Out of the Frying Pan, into the Farage?

One very real benefit of Brexit is that we now know the dangers of accepting Farage's promises at face value.

Remember that old saying, "Out of the frying pan, into the fire"? It describes the human tendency to escape one bad situation by leaping headlong into something even worse. Right now, millions of British voters are so desperate to escape the effects of our broken political system that they risk jumping into the flames with Nigel Farage. We need to start shining a harsher light on this man and insisting that he answers some tougher questions.

The numbers are staggering. In the wake of Reform UK's strong showing in the 2025 local elections, polling shows Farage's party surging to about 30%, overtaking the governing Labour Party and the Conservatives.

Less than a year into Keir Starmer's tenure, Farage is already positioning himself as the only viable alternative. He recently declared, "We are the real opposition" and, for the first time in his career, we couldn’t just dismiss it as just the latest Farage bluster.

This isn't just protest vote schtick anymore. Farage has set his sights on taking real power in 2029, and millions of voters are ready to hand it to him. The most pressing question now isn't whether Farage could ever win, it's whether we'll all see what we're buying before it's too late.

Before we go any further, let's be clear on one thing: the people flocking to Farage aren't fools. They're responding to genuine frustration. Around 75% of voters now say that politics is broken…and I don’t think they’re wrong. Less than a year after giving Labour a landslide mandate for change, millions are already looking elsewhere. Trust in the political system has collapsed so completely that even a fresh government with a massive majority hasn’t been able to persuade people that positive change is coming.

Years of broken promises, economic chaos, and a political class that seems more interested in managing decline than delivering positive change have left voters desperate for something - anything - that feels genuinely different. The appetite for radical change is real, and it's justified. Voters have every right to demand better. They have every right to be furious. What they don't have is a right to switch their brains off while they select their next step. Because, while Farage is definitely a shyster, he is a pretty sophisticated one, and it takes a bit of effort to see what he is getting away with.

Here's an example: he claims to be both the most influential political figure of the last generation AND an outsider who deserves none of the blame for the problems we are all grappling with. Both things cannot be true.

Farage didn't just watch British politics from the sidelines. He shaped it. He pressured the Tories into the Brexit referendum, reshaped the national debate on immigration, and forced every major party to respond to his agenda. If the system is broken, he helped break it. And, if he bears no responsibility for any of that, then he wasn’t influential…in which case why should his promises of positive change be taken seriously now?

Our current problems aren’t born of decisions made in ancient history. They are the result of decisions made in the recent past, and Farage was central to those decisions. The man now selling himself as the solution spent decades creating the problems he's now promising to fix.

Strip away the rhetoric, and Farage's platform is remarkably thin. He excels at opposition but has never shown any appetite for shouldering responsibility. He's never governed, never built an institution, never had to deliver on a promise more complex than “Vote Brexit: take back control”. When the real-world results of his flim-flam start to appear, Farage slinks off…usually to a television studio or a pub (accompanied by cameras) to push some new angry distraction.

Listen to his recent messaging: "The two big parties are the same"…"Only Reform tells the truth about immigration"…"I say what others won't." It's the language of the perpetual outsider, designed to sound like truth-telling but carefully calibrated to avoid offering anything concrete enough to be tested. It used to be just the Conservative government that were the ‘know nothings’, now it’s Labour too…and the Greens…and the Lib Dems…anyone but Nige.

Farage has built a career on pointing at problems, not solving them. That might be enough for a protest movement, but it's not enough for government. When you're angry at the world, a man shouting about the mess can easily be mistaken for the leadership that’s missing. But when you really need results, you see it for what it is: just noise.

For all his pint-clutching, man-of-the-people theatrics, Farage's rise is not driven by honest, grassroots anger. He’s bankrolled by billionaires and right-wing establishment figures. His fundraising dinners cost £25,000 a plate in Mayfair's finest establishments. He's endorsed by Elon Musk and Donald Trump, two of the most powerful men on the planet. He has a national platform on GB News (which comes with a handsome salary), where he's free to shape the narrative without the inconvenience of serious scrutiny.

This isn't a people's revolution…it's a billionaires’ media campaign cosplaying as a working-class movement. Farage isn't storming the establishment; he's being invited in through the front door by people who've calculated that the chaos he creates serves their interests.

And this campaign isn’t their endgame. As Farage himself has admitted: "This is the first important step on the road to 2029." He's no longer content shouting from the sidelines…he’s got his sights fixed on being our next Prime Minister. And - thanks to our loose ‘good chaps’ constitutional arrangements - as Prime Minister, he would have enormous power to recast our country in a way that hard-wires his poisonous view of the world into British society while prioritising the interests of his wealthy backers (as we have seen his best buddy Trump doing in the States).

These aren’t just daydreams either. Farage and co are busy building infrastructure, attracting serious money, and positioning itself for a genuine shot at power when the next crisis hits. It’s clear for all to see. Even in Labour circles now, there's growing private concern that, if trust in democratic institutions continues to erode, Farage could genuinely become Prime Minister within five years.

So, when anyone tells you that Farage is the change Britain needs, ask them these three questions:

1. If he's been so influential for so long, why is everything still so broken?

2. What has he actually built, fixed, or delivered?

3. Who's really pulling the strings…and why?

The way politics works in the UK definitely needs to change. But change without scrutiny is just dangerous surrender to unknown forces. Voters were right to demand change in 2024, and they were right to give Labour the chance to deliver it. But if that change isn't fast enough or deep enough, the solution isn't to abandon democratic accountability altogether. It’s to acknowledge that there are no easy answers - despite what Farage might claim - and to accept that getting our country back on track will require hard work and pragmatism, concepts largely alien to Farage.

Farage doesn't represent a positive break from the current system. He's the insider masquerading as the outsider, the establishment figure cosplaying the rebel, the problem pretending to be the solution.

Britain tried change through the ballot box less than a year ago. It seems not to be working. But before we contemplate abandoning the imperfect democracy we have for the false promises of a shifty strongman, we should ask ourselves: what EXACTLY does he plan to do with our country and the institutions we hold dear?

The frying pan is undeniably hot. But fire - however hypnotic its flickering flames - is still fire, and it is capable of burning everything we value to the ground.