The populist right struggled for decades to make an electoral breakthrough in the United Kingdom.
There were a few moments – particularly after Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in April 1968 – when it looked as though a breakthrough was possible.
Indeed, one of the most interesting ‘what if’ moments in post-WW2 history is what would have happened if Powell had formed his own political party in the wake of that speech and challenged the Conservatives?
For a couple of years opinion polls indicated he was the most popular politician in the UK; one of only a handful – the others tended to be on the left – who could be guaranteed to fill a hall just about anywhere in England.
His switch to the UUP after his formal break with the Conservatives shortly before the general election in February 1974 guaranteed him a parliamentary seat, with colleagues; something which couldn’t have been taken for granted had he formed his own party.
Yet, over 50 years later, people on the populist right still refer to him with deference and many social media sites use ‘Enoch Was Right’ memes.
A lot of smaller, well-to-the-right-of-centre parties have come and gone since 1968. A few of them made a bit of noise and some even gained a little traction: but none of them had a charismatic leader and most tended to divide and then keep on dividing until nothing was left.
The other thing working against them was that the Conservative Party was a genuinely ‘big tent’ party; the only party on the right capable of offering a potential political career or role for those who wanted to follow that path.
The game changed when the businessman and politician James Goldsmith formed the Referendum Party in 1994, determined – post-Maastricht Treaty – to give the UK electorate a chance to stop the ‘one way journey to a European superstate in which the UK would be reduced to the status of a mere observer’.
He also financed the European Foundation, a Eurosceptic think tank. But he died in 1997, and his party died with him.
That left space for someone to pick up the pieces and that someone was Nigel Farage.
He had been involved in populist politics for a number of years (as a member of the Conservatives from 1978-92 and then the Anti-Federalist League), before joining UKIP in 1993 and then ousting its leader in 1997.
He learned a lot from how Goldsmith ran the Referendum Party, particularly in terms of keeping leadership, membership, policy and media almost entirely under his personal control.
UKIP terrified the Conservatives. It did particularly well in the Euro elections in 2014; so well, in fact, that David Cameron included the promise of a referendum in the party’s 2015 general election manifesto.
The rest, as they say, is history. Leave won and the Conservatives imploded. For the next eight years Farage was the one making the weather in UK politics and consolidating his position as the most influential populist politician.
His next goal is an electoral breakthrough in terms of parliamentary seats and the chance - however small it looks right now – of leading a government in 2029.
But for the first time he may face challenges from some who are further to the right than he is.
Elon Musk’s bizarre intervention in support of Tommy Robinson – he seems to regard him as a political prisoner, even though he pleaded guilty to the charges which led him to prison – has created an unexpected problem. Not least the amount of support it seems to have generated for Robinson.
Musk has now gone further: calling for Reform UK to replace Farage as leader because ‘he’s not up to the job’.
The call seems to have been welcomed by Ben Habib (who had already been given the boot by Farage) and by Reform members who have sympathy with Habib’s view about the need to democratise the party.
It may also mean that funding which Musk had been hinting at will not materialise if Farage stays in post.
What will worry Farage most, though, is whether Musk is determined to drive a wedge between him and Trump. Or, worse still, attempt to steer UK populism away from Farage’s domination and towards something more to Musk’s liking.
And that something might embrace a worldview which seems to be shared by Robinson, Laurence Fox and a ragbag of smaller parties, including some which Farage used and abandoned during his rise.
Maybe, just maybe, the UK’s populist right is about to do what it usually does. Disintegrate.