissioner may worsen Reform’s woes. Those investigations predate the two recently announced £36m donations from the crypto tycoons Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo, which themselves risk being backdatedly ruled illegal and are reportedly already being spent on 400 “field agents”. The two mega-donations symbolise two connected stories. One is about the possible buyout of our fragile democracy. The other centres on how, from much of the public’s perspective, all the allegations about Farage and his party might have already turned into an indecipherable blizzard. So, although Reform is down, it is still far from out.
John Harris is a Guardian columnist
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