The Christmas truce broke down on Boxing Day. Before they had fully digested their turkey, Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch were trading blows.
In a year with few big moments fixed in the political diary the existential fight on the right between the Conservative Party and Reform UK will likely be the defining contest of 2025.
In what was surely a deliberate provocation Farage took to social media to claim that his party membership has just surpassed the Conservatives. Reform UK had built up to the moment with a clickable “countdown clock” on their party website, up to and beyond the 131,669 registered Tories who took part in the last leadership contest.
Farage crowed that the “youngest political party in British politics has just overtaken the oldest political party in the world”. Badenoch took the bait firing back hours later with a 300-word, five-thread post on X that: “It’s not real” and that Farage “doesn’t understand the digital age”.
Net result: widespread coverage of Reform UK’s booming membership, topped off with images of Farage cheerily raising his pint as a follower of the Old Surrey Burstow and Kent Hunt. This picturesque culture war gesture may not appeal to all Reform supporters – anti-bloodsport Ann Widdecombe included – but, we can be sure, that Badenoch would never have dared to make it.
Farage v Badenoch will be the match to watch in the coming year. Farage is pitching himself as David against the Goliath of the Conservative Party but in truth he is a wily old pro taking on a naïve newbie, who is impulsively making beginner’s mistakes.
Like Sir Keir Starmer, Badenoch insists that she has a five-year plan working towards “Renewal 2030” – the title she chose for her leadership campaign rather than her own name.
She claims to be “sick or the endless lies, smoke and mirrors, stuff and nonsense politics”.
“We won’t fix what has gone wrong over the past 30 years with rage,” she opined only to rage back furiously against Farage’s latest stunt.
Unlike the Labour leader, Badenoch cannot ignore taunts. She boasts about being an “engineer” who ponders everything carefully before coming up with an answer but seems to hit back blindly.
Her admirers and detractors were right when they said she could start a fight in an empty room. Unfortunately for her the room is not empty and she is in danger of helping her main opponents, Farage and Starmer to fill it.
At Prime Minister’s Questions the new leader of the opposition wades in fists flying with stylishly crafted punches at the Government’s current problems. Starmer ignores her jibes and lies back on the ropes, before striking back with relish at the record of the recent Tory governments, to which she belonged, and which were comprehensively knocked out at the last election.
Badenoch is making the same mistakes in enthusiastically taking on Farage, overestimating her own strength and underestimating his.
Farage and Reform were actively still pulling off a classic social media stunt, complete with “Merry Christmas @KemiBadenoch” hashtags and membership figures projected onto Conservative headquarters, when she hit back, accusing them of misunderstanding digital and being behind the times “copying the fake Tony Blair/Campbell spin book”.
Badenoch’s flurry of punches opened her up to Farage’s crushing counter-punch; “Kemi says I don’t understand the digital age. I have 5.4 million followers and she has 320k. We understand you are bitter, upset and angry that we are now the second biggest party in British politics, and that the Conservative brand is dying under your leadership.”
Farage is able to play the affronted party, offering to open up Reform’s membership books to independent auditing provided the Conservatives do the same, something both Labour and the Conservatives have long been shy of. Badenoch now claims “the Conservative party has put on thousands of new members since the leadership election” but she has yet to publish the evidence or promise to do so.
Badenoch’s ferocity is no match for Farage’s confidence and ability to fight a culture war. In attending the hunt on Thursday Farage signalled where he stood, aligning himself he said with “real people” not “toffs… if that’s what the Labour party thinks”.
Badenoch, on the other hand, delivered a speech in Washington DC earlier this month denouncing the prevalence of “woke”, “leftist” ideology but has a habit of backing off in practice – perhaps wisely. She disowned her own comments about over generous maternity support. She served in a government which oversaw record immigration and, as business secretary she declined to ignite a bonfire of all EU regulations.
Conservative supporters may argue that social media does not matter that much. If so their leader would be well advised not to engage with it so vigorously. As a millennial and a computer engineer Badenoch knows that success online is vital. Farage has learnt from Donald Trump how to set the mood from the unpoliced space of social media. Badenochs’ cries of “fakery” will fall flat. He has more than a million followers on TikTok. Reform UK arguably won the election campaign on that platform favoured by young people and continues to perform favourably with younger voters.
Party membership numbers may not matter that much either. The days are long gone when official supporters were measured in millions. Jeremy Corbyn held the recent record with over half a million Labour members and still lost two elections. Badenoch has drawn attention to the Conservatives’ parlous state and near parity with Reform UK.
In opinion polls Reform is the only party to have made clear gains since the election. Reform has joined the Conservatives and Labour rating in the mid-twenties. It cannot be much comfort to Badenoch that on minus 45 per cent, she is fractionally less unpopular than Farage on -49 per cent. Starmer is on -53 per cent.
Reform UK are not yet “the real opposition”, as Farage claims. The coming year’s local elections look precarious for the Conservatives and Badenoch. In sagacious mode she says she has no plans to bribe the voters, offering instead “hard, unvarnished truths. Many of those truths will be hard for my party and the country.”
She sounds a bit like the UK’s prime minister. Unlike Starmer though, Badenoch has neither confirmed stature nor time on her side.
This May the Conservatives will be defending a high water mark performance from 2021, the last time these English council were contested. Reform UK was not around then, and its predecessors Ukip and Brexit were resting. Reform will be starting from zero meaning any seats they win will be vaunted as straight victories by a new party on the march.
Nigel Farage has form triumphing in non-Westminster elections to devastating effect.
Adam Boulton presents Sunday Morning on Times Radio
