Yes Nigel Farage can become Prime Minister – but it will take him two or even three elections to get there
It is the picture of the week.
Nigel Farage’s Reform Party now have more members than the Tories and projected the figure onto Conservative Party HQ.
That magic number - 131,680 - will haunt Kemi Badenoch this Christmas.
A gleeful Farage has declared himself the official Leader of the Opposition and says No10 is next.
There is no doubt Reform are the insurgents on the rise.
And I think Nigel Farage can become Prime Minister.
But I think it will take Nigel and the Reform Party two - or maybe even three elections - before they can get to Downing Street.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Reform were causing quite a stir with another photo.
Nigel Farage and Reform’s new Treasurer Nick Candy were snapped with Elon Musk at Donald Trump’s effective headquarters at Mar-A- Lago, Florida.
The meeting took place as speculation swirls that Musk may be about to donate a multi-million-pound sum to what he sees as the British answer to MAGA: Reform UK.
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Such a donation would have a big impact. Reform put in a respectable showing at the General Election, pulling in 14% of the vote. But it lacks a ground game.
That crucial component in politics – printing leaflets, knocking doors, collecting data – needs hard cash, especially if the party wants to get on the same footing as the Tories and Labour.
Musk already helped one insurgent win this year. His resource, in the shape of $200 million, bolstered Trump’s operation and sponsored ads, digital content, and people knocking on doors around the country.
There are lessons any UK campaign can learn from their techniques.
Donald Trump – who Elon Musk is rarely spotted far from these days – is minded to help out Nigel Farage.
He frequently praises Farage at speeches. Trump World likes him too.
I attended two Trump rallies this year; each time he was mobbed by activists and generated genuine buzz in the room.
That’s no mean feat for a Brit.
But can even Musk’s millions propel Farage to 10 Downing Street?
There is no doubt that Reform is in a strong position. Since the election they have crept up in the polls to at or over 20%.
In 89 seats – like Angela Rayner’s constituency - Reform is second place to Labour; in 9 other seats – like the former Tory stronghold of Brentwood and Ongar - they are second to the Conservatives.
Farage faces the best of both worlds: a deeply unpopular incumbent government and an Opposition party that voters have lost trust in.
Voters are also desperate for a plain speaker who says it how it is, even if they do not agree on every issue.
That might go some way to explaining why Farage is now the most popular politician in Britain.
Reform are arguably in the best position for a third-party force in British politics in decades.
That is why I do believe it is possible Nigel Farage can become Prime Minister.
But given the way our political system works, it is going to take two - or maybe even three elections - to get there, even with Musk’s cash.
The reason why it is so difficult for Reform to make it into the government is the same reason that the Conservatives struggle to win with Reform doing well.
It is hard to foresee Kemi Badenoch’s party winning a majority – just as it was for Rishi Sunak – with Reform above 10%.
The same applies the other way round too.
When both parties on the right are doing OK, but neither is doing amazingly, Labour sneaks in.
Someone suggested to me the other day that if all three parties were on a similar footing come the election – say on 25% each in the polls – then Reform could squeak a win.
But even if the three parties were tied nationally, few seats in our system look like the whole country. Instead, they skew either more Labour or more Conservative.
In July’s election, only 6 of 650 seats were won by a party with a winning vote share under 30%.
With right-wing voters split between Tories and Reform, it means opposition to Labour is fractured and – even if Tory and Reform votes exceed Labour’s – it is Starmer’s party that either holds or snatches the seat.
Reform’s rise is also limited by the fact that voters are so used to the two main parties being the contenders for 10 Downing Street.
That is why it took Labour so long to become a party of government in the early twentieth century.
It took Labour 45 years to go from its first seats to a majority in the House of Commons.
The same is likely to apply to Reform at the next election.
They could do well and win up to 75 or so seats. But with the right divided, it is more likely we walk into another Labour government.
In the coming years we may hear about a new divide in the Conservative and Reform parties: between those who are ‘pro-pact’ and those who are ‘anti-pact’.
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For now, I am in neither camp.
But looking just at the numbers it is hard to refute the fact that the Tories’ and Reform’s best chance of power is by working together rather than apart.