After dominating British politics for most of the last two years, Nigel Farage and his battered Reform UK party arrive in Birmingham for their conference with myriad problems.
The biggest issue is that Mr Farage’s party is no longer regularly leading in the polls and in one case was even pushed into third place behind the Tories.
It is telling that in an interview with the Spectator, the deputy leader Richard Tice has said that the aim this week is to get the country to “love Nigel Farage again”.
The bigger problem is that while Mr Farage is adored by some, he is hated by many more and is arguably the most divisive figure in UK politics.
open image in galleryHe no longer has Sir Keir Starmer around to be more unpopular than him, which means he consistently comes up with the most negative overall ratings of any political leader.
Reform is becoming a victim of its own hubris. Its pitch to the country was that they are the inevitable next government but this has already come apart.
The party’spopularity has fallen in recent weeks from a comfortable rating at over 30 per cent popularity in the polls a year ago when their Lincolnshire mayor Dame Andrea Jenkyns opened the conference with a bizarre rendition of one of her old songs they are now averaging in the low 20s.
Meanwhile, Mr Farage has looked tired and angry amid mounting pressure over donations he received, which has led to an ongoing investigation by the standards commissioner.
His pre-conference interview with the BBC shows that his mood has not improved even after winning his completely unnecessary by-election in Clacton over the summer where his main opponent was the comedian Count Binface.
He used the interview to lash out at the members of the standards committee and suggest the investigation into the undeclared £5m donation from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne was rigged.
Reform genuinely believes there is some sort of establishment plot against them and have even banned some journalists from attending the conference in Birmingham. But this delusional approach to politics modelled on Mr Farage’s friend, US President Donald Trump, is actually making them blind to their serious flaws as a political operation.
open image in galleryThey failed to capitalise on an 18-month period where they comfortably led in the polls and are now lacking in policies, have question marks over the depth of their talent and are now up against a new Labour leader and prime minister in Andy Burnham who has shown he can take them on.
Mr Burnham thrashed Reform in the Makerfield by-election, a seat Mr Farage’s party could have won, and has since outperformed the Reform leader on social media.
Added to that, a new party on the right – Restore Britain led by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe – is eating away at Mr Farage’s core support.
Restore is now being prompted as an option by pollsters and consistently licking up about 5 per cent. It has the backing of tech billionaire Elon Musk and the algorithms on his X platform and is proving to be a far more attractive option to rightwingers who take an ultra nationalist line.
Yet Restore is also a creation of the arrogance of the Reform leadership. Mr Lowe left Reform because of a row he had with Mr Farage and former chairman, now-shadow home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf. If cooler heads had prevailed there would be no Restore eating away at Reform’s vote but at the time Mr Farage and his allies believed their own publicity that they were unstoppable.
It all now means that unlike last year’s conference, Mr Farage and Reform arrive in Birmingham not battling to be top dog in British politics and being a government in waiting.
Instead, they have a real fight on their hands to be the best supported party of the right in British politics with Kemi Badenoch’s Tories threatening to surpass them.
The prospects of Mr Farage being in Downing Street are far from over but, as things stand, they do not look very likely.