Nigel Farage had grand plans for his Brexit Party – but they will probably be dashed

Editorial: Support for the party has been slowly falling away in the polls as we approach the election, and with it goes Mr Farage’s political clout

For most of the past decade or so, it has been singularly unwise to write off Nigel Farage. His political obituary has been published, prematurely, many times. He is still standing; he is still in the election, albeit in scaled-down form; people will still vote for him.

But the electoral support is nothing like the strength he needs to make his grandiloquent threats frighten anyone. Though he might have thought he was playing a clever tactical game, he was pushing his luck when he demanded that Boris Johnson tear up the withdrawal agreement. It was never going to happen, mainly because Downing Street regards association with Mr Farage as toxic to the Conservative brand.

Just as Mr Farage’s attempt to control the main 2016 Leave campaign was rebuffed by Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, his pleas for a “non-aggression pact” with the Conservatives in the upcoming election have been met with the same mix of scepticism and disdain. Mr Farage’s image among the kinds of voters the Tories need to attract is mostly poor. He is a net liability. They know it and, perhaps, he, deep down, recognises that he is a pungent dish so far as well-off voters in Remain-leaning areas are concerned.

The other reason why Mr Farage has had to climb down and make the most of a rather depleted electoral challenge is simply that he hasn’t got the numbers. Were he on 30 or even 20 per cent in the opinion polls, and the Conservatives correspondingly weakened, then he might have had some more bargaining power – though the negative effect of his association with the Conservative brand would still be an impediment to a more intimate relationship with Mr Johnson (the prime minister needs no further toxification among moderate voters). Yet, despite his hopes and the impressively powerful showing in the European elections this summer – coming first with 5.2 million votes, almost a third of those cast – support for Mr Farage has collapsed. The Brexit Party is now running at levels that are actually below those of his former vehicle, Ukip, in the 2015 election. Mr Farage’s attempts at a bluff have been called. His party is polling at about 10 per cent and there is little chance of it winning a single Westminster seat.

His influence on the election will be, at best, marginal, simply because of that evaporation in his base. Since the summer, a Brexit, of sorts, has been delivered, after a fashion and a little late. Mr Johnson has broken many pledges in the process. The Johnson deal may only be a simulacrum of the kind of “clean break” Brexit Mr Farage favours, but it is good enough for many voters, including a large proportion of those who voted for the Brexit Party in the European elections It also seems to be satisfactory for some Brexit Party financial backers and candidates.

So Mr Farage may well succeed in attracting some Labour voters, and some Tory voters for that matter, in the seats he is contesting, with his efforts concentrated on Labour-held seats in Leave-leaning constituencies in the North and Midlands. The Liberal Democrats and the Scottish and Welsh nationalists will also attract pro-EU votes from both the main parties, and, indeed, some Labour voters will defect directly to the Conservatives. Some disillusioned voters will stay at home in this winter election; others, perhaps younger and more enthusiastic about the EU, will register and actually turn out to vote for the very first time. Some local Labour MPs will be recognised as defiantly pro-European, such as Ben Bradshaw in Remain-voting Exeter. Others, such as Caroline Flint in Don Valley will be unmistakably supportive of Brexit. Their personal appeals will both attract and repel those who may have supported Labour in the past, on both the Leave and Remain sides. With the Remain alliance, the one-sided Leave alliance, defections, independents and local factors playing such conflicting roles, it is difficult to predict the outcome with much certainty.

Perhaps the most that can be said this far out from polling day is that there is not much that can be done to offset the fundamental fact of this election: a poll lead of between 10 and 15 per cent presently enjoyed by the Conservatives over the Labour Party. It makes it highly likely that the next prime minister will be Mr Johnson with a workable majority, backed by a purged party of Eurosceptic loyalists. The rest is just noise.

The net effect of the shrinking intervention of the Brexit Party, given all of the other cross-currents and eddies swirling round the electoral waters, may prove small. Mr Farage will not be in parliament. Moreover, he may soon be departing the political scene, his work done, free to swan around in his flat cap and Barbour jacket, and enjoy as many pints of Spitfire and Rothmans cigarettes as he likes, telling tales. He leaves not with the revolutionary Trump-style bang he once dreamed of, but with something of a whimper. Still, Brexit, eh, Nigel?