It’s been a bad week for Nigel Farage and the Tories. Matthew Partridge reports
After weeks in which it gained ground on the Conservatives in opinion polls, the Reform Party finds itself on the back foot following Nigel Farage’s claim last week that the West had “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by expanding Nato membership to Russia’s borders, says Brian Wheeler on the BBC. Farage’s comments drew “condemnation from leaders across the political spectrum”. Keir Starmer said they were “disgraceful”; Rishi Sunak argued they were “dangerous for Britain’s security”.
Hammering at a wedge issue
Some Western scholars agree with Farage that Nato’s expansion into central and eastern Europe after the cold war made Russia’s position “intolerable”, says The Economist. But both they and Farage “have the argument upside down” – “countries join Nato not to antagonise Russia, but because they are threatened by it”. Russia has a long history as an imperial power and, like most declining empires, it “finds the prospect of becoming just another country hard to swallow”. Abandoning Ukraine, or attempting to impose peace on it, as Farage seems to want, “would only invite the next aggression from Putin”.
Farage’s views are unlikely to help him politically, says Mary Harrington on UnHerd. Many British voters are sympathetic to a less interventionist foreign policy, but surveys and anecdotal data suggest that Ukraine is an “exception” – most people back UK support for Ukraine’s war against the Russian invasion. Farage’s views are particularly “out of step” with the older portion of his base. It’s “hard to say” whether this “will be enough to dent Farage on polling day”, but it’s clearly the first “substantive wedge his enemies have identified with which they could potentially split the Reform coalition”. This is why “they’re hammering at it with all their might”
