The next British general election is in 2029, but you could already feel the tremor from the council election of May 7.
The surge of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party is the clearest warning sign yet that Prime Minister Keir Starmer is living on borrowed time. The Labour Party is divided, its influence weakened, and Starmer’s days in Number 10 are numbered.
Yet it was only two years ago that Labour won a historic landslide victory after 14 years of a Conservative Party government consumed by Brexit turmoil, inflation, scandals, NHS pressures, and leadership chaos.
Although some suggested at the time that Labour’s victory was more apparent than real, meaning, for example, that it won a large number of parliamentary seats but a smaller percentage of the votes, it didn’t matter. Labour had been reborn.
What happened?
What now? The rejection of the Conservative Party did not equal enthusiasm for Labour. Starmer’s Labour became what it was not to win, and Farage’s Reform exploited the void, targeting messages around immigration, national identity, elite distrust, economic frustration, and the anger at “London politics.”
To make matters worse, those who voted for Brexit have quickly forgotten that Britain hasn’t finished paying the price.
Also, the two-party system is under severe strain, and working-class voters, once Labour’s bastion, are becoming more politically fluid. Apart from Reform, smaller parties such as the Greens and Liberal Democrats have also benefited from the voter insurgency, leading to growing calls for a change in leadership, especially within the ruling Labour Party, which has suffered the collapse of traditional Red Wall councils.
No dog in the fight
I have no dog in this fight. I’m concerned, however, that if Farage’s Reform benefits from the impending Labour chaos, Africa’s relations with Britain could be heading for a very long winter.
Farage’s history suggests so. His former classmates and teachers alleged that as a teenager, he made racist remarks, used antisemitic language, praised Hitler and mocked immigrants and ethnic minorities.
He has, of course, denied these charges, even though a 1981 letter from an English teacher reportedly urged his school headmaster to reconsider making Farage a prefect because of what she described as his alleged “racist and neo-fascist views.”
That’s not all. In April, the Reform UK home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, said that if the party came to power, it would stop issuing visas to citizens of countries seeking slavery reparations from Britain, specifically mentioning Nigeria, Ghana, Jamaica, Kenya and Barbados.
The UN has described the slave trade as “the gravest crime against humanity,” and called for reparations as “a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs.” I don’t personally believe in Reparations based on slavery, because apart from stoking grievance-based politics, as Thomas Sowell argued so well, “There’s no principle by which reparations can be confined to just one group.”
A Conservative view
I chatted to Bola Adediran, a Nigerian-born Conservative Party candidate who came fifth in the last council election in Bromley, London, won by a Reform candidate. He had this to say about Farage: “His politics taps directly into these sentiments – frustration, immigration, and the rise in identity politics – and moments.
“What makes him effective is not simply his rhetoric, but his ability to position himself as the voice of the people who feel ignored by mainstream politics.”
