The heavens are just about to open as Nigel Farage’s Range Rover pulls up beside the Royal Bar in Morecambe on Wednesday morning. But as he enters the seafront pub, sporting a Cheshire grin and a new pair of crimson corduroys, it is clear that even an April deluge cannot dampen his spirits.
Two dozen Reform UK council candidates have gathered to hear a pep talk from their leader, who is visiting Lancashire for a day of local election campaigning.
A short drive from Blackpool, Morecambe, like many towns in the county, is a traditional Labour-Tory battleground that is rapidly turning Reform’s shade of turquoise.
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Here, next to an estuary that once supported thriving fishing and tourism industries, Reform has amassed an army of 1,000 members. Residents say they are fed up with a political class that has forgotten them. Potholes are a particular bugbear; there are 84,000 in the county, more than almost any other English local authority.
With Reform now regularly tying or leading Labour in the national polls, these are the kind of areas Farage believes he will sweep on May 1.
Lancashire county council, controlled by the Tories, is “a massive target for us”, he says, along with Nottinghamshire, Co Durham and Kent, which he is due to visit within days. Farage also believes that three mayoral contests — Doncaster, Hull and Greater Lincolnshire — are “realistic” targets.
He has been campaigning “relentlessly”, and is fielding more candidates, at 1,600, than any other party. Farage is also busily securing new celebrity backers. The latest is Marco Pierre White, the chef and former mentor to Gordon Ramsay, who has this weekend endorsed Arron Banks, Reform’s candidate for Bristol mayor. The deal was hatched last Monday in typical Farage style, over an “incredibly boozy” dinner at one of the chef’s hotels near Bath.
In a direct appeal to Sir Keir Starmer’s red wall heartlands, Farage has recently called for British Steel to be nationalised while also openly courting the trade unions. On Tuesday, in a speech in Co Durham, the spiritual home of the miners, he vowed to “reindustrialise Britain”.
Across from the Royal stands a statue of the comedian Eric Morecambe, the town’s most famous son. As Farage poses next to it with his candidates, a small crowd gathers to take pictures. “Come to Scotland next,” shouts a blonde woman named Sarah, 49, who has travelled down from Inverclyde, near Glasgow, for a short holiday with her family. She says while she used to vote SNP in her younger years, she thinks Farage is “brill” and wants a leader who values the Union. “I’m proud to be British,” she adds.
On the way to the next campaign stop, Farage and I sat down for lunch at the Fleece Inn, Dolphinholme. Over a steak and onion baguette and two pints of Hen Harrier pale ale, Farage explains why he, a Thatcherite former commodities trader, supports nationalising the Scunthorpe steelworks. “The world is a more dangerous place than at any point in my lifetime,” he says, with western nations forced to re-examine globalisation and their self-sufficiency.
“This Eighties idea that it didn’t matter who owned what, it didn’t matter where stuff was produced, it didn’t matter what companies owned everything in Britain, it didn’t matter where goods were manufactured — that’s gone. It was of its moment and its time.”
While some believe Farage has cynically jumped on the steel bandwagon because it plays well with target voters, he insists he has been thinking about the security of British industry for more than three decades.
“The first time I questioned this whole philosophy was in 1992, when I watched the North Nottingham miners march down Park Lane,” he says. “I stood at the side of the road and watched them, and I thought ‘I’m on their side’. After the end of the coal strike, they broke every production record ever seen, but because of cheap Polish imports after the Berlin Wall came down, they were undercut and closed by [Michael] Heseltine.”
On steel specifically, he says he spent 22 years as a trader working with the metal industries. “I was going out on the road to Liverpool, to Swadlincote in Derbyshire, to Enfield rolling mill, I was going out all over this country dealing with people who were manufacturing and rolling metals. And I’ve watched the rapid deindustrialisation of stuff we ought to be making here.”
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The bigger question is whether Farage, a Brexit-championing, free market liberal, is now a protectionist and would consider nationalising other sectors. “There may well be [others],” he said. “Our thinking has to change.”
