Posted on January 24, 2025

Trump Ally Nigel Farage Changes Tone on UK Migration in Bid for Power

Lucy White et al., Bloomberg, January 17, 2025

Farage, who in July won a Parliamentary seat at the eighth time of asking, accepted his party’s economic plans came with a “big initial cost,” denied they’d wreak the same sort of market havoc as the seven-week prime minister Liz Truss’s ill-fated mini budget of 2022, and advocated for sectoral trade deals with the US.

He also repeated his offer to help Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government in its relations with the incoming US administration of Donald Trump, a personal friend, and labeled Tesla owner Elon Musk — who recently called for Farage’s ouster as Reform leader — a “hero” for buying the social media platform Twitter, now X, and promoting free speech.

But for a UK audience familiar with the Brexit architect’s long history of campaigning against European Union membership and the free movement of people that went with it, Farage’s remarks on immigration appear to represent a softening. He denied Reform was anti-immigration, saying instead it was “pro-control.”

“We are not putting up the barriers entirely,” Farage, 60, said. “If we want the City of London, where we’re sitting right now, if we want our tech sector to be a world leader, if we want to turn this place into one of the crypto trading centers of the world — all those things — there’s a lot we can do with British people, but we will need some highly-skilled people from other parts of the world.”

The remarks contrast with Farage’s campaigning during Britain’s referendum on leaving the European Union in 2016. Then, he drew criticism for suggesting continued EU membership would allow 75 million Turkish citizens to travel freely to Britain, and was accused of stoking anti-immigrant hostility with a poster showing a queue of largely non-white migrants under the slogan: “Breaking point.” Farage once again made immigration a focal point in last year’s vote, calling it an “immigration election,” tying economic and social problems to an influx of people from abroad.

Farage stressed Reform was “non sectarian, non racist” and would never have dealings with far-right campaigner Tommy Robinson — whose release from prison Musk has repeatedly called for this year.

UK policy needs to ensure there’s no “overall population explosion due to immigration,” Farage said, referring to official data showing net migration soared to an all-time high of 906,000 in the year to June 2023. Nevertheless, he said “there’s still plenty of room for people to come on either work visas or in some cases come to settle.” He failed to address how lower migration would affect the health and social care sectors, which are currently staffed by large numbers of low-paid workers from overseas.

Riding high in recent opinion polls that put Reform roughly level-pegging with both Labour and the Conservatives, Farage smells an opportunity to finally make a dent in the duopoly that have dominated British politics for a century — in his words, the “uni-party.” After making inroads into the Tory vote in the general election in July, he’s said he’s now coming for Labour, promising a political revolution.

Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system doesn’t help. Reform won just 5 seats on 14.3% of the vote, compared with the 72 seats taken by the centrist Liberal Democrats on 12.2%, a reflection of that party’s more seasoned ground operation. With Reform placing second in 98 constituencies, Farage has vowed to professionalize his still new party and make it a force by the next election, due by mid-2029.

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