The Canadian inspiration for Britain’s surging right-wing Reform party

Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage received a hero’s welcome when he arrived late last week at a victory party in Chelmsford, an Essex commuter town on the outskirts of London, a world away from that city’s centre of power.

The silver-tongued leader of this upstart right-wing populist party regaled the jubilant, and lubricated, crowd with details of Reform’s impressive victories in local elections across England, including in working-class areas where the governing Labour Party has been a dominant force since the First World War.

“We’re seeing some truly historic shifts in voting patterns in parts of this country. Things, frankly, I could never have dreamt we’d see,” Farage said.

Reform won more than 1,400 council seats in contests that effectively serve as the country’s midterm elections, an indictment of sitting Prime Minister Keir Starmer whose Labour Party lost a stunning 1,500 seats. Starmer is now fighting for his survival as leader.

The Conservatives also dropped about 560 seats as the fledgling Reform movement turned its positive polling results into real electoral success, to the detriment of parties on both the left and the right.

Reform’s commitment to freeze immigration, stem the flow of migrants, pull back on Britain’s net-zero emissions plan, cut taxes and slash health-care wait times resonated in an election where voters picked local councillors who will have no say over virtually any of those things.

Still, the Reform agenda clearly appealed to the disaffected voting public tired of perceived inaction on all those issues.

The data shows Labour has actually made progress in some of these areas, namely curbing the number of newcomers. But the local elections became something of a national referendum, and the results are in: a plurality of voters want a radical departure from how things are normally done.

After playfully commenting on the quirkiness of some northern accents, his love of drink and his commitment to make Reform the “fun” party — generally being the cheeky chap his voter base loves — Farage paused to make a serious point.

He named former Reform Party of Canada leader Preston Manning as someone to emulate, and said Manning’s anti-establishment playbook will be deployed in the U.K. to try to drive a stake through the Labour-Conservative duopoly once and for all.

While Manning has receded into the background in Canada — the party he started has been gone for decades — Farage gave him top billing at an event marking election results that rocked the British political establishment.

Farage said the 83-year-old Manning, the wonkish populist pioneer, was his “inspiration” and the reason why he called his own party Reform.

As doubts continue to swirl about whether Farage can take his movement from a protest party born out of Brexit to government at the Palace of Westminster, Farage invoked Manning because he’s a rare example of a leader who challenged the established political forces and won — sort of.

“They became the biggest party in Canada, they finished up in government for 10 years and did a really, really great job,” Farage said, glossing over the Reform’s bumpy transformation into the Canadian Alliance, and its eventual merger with its one-time rival the Progressive Conservatives before winning its first federal election.

WATCH | Right-wing U.K. populist Nigel Farage says Canada’s Reform Party founder was his ‘inspiration’:

Right-wing U.K. populist Nigel Farage says Canada’s Reform Party founder was his ‘inspiration’

In a speech to his Reform UK party after a surge of support in local elections, Leader Nigel Farage said Reform Party of Canada founder Preston Manning’s advice to have internal disagreements in private is ‘something I want you all to bear in mind.’

Manning, Farage said, took his movement from something that was “non-existent” — a marginal force compared to the Liberal and PC parties — to “taking control of the country and running it,” and the same can be done in Britain.

Farage said Manning and the people who followed him could achieve all of that because the party kept its disagreements and “times of stress” private and out of the press.

“Manning said something I want you all to bear in mind: He said, ‘We got to the top, we won and we succeeded because we had our disagreements in private and not in public,'” Farage recounted.

“Please heed my advice on that. There are times when it’s better to bite your tongue,” he said.

Manning learned that lesson the hard way: In its early days, the Reform Party attracted outspoken and sometimes unsavoury characters whose public musings hurt the party’s chances among mainstream voters, especially in central and eastern Canada.

Manning suppressed racist, far-right elements drawn to his movement, which he largely focused on resolving Western alienation and democratic reform. His eventual successor, former prime minister Stephen Harper, prioritized economic issues and good governance over divisive social conservative issues like abortion.

Speaking last year at the Reform UK’s party conference where he was a featured guest, Manning’s principal advice to a movement partly shaped in his image was this: stay united, at least in public.

“All we got was headlines: ‘Reform divided,’ and therefore not to be trusted by the public,” Manning recalled of his own party.

He also counselled British populists to avoid discussing policy specifics while keeping the election manifesto tightly focused, to avoid becoming ensnared in proposals that could turn off voters.

“As a new party, we felt we had to have a policy on everything to prove that we belonged in the big leagues,” Manning said. “Major on the majors.”

Farage is trying to follow that advice.

He had a public break with one of the more extreme voices in his party, MP Rupert Lowe, over mass deportations. Lowe has provocatively warned about “unvetted foreign men from barbaric cultures that have no place in our communities.”

Lowe was also accused of threatening behavior and harassment, and subsequently removed. He has since started his own party, Restore Britain, which is more stridently nativist with its focus on the so-called “relentless creep of radical Islam.” The chairman of Farage’s Reform, by comparison, is a Muslim.

And as per Manning’s guidance, Reform’s short list of policies is bold, but the details are scant —except for the section on migrants, which is 42 pages.

WATCH | Reform UK scores breakthrough wins in local elections:

Reform UK scores breakthrough wins in local elections

Reform UK, the populist party led by Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, saw a surge in support in local elections in the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed to stay in office to ‘deliver change’ despite his Labour Party suffering heavy losses.

“Canadians forget this, but in the English-speaking world, if you want to pick an OG player in the populist sweepstakes your choices are Ronald Reagan in the States or Preston Manning,” Jim Farney, an expert on Canadian conservatism and the Regina director at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, said in an interview with CBC News.

“Reform in the 1990s really was early out the gates and set the agenda for the next 20 years of Canadian conservative politics. It had massive success and massive influence even though they never formed a government,” he said.

And when Manning stepped back, he was “thoughtful and articulate” about building something from scratch, emphasizing the need for a strong party organization, robust fundraising and “a very tight message control.”

“Manning wrote three books about how to pull all of these things together. He has a thought-leader persona on the right because he left so many breadcrumbs,” Farney said.

But emulating Manning’s Reform isn’t exactly a surefire way to get into government, he added.

The party’s best result actually came under Manning’s successor, Stockwell Day, who led a renamed party and orchestrated a small breakthrough in must-win Ontario. Even then, the party only pulled in about one-quarter of the national vote in the 2000 federal election.

Elements of the original Reform party eventually claimed victory, but only after putting some water in their wine by merging with the more moderate PCs and uniting the right to effectively challenge the Liberals.

Farage, meanwhile, has been hostile to his British Conservative opponents, moving to block any more defections from that party to the ascendant Reform.

In fact, Farney said, the Canadian Reform experience is “a warning” to similar parties around the world: Splintering the right-of-centre vote generally keeps conservative-minded parties out of power in a first-past-the-post electoral system.

Farney said a united conservative movement in Canada could have bested former prime minister Jean Chretien’s Liberals in the 1997 and 2000 elections.

“The success of Reform [UK] could be like the success of Reform here — it lets Labour keep piecing together a government, one way or another,” he said.

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-inspiration-nigel-farage-british-reform-party-9.7196607?cmp=rss