The most obvious, I suggest, would be the water industry, local monopolies teetering on the brink, having channelled tens of billions of pounds to shareholders rather than maintenance.
“Let them go bust,” Farage replies. “Why should we protect the bondholders?” And if Thames Water, the most financially imperilled, went under, what then? “You might take it over temporarily. And then you ask for consortium bids for a new owner, you obviously rewrite the rules on dividend takeouts. I don’t think this is very difficult.”
Farage is not only speaking the language of the Labour left but the union leaders who paint him as a bogeyman. Gary Smith, leader of the GMB union, which represents steelworkers, has said Reform is an enemy, not an ally.
On a personal level, Farage appears to hold a number of trade unionists in high regard. While Arthur Scargill, the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, was hellbent on “destroying everything”, he “admired” Roy Lynk, who led the more moderate Nottingham mineworkers.
He counted the late Bob Crow, the former general secretary of the RMT, as a friend. “Had Bob not died, my [Brexit] referendum campaign was going to be a double act with him and me touring the country,” Farage says. “Bob used to say to me, ‘I’ve got a problem with you, Nige — a lot of my lads are voting for you.’ Gary Smith is in the same position.”
This charm offensive is a logical next step as Reform seeks to replace Labour as the party of so-called “working people” — but is Farage’s pitch to the unions genuine? “I would sit down and talk to them tomorrow,” he says. “If we are going to reindustrialise Britain, then we have to realise that the trade unions and relationships with them are a very important part of it.”
For Farage, heavy industry will recover only if Britain’s energy prices fall dramatically. But the UK must also generate much more of its own electricity, he adds, noting that America produces about three times as much per person. This is why British coal, gas and oil would not only remain but be encouraged to grow under Reform, and why Farage would scrap net zero were he to be made PM. However, he also believes the future of British energy is nuclear and says he is “massively pro”.
Even if he is pro-nuclear, Farage’s stance on net zero would undoubtedly lead to tensions with the King, a lifelong environmentalist. In No 10, would he really be prepared for that confrontation?
“Of course,” he says, noting that “we have fallen out in the past”, an apparent reference to when he refused to applaud Charles, then Prince of Wales, when he gave a climate speech to the European parliament in 2008. However, Farage is quick to add: “I believe him to be a very decent human being, my interactions with him have always been civil and often slightly humorous about how much we disagree.”
He has far more in common with President Trump, who, despite pausing most of his universal tariffs, is now threatening to impose import levies on pharmaceuticals. The UK’s medicines industry could face a multibillion-pound hit. Farage seeks to play down the issue, arguing everyone has forgotten Trump also imposed tariffs during his first term.
And while Starmer is trying to negotiate a trade deal to alleviate the worst effects, he argues the government is in “a mess” and cannot maximise the benefits if, as reported, it is seeking “more and more alignment” with the EU’s food and drink standards.
Would he be prepared to accept US chlorinated chicken as the price of a more comprehensive trade pact? “If you have a look at the chicken we are currently importing from Thailand, you look at the conditions they’ve been reared in, and that every single bag of pre-made salad in every single supermarket has been chlorinated … once those basics have been accepted I’ll have a debate with you,” he replies.
Asked how he would square that with his championing of British farmers, who face being undercut, Farage said the solution was to ensure American imports were properly labelled.
“I want to promote British farming as being a high-end product,” he continues. “I think the growth of farmers’ markets, they are a much more discerning audience that wants to know where their meat comes from. I don’t think British farmers have anything to fear from this long-term.” If that proves “too difficult”, ministers should just swerve agriculture and focus on a series of sectoral deals with the US, spanning alcohol, cars, clothes and financial services.
What of Elon Musk, who ended 2024 backing Farage to become prime minister and started 2025 calling for him to be ousted for failing to back the extreme immigration policies espoused by the likes of Tommy Robinson?
Farage and Musk have exchanged messages since. While he will not say what they discussed, he does not deny Musk again pressured him on immigration. “I’ve fought against this for 25 years,” he continues. “You can’t bully me, I know what I think is right and what I think is wrong. Nobody pushes me around — not even him.”
