Why I'm worried that Nigel Farage will break the British state

Madness is like gravity, all it takes is a little push.

POD! On The Abundance Agenda this week, we dig into the NHS ten year plan, and get mad at the moralising over weight-loss drugs. Plus I try to convince Martin that the new GOV.UK app heralds a transformation of the British state. And we speak to Ant Breach from the Centre for Cities about “anti-supply” measures that are holding back house-building. Listen on Apple, Spotify, Substack, or wherever you get your pods!

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The stakes in British politics feel unusually high at the moment.

The problem is that the government really is in an impossible situation. It is caught in the midst of the inherent contradiction of the economic situation (not good), the fiscal rules (still mostly iron-clad) and Labour MPs and activists on the left understandably banging the drum and demanding more spending to improve public services and their constituents’ lives.

However, I’ve written before about why despite the grim atmospherics, I’m relatively optimistic.

I think the government has been placing many of the right strategic bets on measures that will make the economy grow – like planning reform – which will eventually ease the zero-sum trade-off between fiscal rectitude and public spending.

That’s why I’ve found it intensely frustrating to read lobby journalists reflecting on the first year of the Labour government with the depth of their analysis amounting to “why are things still bad after a year?”, seemingly forgetting that it will – obviously – take a while for these efforts to bear fruit, and that the next election is still three or four years away.

I’d personally characterise the first year more sympathetically. I think that right now we’re in a similar position to the one we were in a few weeks into lockdown: Drastic measures had been imposed – but the key indicators had not yet started to turn in the right direction. It was the moment when you knew the right interventions had been made and that they should pay off, but you could still be forgiven for holding your breath.

However, also like the mixed efficacy of lockdown, we need to be realistic. Though I think what the government is doing is broadly the right thing to do, there is also a sizeable chance that it might not work – or at least might not work enough.

Perhaps growth will remain sluggish, because of global events beyond Downing Street’s control? Perhaps the government is not moving fast enough, so that there won’t be enough tangible progress felt by voters in 2029? And you should never underestimate the Labour Party’s ability to self-sabotage.

So this means that it is prudent to think about what happens next, and unfortunately that means thinking about (heavy sigh) Nigel Farage.

As I say, I’m not a total fatalist, especially years out from the next election when a million different things could change the political weather, but as things stand there is clearly a sizeable chance – not massive, but well above zero – that in 2029 Farage and his band of fruitcakes and loonies could find themselves with their hands on the levers of power.

I know, reading that sentence back made me feel a little nauseous too. But I really think it is worth thinking about now, because we still have the opportunity to act early and mitigate a number of worst-case scenarios.

And what I want to focus on in the rest of this piece is not the policies that a Reform government might unleash on the country – Sam Freedman has written a typically detailed analysis of what that would look like – but I want to look at how Reform in power could reshape – and break – the institutions of government and the functioning of the British state itself.

So let’s dig in and grimace through this.

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