My Ch4 film on Nigel Farage as PM

Yes, it could happen. Here's why

When I first starting discussing a film called “Can Nigel Farage be Prime Minister” the title seemed deliberately provocative. A conversation starter, not a serious question. But then something strange started to happen. Reform UK’s polling converted, spectacularly, into power in local elections. Labour strategists started calling Farage their “main rival”. And now, incredibly, the bookmakers have him as favourite to be the next Prime Minister. So the title was changed to “Will Nigel Farage” and transmission rushed forward to 8pm tomorrow. I’d like to tell you a bit about it.

This is a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary not about Farage per se but nature and depth of support for Reform, what’s driving it, and whether a party that trades on protest can pivot to power. It includes an interview with Farage himself. “Why not?” he says when I ask if he wants to be PM. “At least I believe in stuff.” Although I was not, and am still not, convinced he wants to govern.

The focus group that changed my mind.

We held focus groups in Solihull — swing territory, not Brexit heartland — and found something that surprised me. Most participants didn’t need persuading that Farage could become Prime Minister. Many, including young and previously disengaged voters, said they’d probably vote Reform. What was (then) my outside case was their base case.

Ricky, unemployed, called the mainstream parties “a constant circle of empty promises”. Jessica, on maternity leave, said: “Labour’s not the party I grew up with. Conservatives don’t care. Lib Dems are invisible. Reform’s a wild card.” That phrase came up more than once. Reform doesn’t inspire universal confidence, but its appeal is clearer than ever: a gamble worth taking. At the end of a discussion about good and bad, four of the ten said they would vote Reform and three said they might.

Also the Trump trend - how immigrants and ethnic minority voters turned to him, confounding the cliches of left and right - is also happening here. I meet Asim, a landlord from Salford, son of a Pakistani immigrant, with a Union Jack tattoo on one side of his chest and the St George’s Cross on the other. “This country gave my family everything,” he says, having been bussed to Hamilton to campaig proudly for Farage. “But we’re importing people who bring their way of life and their habits here — and it doesn’t belong here.”

Can Reform survive without Farage?

Before I made this film, I thought Reform was a soufflé that would collapse without its leader. But our polling tells a different story: if Farage were to quit tomorrow, some 85pc of its support would stay. That’s more than either Labour or the Tories retain from their 2024 voters. Farage made it famous but there seems to be something stronger and longer-lasting going on..

In the focus group, some participants even said Farage was the reason they hesitated. “I like Reform, but I don’t like his delivery,” said one. Another called him “a bit like Marmite”. This wasn’t said in hostility — but as a recognition that his divisiveness is, for some, a bug not a feature.

How he could win with 30%

Under our electoral system, 30% of the vote can deliver a parliamentary majority. That’s how fragmented our politics has become. And that’s roughly where Reform sits in some polls. The psephologist John Curtice tells me: “With our system, it’s not how many votes you have, it’s how many compared to the others. And that 31% could conceivably be enough.” This presents Farage with a strategic choice: soften the message and try to broaden support, or double down on controversy — provoke outrage, trigger the media, and hold your 30% firm.

Below shows what our new four-party politics makes possible…

One of the most discussed moments in the film is an ad Reform ran during the Hamilton by-election. It edited a speech by Anas Sarwar — a speech about unity — to make it look like he was promoting ethnic sectarianism. I challenge Farage on this. “That’s how I saw it,” he says.

The r-word

One of the most striking stats in our Survation poll is that the country is exactly splot on whether Reform UK is a racist party. I had doubts about using the r-word in the film at all, not because racism isn’t a serious charge, but because it’s too often used as a substitute for argument. What people mean by it varies wildly. Some think Farage is racist for even raising questions of culture or immigration. Others, like Asim, see themselves reflected in his message and are enraged by the label.

If you define racism as racial bigotry, there’s no evidence to pin it on ReformUK or Farage. But if you define it more loosely — any blunt talk about race — then it’s easy to throw around. As Margaret Hodge tells me in the film, “If you accuse people of being racist, they stop listening.” She learned that when fighting the BNP in Barking. And she warns that Labour’s attacks on Farage may backfire in the same way.

The Tory dilemma

Should the Tories make a deal with Reform? It’s the debate that dare not speak its name. Farage says never. Kemi Badenoch says never. But others, including Robert Jenrick and Iain Duncan Smith, are more equivocal. Jacob Rees-Mogg, who lost his seat in the recent election, speaks more freely now. “Pride comes before destruction,” he tells me, as we film in his Westminster home. “All coalitions are feasible.” He even floats the idea that Farage might need Tory expertise to govern — that the two combined could, like Thatcher in 1979, achieve “both a majority and a mandate”.

This is the shift: a year ago, the Tories talked about Farage as a pest. Now they talk as if they stand ready to be the extra inch on his shoes.

Can they actually govern?

Reform now runs Kent, the UK’s largest council by population. Linden Kemkaran, who worked with me at The Spectator, is now its leader. She calls Kent the party’s “shop window”. Farage agrees: “How we perform will make a material difference,” he says

But Reform’s councillors are inexperienced. The risk is collapse — that the chaos of Liz Truss’s premiership repeats itself at local level. Reform has a year to prove that it can run things before the next election. And Farage is asking voters to judge him on that record.

We are four years away from an election with the political wheel still spinning: it would foolish to say anything now about the situation in 2019. But I close the film saying that this already feels like a revolution in the making. It’s not about a belief in one mans ability to fix things, its about a sense that no one else will. Nigel Farage stands as a kind of ‘break glass in case of emergency’ candidate - someone that voters will reach if they have to. But making this film made me lose any doubt that they will So the question isn’t what Farage will do next , it’s what Keir Starmer or anybody else will do to stop him.

The film airs on Channel Four at 8pm tomorrow: I do hope you’ll watch! And tell me what you think.