What if Reform wins
🎥 An interview with Peter Chappell...
Though there’s a long way to go, there’s a frighteningly high chance that Nigel Farage could lead a future Reform government in the UK. That means, after years – decades – of whinging from the sidelines, Farage would be tasked with the gruelling, often unglamorous job of running the country.
And we’d all have to suffer the consequences.
To assess that scenario, what it would mean for the country and how Farage would seek to govern, I sat down with Peter Chappell – a journalist at The Times and the author of a new book, What If Reform Wins. Peter’s pseudo-fantasy skips ahead in time to imagine Britain under a Reform administration, and the inevitable chaos that would ensue.
We chatted about Farage’s relationship with Trump, their mutual authoritarian tendencies, the factional battles within Reform, the UK’s weak constitutional safeguards, and much more.
I hope you enjoy the interview – and don’t find it too horrifying.
If you have any feedback, or you’d like to suggest someone for me to interview next, please drop a comment below.
It’s also possible to watch the interview on YouTube.
Does anyone believe that even if Farage won, he'd actually want to be PM? He'd wallow in the glory of course, but he's such a workshy bum he'd never be able to stick to the hard graft. He'd find an excuse to duck out and put someone else in, while he swanned around the world at public expense.
Fascinating but horrifying conversation--especially after reading a lot about Lowe & Restore, his following on X, dragging Reform to the right--and makes me curious to read Peter's book "What if Reform Wins?".
Meanwhile it's hard to understand why Labour appears so complacent about FPTP as the electoral system likely to give Reform a majority in the next general election, on less than 30% of the vote...
With even Burnham promising to introduce the Supplementary Vote not only "in the next government" ie TOO LATE, but only after including SV in a manifesto and later putting it to a referendum...
AV+ aka SV was recommended by the Jenkins Commission on Electoral Reform in 1998. It s needed NOW: for elections at every level.
But Blair and Brown did nothing about it, and Starmer--with a huge majority of 63% of seats BUT on only 34% of the vote--has done nothing about it: despite the Representation of the People bill currently going through Parliament.
And even Burnham seems to be living in a dreamworld: he really thinks Labour under his own magic touch as possible PM--if he wins in Makerfield--will win another general election under FPTP? An election which might have to be called by popular demand a lot sooner than Burnham thinks.
If it weren't all so maddening, it would be very depressing: waiting for a seemingly inevitable Reform government to do its worst.