By Azu Ishiekwene
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 fourth 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.”
Yet it would be an absolute disgrace for a racially bigoted twat to exploit voters’ misplaced economic and political grievances to advantage.
Demagoguery is tempting under the current global system, where the immigrant is the new scapegoat. Still, many are hoping that where guardrails failed in the US, the institutional restraints in Britain will curb the rise of a demagogue on this side of the pond.
Farage all the way?
Is Farage’s journey to Number 10 inevitable? It does look precarious, but inevitable. Precarious because the electoral system in Britain works against smaller parties. As demonstrated by his previous records in UKIP and the Brexit Party, Reform could win a high vote share but low parliamentary representation.
The party is big on headlines and the polls, but still relatively thin on structure and organisation. Other smaller parties that could work with it to form a coalition government can hardly risk Farage’s bombast or Reform’s lack of clarity on the vital issue of the economy.
Yet, I sense a certain delayed inevitability. Starmer is only kept in place by a thread of relatively weak potential immediate successors.
“Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are the leading candidates,” Adediran told me, “but neither projects the kind of authority or broad confidence usually associated with a prime minister-in-waiting. Andy Burham may have posed a stronger alternative, but Starmer was astute enough not to encourage his return to Parliament earlier this year.” Who bells the cat?
How long, Starmer?
How long can Starmer hang on? He will not go quietly. If his scandalous appointment of Peter Mandelson as British ambassador to the US couldn’t force him to resign, perhaps only a leadership challenge will. And it’s only a matter of time before the uncoordinated, sultry calls for his resignation will coalesce into a formidable rebellion. Despite his sanctimony and confidence in a parliamentary majority that feels indebted to him, it’s improbable that Starmer will last the distance to 2029.
Farage is in a subdued rehearsal. Of the lot outside, he looks likely to be the next elected prime minister, warts and all. In the end, every country gets the leadership it deserves.
If British voters think that Farage’s demagoguery is the solution to their economic and political misery, especially the economic, they should ask US voters about life under President Donald Trump, who campaigned on “affordability” and blamed everything wrong with America on immigrants.
Restraint or not
I’ve heard that, unlike America, institutional restraints – British parliamentary democracy, the House of Lords, and the Judiciary, for example – will make it harder for a Trump-style leader to emerge in the UK. Democracies do not always fail through military coups. Sometimes they fail due to consent, fear, or elite manipulation. From Hungary to Venezuela and from Uganda to Russia and Germany, democracies have produced some of the worst dictators.
For example, a milder and less odious variety, even from Britain, was a certain Tony Blair, who joined forces with a certain George W. Bush of America to invade Iraq under the blatant lie that they were going to save the world by removing weapons of mass destruction. Blair and Bush, products of democracy, lied to themselves, their countries, and the world, evading the detection of “institutional restraints.”
Under his sleeve
Life is hard, compounded by corrupt and incompetent governments in Africa. Immigrants who abuse the hospitality of their host communities only make it harder for themselves and others. They should face the law, as it should be. History has shown repeatedly that societies rarely resolve economic problems by turning foreigners into permanent scapegoats.
Britain stands at a moment when frustration can either deepen democratic maturity or embolden grievance merchants. The choice the parties make before 2029 may not only shape Britain’s future, but also its moral relationship with Africa and the wider world.
Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book, Writing for Media and Monetising It.
