Nigel Farage now has a bigger target
There was one clear winner emerging from last Thursday’s European vote when the results were finally announced last night. Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, created out of nothing just a few weeks ago, was on course to top the poll and send the largest number of MEPS to Strasbourg to attend a parliament none of them wants to belong to. It was set to win a bigger share of the vote than Ukip in 2014 and take all of Mr Farage’s old party’s seats.
But the Lib Dems, who want another referendum and seek to stay in the EU, were also projected to do well, especially in London, suggesting that Remainer tactical voting was paying dividends but that the national divide was as deep as ever. Essentially, the two parties with the clearest messages were rewarded.
Remainers will doubtless aggregate the votes for the Lib Dems, Change UK (which sank without trace), the SNP, Greens and minor parties committed either to revoking Article 50 or securing another referendum to show that support is still strong for Remain. Their message would have had greater resonance had they spoken with one voice, as indeed they might yet do if reports of a possible election pact prove correct.
But the losers were also easy to identify: for the two parties that have dominated British politics for a century the night was turning into an unmitigated disaster.
For the Conservatives the election was as bad as everyone had feared but probably never believed until confronted with the actual voting figures confirming the lowest share of the vote ever recorded for a governing party in a national election. In many regions the Tories came fifth or even sixth and were set to lose almost all of their seats. Had she not announced her intention to resign as Prime Minister last Friday, Theresa May would today be under irresistible pressure to do just that. The night was not much better for Labour, which in some areas registered its smallest share of the national vote since the 1920s.
Mr Farage had a clear and easily understood platform and he is now making the political weather, even to the point of defining the terms of the Tory leadership contest, which is as much about showing the party who can best stand up to the Brexit Party leader as it is about wider matters of policy. Yet judging by the various pitches being made by the half-a-dozen hopefuls who have so far declared their candidacy, none of them have understood what it is they are up against.
Mr Farage has moved on from the minutiae of Brexit which is still the preoccupation of the Tories and Labour. While they still assure potential supporters that they can get this tweak here or that change there to the Withdrawal Agreement, Mr Farage is making a different point entirely.
Borrowing from the Donald Trump playbook, his argument is that democracy has failed because its old-style practitioners in the mainstream, traditional parties have let the people down. Nor is this something unique to Britain. Mr Farage is the personification in the UK of a phenomenon being witnessed right across Europe. It is described as populism but is more a reflection of frustration and anger with the way things have been done up to now and a demand that they should be done differently.
From Italy and France, where Marine Le Pen’s party was on course to defeat President Macron’s En Marche, to the old Warsaw Pact countries in the east, politics is fragmenting as populists and campaigning organisations like the Greens in Germany push the older parties aside.
Here, many Remainers were reconciled to having lost the referendum and are just as appalled as Brexiters that the democratic will is being thwarted. It is this discomfiture that Mr Farage has tapped into. He is no longer the Ukip leader pressing for an exit from the EU; he is the doughty champion of democracy able to suggest that not only did Brussels never listen to the voters but neither does Westminster.
Mr Farage is looking now at a much bigger game than merely forcing one or other of the main parties to deliver a “true” Brexit. He is after replacing them because he thinks they are no longer to be trusted to do what the voters want. The old guard either fights back soon or it will be swept away.