{"id":90164,"date":"2026-02-16T08:46:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T08:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=90164"},"modified":"2026-02-16T08:46:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T08:46:23","slug":"post-peak-farage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/02\/16\/post-peak-farage\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-peak Farage"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Guardian has this headline<\/a> this morning:<\/p>\n

\n

UK far right lines up behind Rupert Lowe in challenge to Reform<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The subtitle is:<\/p>\n

MP who fell out with Nigel Farage and has backing of Elon Musk launches anti-immigration party in Great Yarmouth<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And as the article notes:<\/p>\n

\n

Over the weekend other parties and figures to the right of Reform quickly rallied behind the new party. Advance UK, led by the former Reform deputy leader Ben Habib and backed by the far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson, said it would consider a merger.<\/p>\n

Such a force could cost Reform a number of seats \u2013 and potentially even power, in a wafer-thin general election result \u2013 by splitting support among those drawn to hard-right anti-immigration populism.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What do I think about the prospect of a fractured right, split between Farage, Lowe and the Tories?<\/p>\n

\"Yes, please\" is the only real response I can offer to that prospect.<\/p>\n

\"Bring it on\", might be my second take.<\/p>\n

Whatever electoral system we have, this is welcome. The more the far-right fight among themselves, the more extreme they will get, the less their appeal will be, and the lower their electoral success will be.<\/p>\n

That does not end their toxicity, and I am aware of that. But the fact that Farage cannot now hold his far-right front together clearly supports the hypothesis that I have had for a while, which is that his appeal has peaked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Guardian has this headline this morning: UK far right lines up behind Rupert Lowe in challenge to Reform The subtitle is: MP who fell
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,203,106,214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-fascism","category-politics","category-reform"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90165,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90164\/revisions\/90165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}