ENOCH POWELL, the late Conservation politician, featured in the news last month when the Prime Minister said that the UK risked becoming “an island of strangers”. Sir Keir Starmer was echoing Powell’s 1968 “rivers of blood speech” on immigration (News, 16 May).
Powell was an Anglican, but, later in life, wrote that the crucifixion — perhaps the most written- and talked-about event in the world — did not take place. As a spokesperson for the Roman Catholic Church said at the time, with an admirably light touch: “If Mr Powell is right, we’re going to have to make a lot of changes to church architecture.” It spoke volumes about Powell’s judgement.
Powell’s modern-day successor, Nigel Farage, is not known to hold religious beliefs of any kind, but he has spoken of the importance of “Judaeo-Christian values”, and describes his slogan as “Family, community, country.” There is little evidence, however, that the values that he espouses govern the policies that his party seeks to enact. Instead, enabled by Labour and the Tories, Mr Farage is leading us in a race to the bottom when it comes to immigration and more.
This matters, because the next General Election could well result in Mr Farage’s becoming Prime Minister. The party he leads, Reform UK, is performing well: a poll of voting intentions by Survation last month put it in first place, with 30 per cent of the intended vote share, ahead of Labour on 25 per cent and the Tories on 18 per cent. Reform also made large gains in the local elections last month.
Furthermore, in this age of populism, led by Mr Farage’s friend President Trump, not to mention various would-be fascists in Europe, it would be complacent to dismiss the prospect of a Prime Minister Farage.
And it’s worth being clear what he would do. The Labour peer Lord Adonis, who has been warning about this for a decade or more, is insisting to friends today that Mr Farage would probably wage a war on culture and abolish the BBC, as well as crack down on migrants. The latter move could involve deportations.
So, what is Labour doing about this? Well, as we have seen during the past week, instead of tackling child poverty and the cost of living, two of its brightest MPs, Stella Creasy and Kim Leadbeater, are seeking, respectively, to end life up to the point of birth and to end it prematurely before death.
Future generations will surely look back with dismay at both the attempted amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, aimed at legalising self-administered abortions, and the assisted-dying Bill as the ultimate displacement activity from a largely secular Parliament that increasingly represents our national moral decay.
Mr Farage has spoken out against both of these Bills, and his views may well chime with the public. It would be a shame if Labour ceded further ground to Reform. In the end, Prime Minister Farage would be as disastrous for the country as a Prime Minister Powell.
James Macintyre’s forthcoming book, Gordon Brown: Power with purpose, will be published by Bloomsbury.
Paul Vallely is away.
