Why Nigel Farage will become a recruiting sergeant for a new EU referendum

Keir Starmer’s softly-softly approach to Brexit will be endorsed in resounding style on July 4, but for frustrated Rejoiners hope is at hand from a very unexpected source – Nigel Farage.

When the idea of a second referendum on leaving the EU has been posited over the past few years, Farage’s take has been that one should indeed be held – in 2057. That would, his theory went, mirror the 41 years between the 1975 and 2016 referendums.

But now, British politics’ great opportunist appears to have changed his tune on how soon referendums on the same subject should be held.

This week, Farage predicted that Reform might get six million votes on July 4 – but only a handful of seats (the most recent MRPs show them winning anywhere between three and 18). He claims that six million votes would be worth 140 seats under proportional representation.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, he called the first past the post system “absolutely bankrupt”, adding: “I think we’re going to get six million votes. If we don’t win many seats, there’ll be considerable public anger. But if Keir Starmer gets 38 per cent and 500 seats there’ll be even greater anger and major changes coming.”

Farage then indicated that Reform would be at the forefront of a pro-PR campaign over the next five years, saying: “I think an appetite for change is going to become a very, very big campaigning issue and I see our role [as campaigning for it].”

The drumbeat for PR has already been taken up among prominent Reform faces, with journalist Isabel Oakeshott, partner of the party’s funder and deposed leader Richard Tice, tweeting: “An electoral system that disenfranchises millions of people is not fit for purpose.” The broadcaster and former Brexit Party MEP Alex Phillips posted that if Reform’s vote “doesn’t translate into a sweep of seats, major questions should and will be asked about what many will regard as a totally rigged ‘democratic’ system.”

It seems certain then that Reform’s plan is to bang on about PR throughout the next parliament in the hope of making it a campaign issue in 2028 or 2029, with the ultimate goal a referendum on a new voting system (Farage’s preference is for the Alternative Vote) in 2030.

The problem for him is that Britain had a referendum on AV in 2011, when 68% of those who voted backed remaining with first past the post. Of course, circumstances change and we could vote again – but wouldn’t Farage demanding a re-run of one referendum logically mean he had to support a re-run of another? Especially on an issue where there is much wider clamour for change? The latest polls on both issues show, respectively, 50% for Rejoin and only 35% for stay out; and 45% for PR compared to 25% for FPTP.

By Farage’s new timetable – 19 years between referendums, not 41 – that would mean a second Brexit referendum (and third on Britain and Europe) in 2035. That will feel far too late for all those of us who see the damage Farage’s pet project has done to our country. Yet the idea of a new referendum at the start of what might be Labour’s third term, in which they would be able to admit to the electorate that they had tried and failed to make Brexit work, seems very plausible.