Just The Beginning

Ben Wildsmith

On social media in America, the MAGA movement is clear about the nation’s direction of travel.

When Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, he warned us, Terminator-style, that he’d be back and much of the world dismissed it as the hubris of a sore loser.

As a candidate, Trump’s claims and demeanour were so outside of accepted norms as to lend his run a hyper-real quality. It was happening in front of our eyes but unfolding like entertainment rather than current affairs.

Where the character Trump played on The Apprentice ended and his authentic self began was indiscernible.

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Aberration

The political establishment, in the US and abroad, viewed Trump’s first term as an aberration in the American story.

He had risen to power on the rising tide of a celebrity culture that would be exposed as nonsensical when applied to real-world governance.

Against those assumptions, Joe Biden’s presidency was presented as a reset. The old, comfortable tropes of national unity were wheeled out without any particular urgency or concern for why they had lost their power four years previously.

If Trump’s victory had seemed like a TV show come to life, his first term was characterised as a bad dream from which the USA had, mercifully, awoken.

So much for all that.

As MAGA starts to dream of decades in power, the UK stands at its own point of inflection with the upcoming Caerphilly by election assuming fraught significance. If Reform UK were to win on October 23rd, it would represent a political earthquake.

The certainties of over a century would have been sloughed off, creating momentum for Reform that would both energise and legitimise its appeal across the UK.

Such a result would, quite literally, go down in the history books.

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Alliances

So, let’s peek ahead at what that might mean. In the Senedd, it’s highly unlikely that Reform could govern. With the Conservatives in full retreat, it seems numerically impossible for the party to form alliances for its programme.

If it were to emerge as the largest party next May, however, the implications for Welsh democracy are dire. The concurrent council elections in England look certain to be catastrophic for Labour.

If Reform performs strongly, Nigel Farage, assisted by the right-wing press, will characterise the Westminster government as governing against the will of the electorate.

In a scenario where Reform is locked out of power in the Senedd, despite being the largest party, we can expect endless populist stunts around issues like green subsidies and funding for refugees which are designed to delegitimise the Senedd as a democratic institution.

Welsh democracy will become the scapegoat for UK-wide discontent and a televised forum for Reform’s campaign to force and win a general election.

Vilification

Should Farage eventually become Prime Minister, the prospects for a Senedd led by Plaid with Labour cooperation seem extremely bleak to me. After years of vilification as stitched-up vessels of the liberal establishment, devolved institutions would be ripe for punishment.

Reform-friendly influencers are actively calling for the Senedd’s abolition now, even as the party is contesting a seat in it.

The Brit-Nat, racist fanatics who shout loudest on social media, however, do not win elections as yet.

Farage is canny enough to know that his appeal must be to the mass of people who feel conned by the Labour government they voted for last year. Keir Starmer’s failure to offer anything that promises a brighter future has enraged swathes of decent people who after austerity, Brexit, and Covid cannot remember government doing anything that didn’t make their lives worse.

Appealing to these people will require an approach that seems respectable and sensible. In government, Farage will face the same constraints of bond market control and low productivity that has hamstrung the current administration. His policies on immigration will be unenforceable unless civil liberties are destroyed and, even if successful, will create labour shortages and serious disorder. Here is where the real danger lies.

The failure of a Reform government would force it either to moderate its position in pursuit of stability, or to abandon its quasi-moderate stance and tack to the right.

Vulnerable

In either case, Farage would be vulnerable to accusations of betrayal, but it would be condemnation from the right which would capture the headlines. Just as Johnson’s Brexit somehow failed because it wasn’t Brexity enough, according to Farage, his government will fail for not being tough enough on immigration and welfare spending according to Rupert Lowe, Ben Habib and, let’s not forget, ‘Tommy Robinson’.

As Farage shifts the widow of acceptability to the right, he will begin to appear towards the left of what it reveals.

As we have seen in America, once simplistic, false premises have taken root in a democracy, it is the work of decades to dig them out.

Many in our political establishment view a Reform government as catastrophic. Their mistake may be to assume that they will remain in a position to oppose it.

We stand on the cusp of a wild fantasy becoming reality. It’s reasonable to fear that it might just be the beginning.