This year, instead of the most-read articles of the year, the team have picked their favourites of the 1,500 or so we have published in 2024. They will appear in no particular order until New Year’s Eve. Today’s choice was first published on June 28, 2024.
THE news that should have been on the front page of the Telegraph yesterday and leading all the headlines (but wasn’t) was that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is on course to win 18 seats at the general election, according to the latest polling. We may even see our very own Paddy Benham-Crosswell becoming the MP for Swansea West! Now wouldn’t that be wonderful? I have to say if he does I will be tempted to claim him as TCW‘s first MP!
Pollsters Electoral Calculus and Find Out Now have conducted a new large-scale MRP (which stands for Multi-level Regression and Poststratification – a relatively recent innovation in ‘polling science’ which successfully predicted the results of the last two general elections) which gives the estimated result in each (new) Westminster constituency. As well as the 18 seats, it predicts that Reform UK will win a higher vote share than the Conservatives. You can examine the findings in detail here.
The Telegraph‘s ‘live’ general election report yesterday did condescend to say that Nigel Farage, Richard Tice and Lee Anderson would all win seats if the results of this poll were replicated on July 4, ‘with Reform’s forecast vote share of 17 per cent two points ahead of the Conservatives on 15 per cent’.
The fieldwork, conducted from June 14 to 24, with a sample size of more than 19,000, also shows the Tories pushed into third behind the Liberal Democrats, with Sir Ed Davey becoming leader of the Opposition, which I have to say is a worry, and forecast that Labour would win a large majority. Ugh.
Who knows? The tidal surge Farage has started hasn’t finished. There are still six days to go.
With Farage and his speaking skills in Parliament, one thing for certain is that neither Sir Ed Davey nor Sir Keir Starmer will get an easy ride. In a short three weeks Nigel Farage had already gone where establishment angels fear to tread and not just on the immigration invasion – a word he has rightly doubled down on. Overnight he shifted the Overton window on the Ukraine-Russia War with some home truths on Nato’s and the West’s responsibility for the conflict. In Sunderland yesterday he broke the election debate silence on lockdown, saying that ‘the second and third Covid lockdowns were the biggest-ever mistake made by a British government in peacetime’. I hope he will soon be saying the vaccines were too. He went on to expose the hypocrisy and stupidity over destructive Net Zero. Scrap the crazy Net Zero rules, he says. The applause came again and again as John Hale, TCW‘s very own reporter at the rally, affirmed. You can read his overview here.
The key point is that Farage is much the most powerful figure in this election, as his rally speeches over the last weeks have underlined. All the other wet and identity-obsessed politicos pale into insignificance beside him. What’s more, he’s stated categorically that he has come back to lead. How long since we heard that word ‘lead’? He talks like a leader and, with immaculate shirt, tie and jacket every time, showing that respect to his audience, looks like a leader too. It’s what terrifies the wet and woke creatures of contrived focus groups that is the present day political establishment.
Like Donald Trump, Farage knows what works when it comes to electioneering. Doing what the best politicians have always done, he’s got out on the stump, making the speeches and dropping the truth bombs that Brits have been waiting so long to hear.
Since declaring his leadership of Reform UK and that he would be standing to be the MP for Clacton he’s held four rallies – one in Clacton, one in Maidstone, one in Newton Abbot, Devon, where the crowds queueing to get in were beyond the capacity of the venue despite the short notice, and the most recent in Sunderland where he daringly announced the support of Sir John Hall, the former Newcastle United owner and major Tory donor. A schedule like this takes energy and dedication, something the country is currently in sort supply of.
You can see the crowds queueing in Devon here.
In Sunderland too, the sell-out crowds continued. They were huge despite less than 48 hours’ notice, and his ‘be proud of Britain and its history’ and ‘stop and search’ speech was voted ‘fantastic’.
In case you missed his first speech at Clacton, here it is:
This is his second rally at Maidstone:
Watch them and judge for yourself whether the MSM and BBC, Sky and ITV have honestly or objectively reported these events or the massive groundswell of support growing for him in the country. I think not.
On Sunday he is holding what he says will be the biggest event of his political career at Birmingham NEC. He invites people to ‘come and be apart of history!’
