This is what worries me. While the Tory party are manoeuvring to stop Braverman getting nominated the actual membership is further right of them and if the rest of the candidates are more moderate Tories, she could win it. She's the only potential candidate who has talked about a merger with Reform, so if the members see this as a fix for their troubles then they'll go for it and she'll see it as a mandate to bring Farage in, presumably into some high ranking role.
As I've said before, I'd bet decent money that someone (possibly Tufton Street adjacent) did polling that demonstrated the steps needed to get Farage into the top job are all in place, leading to his U-turn.
The steps would be:
- Farage leads Reform
- They get a much higher share of the vote because of that
- It's enough to lose Tories their seats and cause genuine concern in the Tory party
- Braverman stands as the most explicitly pro-merger candidate
- The Tory MPs don't want her but the party membership have shown they are much further right and vote her in
- Farage snatches Braverman's hand of and gets a senior role in the Tory party
- Polls suggest Braverman is electoral poison while Farage is much more popular and he gets the leadership just in time for
- The next general election where Labour have an uphill fight because they don't have the "get the Tories out" tailwind and are judged on their record in office, which may be less than impressive and uninspiring (partly because the country is wrecked)
- Farage become PM
- Fascism
6 weeks ago, even step 1 seemed unlikely and yet here we are talking about step 5.
Now Farage is odious and has made some pretty concerning comments, so he may be electoral poison that could just be what Labour needs to secure the second term they need to start seeing real changes (especially if we look at the efforts in France to stop the Nazis becoming the largest party). However, these are Tory party members who thought Liz Truss and her Tufton Street-written manifesto was a winner and an electorate who went all in on BoJo, costing us billions of pounds and thousands of lives. I am unsure I want to roll those dice.