Farage’s reluctance to go down this path has not only caused a fissure with Musk but a number of malcontents in his own party, who are trying to paint him as a soft touch. Among them is Rupert Lowe, the MP who was kicked out of Reform in March.
A decade ago, Farage was widely condemned and accused of dog-whistling when, during the 2015 election, he suggested migrants with HIV were coming to Britain so they could receive treatment on the NHS. Since then, as he has become closer to power, his views appear to have mellowed. While his policy is net zero immigration, Lowe has gone much further and is calling for mass deportations. Such calls clearly alarm Farage, who believes this could be easily conflated with the mass expulsion of people based on ethnicity, including those born in Britain.
“We’re just not going there, never have and never will,” he says, looking visibly uncomfortable.
Even as he battles those on his right, Farage is accused of racism by those on his left. The day before we meet, Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, has labelled him “a pound shop Donald Trump” who has made a “a career out of dog-whistle politics”.
Do such accusations upset him on a personal level? “Yeah, because it’s just nonsense,” he says. “It’s quite annoying. I think I’m pretty sensible on all of these things.”
With lunch finished, the Reform battle bus travels on to the Strawberry Gardens pub in Fleetwood, another nearby coastal town beset by many of the same problems as Morecambe.
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As Farage vows a Reform-run council will do a “damn sight” more to fix potholes, one of the candidates says they are on course for a “landslide” and their data suggests that in one ward, Tory support has collapsed from 70 per cent to just 1.5 per cent.
Cheering Farage on are Peter and Andrea Murphy, a retired couple who were previously staunch Conservatives. Peter, who served for 12 years on the local Wyre council, said potholes were a genuine problem. “The vast majority of roads with the wear and tear, they don’t get filled in properly, they don’t get repaired properly, and it’s an ongoing thing. Some of the roads you drive down you could be losing a tyre,” he said.
He became disillusioned with the Tories over their Brexit infighting, whereas with Reform he feels he is “singing from the same hymn sheet”. Andrea adds: “I don’t recognise anybody in the Conservatives any more. I certainly don’t recognise the Labour Party. I always thought this country needed a good opposition party, but they are both the same now.”
On a nearby table, Linda Harding, a recently retired publican in her sixties, says she too was a Tory voter but sees Farage as “down to earth”. She agrees potholes are a problem, but says that in Fleetwood, the “biggest problem is drugs” and Labour has done nothing.
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Across the country, it is clear growing numbers share the views of Linda and the Murphys. A poll of 16,000 people, published this weekend by the More in Common think tank, suggests that if an election were held now, Reform would emerge the largest party, with 180 seats, while the Tories and Labour would be tied on 165 each. This is despite Reform having a slightly lower vote share — something More in Common’s director, Luke Tryl, says shows their vote is becoming both broader and more efficient.
On Friday, while lunching at the Old Down Estate, a wedding venue near Bristol owned by Banks, Pierre White says he believes Farage to be a “great man”. Like Jeremy Corbyn, another politician he respected because of his “conviction”, he says Farage “was a lone wolf for years … in Europe, fighting for what he believed in. Whether you agree with him or not is an irrelevance. I admire the man’s tenacity.”
Similarly, he says that Banks, one of the “Bad Boys” of Brexit who bankrolled Farage for years, “would be a very good mayor” and he believes him to be a “man of substance”. In contrast, he says “I don’t really know anything” about Starmer, who he says is “always playing it safe”.
The only snag for Banks is that while Pierre White is backing him, he does not actually intend to vote for anyone. “I’ve never voted. I never will vote. Old habits die hard,” he adds.
During lunch, I asked Farage whether he thought his growing popularity stemmed from maintaining the perception of being “anti-establishment” — despite now being an MP — and because his policies are largely informed by conversations with people in pubs such as the Strawberry Gardens. “[My views] come from the real world,” he says.
“There’s one thing I’m good at in life, one talent, I can see ahead in a way that a lot of people can’t. Sorry if it sounds big-headed, but it’s true. I’m pretty useless at most things. But I’m never scared of being ahead of the game.”
