Nigel Farage has set out to destroy the Tories – and history may be on his side

He’s back, only this time he really means business. Nigel Farage is presenting himself in this general election campaign not as the great disruptor but as the Terminator. Just a week after he ruled out playing a central role, he has not only taken over the reins of Reform and announced his candidacy in Clacton, but also believes he can supplant the Tories as the main opposition party.

That is quite a claim and one that risks puncturing the Farage legend if he now fails to pull it off.

There is a playbook for this, which is what happened in Canada in 1993, an election that has acquired a near mythical status on the populist Right. The parallels are uncanny. A Conservative administration in office for 10 years and led by a relatively new prime minister, Kim Campbell, lost 154 seats, retaining only two. What had been the governing party was reduced to the fifth largest in the parliament.

Partly this was the consequence of uniquely Canadian matters, notably arguments over regional policy and the position of Quebec. These tensions led to the rise of a party to the Right of the Progressive Conservatives calling itself Reform – indeed, Mr Farage deliberately named his new party after the Canadian insurgents.

An economic recession, unpopular tax rises, and a splintering of the vote on the Right led to the electoral destruction of the Progressive Conservatives in 1993. They had appointed Ms Campbell because they imagined she would stave off defeat, yet they won just 16 per cent of the votes while Reform won 19 per cent. The Tories hoped Rishi Sunak would steady the ship here by being more popular and less reckless than Liz Truss. Yet he has failed to do so.

Reform UK also sprang from a constitutional issue – getting Britain out of Europe. But, as in Canada, it has morphed into an ideological challenger to mainstream conservatism. In 2019, Boris Johnson managed to unite the centre and the populist Right by embracing Brexit and securing a deal with Mr Farage to stand aside his Brexit Party candidates in Tory-held seats. That has now broken down and no pact is possible.

Mr Farage argues that he will take votes from Labour as in 2015, when Ukip helped secure David Cameron an outright majority by allowing the Tories to fend off Ed Miliband’s party in a number of key seats. But because the Tories won so emphatically in 2019, the impact of a resurgent Reform Party will fall disproportionately on them.

The YouGov MRP projection published on Monday night and based on a 60,000-voter sample suggested that Sir Keir Starmer could be heading to Downing Street with a historic majority of 194. That would be bigger than Tony Blair in 1997 and represents a net gain of more than 220 seats, which would be extraordinary if it happened. The Tories would retain just 140 seats, their fewest since the 1906 catastrophe when Balfour lost 246 seats, reducing the parliamentary party to 156.

It will be noted that, while these results were appalling, they were not so-called ELEs, or extinction-level events. The Conservatives recovered from both calamities, though it took them years to do so, just as they did from the great split of 1846 over the Corn Laws.

The Conservative Party is the oldest and most resilient political movement in the world. The idea that it will be supplanted by a populist upstart seems fanciful. Indeed, although YouGov shows Reform performing strongly in a number of seats, it is still a long way off winning any. It is in second place in 27, including 11 in Yorkshire.

But the fieldwork for this poll was conducted before Mr Farage’s dramatic re-emergence into the political limelight. Has he really got the personal magnetism to push the party’s vote up from around 11 per cent to the 20 per cent or more it would need to overtake the Conservatives?

He would be the first to admit that he is a Marmite politician – just as many voters hate him as love him. There will be many centrist Tories planning to vote Lib Dem or stay at home on election day who might now return to the fold precisely because Mr Farage is back in the fray.

Moreover, the Tories must surely have planned for this eventuality, though you do wonder given the way Rishi Sunak sprang this election on everyone, even wrong-footing many in his own party. The initial rollout of policies is designed to appeal precisely to those Tories who might vote Reform – the return of national service, a new crackdown on legal immigration, hints of tax cuts, a reaffirmation of the triple lock on the state pension.

The problem is no one seems to be listening. Moreover, the Tories are merely highlighting their own shortcomings by promising policies they singularly failed to deliver when in office for 14 years. Mr Farage is articulating that frustration rather than offering any solutions.

As he wrote in this newspaper: “There is deep anger that public services, from healthcare to housing, are disintegrating even as record peacetime taxes are levied on pitifully stagnant wages. And there is utter despondency among the electorate that neither Labour nor the Tories can put forward a plan – let alone a leader – that offers just a shred of hope that things might improve.” However, blaming the chattering classes, Whitehall blobs and metropolitan elites does not amount to a prospectus for government.

But so deep is the disaffection with the Tories that it is not impossible Reform could gain more votes than them. The first polls to take into account Mr Farage’s return will be a critical insight into whether this is at all likely. A poll of polls published by Politico already puts the Conservatives as low as 23 per cent. If that falls further, they could be overtaken.

It almost happened in 1983, when the SDP came within 2 per cent of becoming the second largest party yet won just 23 seats while Labour won 209. Even if Reform manages more than 20 per cent across the country, the diffused spread of its support may translate into only a few seats.

One of those gains must include Clacton-on-Sea to give Mr Farage a foothold in Westminster if he is to follow the Canadian template. After their 1993 debacle, the Conservatives were gradually rebuilt under Stephen Harper, who had previously been a leader of Reform. In 2006, he became prime minister, serving for 10 years. Is that Farage’s ultimate goal?