‘If you want to see will, go back and look at that broadcast. That does suggest a chap with a backbone. The backbones around Westminster are more Haribo than titanium.’
Nigel Farage has just resigned his seat to force a by-election in Clacton. The establishment, his allies say, is trying to destroy him. Perhaps – but have they misjudged their target?
Gawain Towler, Reform UK’s director of communications from 2019 to 2024 and now a member of the party’s governing board, joined CapX editor Marc Sidwell in the immediate aftermath of Farage’s dramatic announcement. He argues the campaign against his former boss is misreading both the man and the country.
Towler admits the drip, drip, drip of negative stories – the donations controversy, the billionaire friends, the standards investigation – are damaging, and that Farage was at best unwise to leave his flank exposed to attack.
He sees the bad press as an artillery barrage from the establishment: wear down morale, make ordinary Reform-minded voters reluctant to associate with a movement under constant fire and hope Farage decides the fight isn’t worth it. Farage, instead, has decided to fight. Will voters be admiring or appalled?
What the establishment may be missing, according to Towler, is the English sense of fair play. People cannot abide the appearance of the entire machine turning on one man – and the more that narrative takes hold, the more it risks generating sympathy rather than aversion.
But the central question that will define the next phase of British politics is this: can a movement built around one figure survive – or strengthen – if that figure’s relatable, clubbable image is damaged by his ties to the wealthy and doubts about whether he’s willing to play by the rules?
Below, you’ll find some short excerpts from our conversation.
Marc Sidwell
Editor, CapX
On the press attacks:
‘The whole point of this is a rolling barrage.
Why are they pushing [the Parliamentary Standards inquiry] to September? So they can leak and drip and attack, all through the summer. It’s like an artillery barrage on the first night of the Somme – you bombard the front line for month after month until you’ve broken the wire and destroyed morale, and only then do you attack.
That is what they’re doing. They are trying to break the morale of Reform itself.’
On fair play:
‘There is a native sense of fair play in this country. People don’t mind error, as long as it’s apologised for. They don’t mind mistakes, as long as they’re owned. But they hate hypocrisy – and this is beginning to look like the entire machine is focusing on one man. That doesn’t feel like fair play. It ain’t cricket.’
On Farage’s resolve:
‘They are targeting him because they were desperate for him to resign. I have received text messages today from the press telling me that Labour Party people are telling them he’s ill, that he’s having cancer treatment in America. I’ve had that stuff from the Tories before. They are trying to undermine him in every way they can, and they’re trying to make him think: why am I doing this? I had an easy life, making lots of cash, having fun, without this rubbish every day.
But they do not understand the measure of the man. This is a very English response – you tell me I can’t do something, well I’m damn well going to do it. I think they’ve misunderstood that, and misunderstood the character of our nation.’
Is Reform a one-man band?:
‘It can’t be a one-man band when we came second in Wales and have destroyed Labour there – we now hold thirty-odd seats in the Welsh Assembly. We came second, or second equal, in Scotland, seventeen seats up there. Two and a half thousand councillors, thirty-four councils that we run and lots more where we’re very influential. This is not a one-man band. This is a movement which he has led.’
