Farage’s latest deportation stunt is a perfect example of what I’ve long called his knack for self-sabotage. Ripping up Indefinite Leave to Remain, re-vetting people who have lived here for years, even floating deals with the Taliban - it’s not policy, it’s theatre. It terrifies moderates, alarms business, and horrifies lawyers, but it gets him what he really wants: attention, outrage, and another lap around the media circus.
That’s the point. Governing would mean detail, delivery and accountability. Farage doesn’t want any of that – why would he, when being on the outside is so much more lucrative? He makes more money flogging grievance on GB News and selling books than he ever would at a Treasury dispatch box. His business model is outrage, not outcomes.
The problem is his wealthy backers want outcomes. They want deregulation, bonfires of standards, tax cuts for themselves. They know Farage is a wrecking ball, not a builder. Yet he’s a wrecking ball with a fan club. Try to edge him aside and he won’t go quietly – he’ll split the vote, as he always has, because division is his one true talent.
That’s why Rupert Lowe has already broken away to launch his own “Restore Britain.” Lee Anderson is too much of a fool to lead anything beyond a pub lock-in. Corbyn has launched “Your Party” on Labour’s left flank. Add Greens, Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid – and suddenly the “two-party system” looks more like a smashed windscreen, shards in every direction.
And here’s where it gets dangerous. Under first-past-the-post, all this fragmentation doesn’t translate fairly into seats. Instead, we get grotesque distortions: a Labour majority built on little more than a third of the vote; a Tory rump clinging on despite collapse; millions voting for Reform, Restore Britain, Greens, or Corbyn’s lot, only to find themselves with a scattering of MPs, or none at all. We are heading into an age of hollow majorities – governments claiming sweeping authority on threadbare shares of the national vote.
That mismatch between votes cast and seats won is becoming impossible to defend. When two big blocs dominated, the stitch-up was disguised. But when everyone can see their party of choice being short-changed, the calls for proportional representation grow deafening. Ironically, it may be Farage, Lowe and Corbyn – railing against the establishment while being strangled by first-past-the-post – who end up forcing the issue.
But PR itself is no magic cure. It carries dangers of its own. It can splinter politics further into a mess of small parties. It makes coalition horse-trading the norm, with voters watching manifesto promises sacrificed behind closed doors. It can empower extremists who only scrape five percent of the vote but suddenly hold the balance of power. It can produce weaker or revolving governments – Italy being the poster child. And depending on the system, it can weaken the link between MPs and local constituencies, turning elections into a fight between party lists rather than people.
Yet even with those dangers, PR at least reflects reality. First-past-the-post produces false majorities and wasted votes. PR risks messiness, but it’s honest messiness. The real challenge is cultural – can Britain learn to treat coalition as normal politics rather than betrayal? Germany and Scandinavia manage it. Israel and Italy struggle. Where Britain would land is an open question.
Farage thinks he’s playing the arsonist who never has to face the flames. In truth, his self-sabotage is part of a broader splintering that could burn down the whole duopoly. What replaces it may not be neat – it may be unstable, compromised, and fractious – but at least it will reflect the country we’ve actually become.
Self-sabotage, after all, isn’t just Farage’s party trick. It may turn out to be the undoing of the system itself.
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