Nigel Farage’s success in outflanking Keir Starmer when he pledged to reinstate winter fuel payments and child benefits reflected his innate understanding of how to enlist the UK’s dominant right-wing newspapers to help upstage political opponents.
A knack of knowing when to pounce on a wounded leader or a party in distress is an invaluable attribute in the jungle of British politics and is even more powerful if the opportunity chimes with the news media’s agenda.
For the last two decades Farage’s adroit positioning has helped to weaponize a succession of aggressive press campaigns.
His grasp of the mindset of the Conservative commentariat -- and a wider knowledge of the inner workings of the news media -- took years to develop, starting in the early 1990s, with the launch of UKIP (a time which I can write about with personal insight).
Farage has become a ubiquitous weapon of choice for the Tory press. He is ever ready and willing to piggyback their campaigns whether for delivering Brexit; exploiting fears over immigration; pressurising Conservative Party leaders; or most recently when seeking to undermine Labour’s re-election prospects.
Hot on the heels of Reform’s stunning success in early May in taking control of ten English councils; gaining two mayoralties; and snatching victory the Runcorn by-election by six votes, Farage was in full pursuit: Starmer’s vulnerability was all too evident.
In the wake of Labour’s dire losses and uncomfortable headlines about continuing turmoil over the withdrawal of winter fuel payments and the refusal to end the two-child benefit cap, Reform were on a roll.
As Starmer struggled to quell a looming revolt, Farage went over the heads of Labour’s Red Wall MPs with a promise of full reinstatement.
“Farage to outflank Starmer on benefits” was the front-page headline of the Reform-leaning Sunday Telegraph (25.5.2025) – a well-placed exclusive that became the dominant storyline for the Sunday political programmes, adding yet further pressure on Starmer.
In the lead-up to May elections, Farage had regularly made the Daily Telegraph’s front page.
“I’ve got a fighting chance to be PM” said the headline over a Telegraph report out “on the doorsteps (and the barstools)” with the Reform leader as he toured Labour and Tory strongholds (24.4.2025).
He was front page news again celebrating Labour’s defeat in the Runcorn by-election. “The six votes that shook politics” was the headline over Farage’s claim that the May elections had secured the “greatest local election result for an outsider party”. (Daily Telegraph, 3.5.2025)
Farage’s timing could not be faulted. Opinion surveys indicated that Reform were ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives.
The challenge he faced was to take command of the rolling story, piling on the pressure on Starmer and a hapless Kemi Badenoch, a feat he accomplished with ease.
From his earliest days as a founder member of UKIP, Farage had always been an eager student.
I had met him first when he stood in the 1994 Eastleigh parliamentary by-election at a time when my status as a BBC political correspondent was regarded as an irritant by the Labour Party machine due to my developing interest in the news media’s role in political campaigning.
To avoid potential friction with Tony Blair’s acolytes, BBC Westminster had frequently assigned me to cover fringe events such as UKIP conferences where former Conservative Euro-sceptics were debating – and keen to discuss with journalists -- how best to promote their campaign to secure the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union.
My third book Campaign 1997, which charted the manoeuvring behind Blair’s landslide victory, was considered to be even more “unhelpful” by the New Labour spin machine.
Its launch at Politicos bookshop in the summer of 1997 was boycotted by the party’s leading media apparatchiks, anxious not to be seen in the company of a journalist who had been deemed “unreliable” and who had incurred the wrath of both Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell.
A contingent from UKIP had no such inhibitions, keen to buy the book, anxious to keep in touch.
After his election as an MEP for South-East England in the 1999 European Parliament election, Farage emerged as one of UKIP’s most quoted politicians.
My contacts with UKIP led to a chance inquiry in March 2001: a BBC producer asked how I thought Farage would acquit himself on the Radio 4 programme Any Questions. I assured her that Farage would be an accomplished panellist.
Later the following year, after I had to leave the BBC on reaching sixty, Farage rang me at home. He thanked me for helping him to get “launched into broadcasting” and asked for some advice.
When was the best time for UKIP to hold its party conference? Would it be wise to stick to the week immediately after the Conservative conference or should they go later in the autumn so as not be overshadowed?
I said UKIP’s tactic should be to try to upstage the Conservatives by generating damaging headlines just as the Tory representatives were arriving for their own conference.
Ideally the UKIP conference should be squeezed into the weekend leading up to the opening of the Tory gathering and their aim should be to grab the news agenda; their news value was as an irritant to the Conservatives.
“Yes, I get it,” replied Farage. “So, it’s the timing in the news cycle that matters most of all.”
Needless to say, I smiled with wry amusement when I saw Farage pull off well-aimed publicity stunts on the eve of Tory conferences.
On several subsequent occasions I realised how valuable my advice had been. Farage rang me twice at home offering me the job of UKIP press officer, an offer I had no hesitation in turning down.
Like many journalists I was only too happy – and still am -- to chat away with contacts, whatever their political persuasion, especially as I have taken such an interest in the dark arts of media manipulation.
At the time I had no reason to dodge Farage’s questions, but little did I think my chats might have become a minor building block in the relentless rise of a political chancer whose malign influence has had such an impact on the course of British politics.