Not long ago, Nigel Farage seemed dominant. The political campaigning genius who destroyed Britain’s membership of the European Union seemed set to be the next UK prime minister. But his Reform UK party balloon is deflating. After the Makerfield by-election, won at a canter by Andy Burnham, Farage resorted to blaming voters for choosing badly, in a video shot in a field so no one would heckle him. Such symbols matter.

Reform has won just one of the five UK parliamentary by-elections held since the 2024 general election. It also lost the Caerphilly by-election to the Welsh Senedd. Its supporters would argue that, as a newish party, it has done amazingly well – it still leads the two traditional big parties, Labour and the Tories, and triumphed in England’s local elections. But momentum matters in politics, And there are signs that the mud thrown up by Farage’s £5 million gift from a crypto milliionnaire is starting to stick, along with Reform’s abysmal record in the councils it now controls.

In football, you can afford to be unpopular if you win. In politics, it’s not so easy. We now have plenty of evidence that Reform’s Marmite reputation is costing it victory when it matters. That certainly happened in the Caerphilly Senedd by-election, in the Senedd general election, and at Gorton and Denton, won by the Greens in February. Voters are voting tactically to keep Reform out. And that’s before we count the votes it is losing to the even more extreme right-wing Restore party, created by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe to seek revenged against Farage after the two fell out last year.

Tilt right to lose again

Nigel Farage is clearly rattled by Restore. Most commentators agreed that this motivated his outrageous call for British people to react to Henry Nowak’s murder with ‘pure, cold rage’ – despite the call from the teenager’s father that Henry’s death was not exploited to create division. To give him some credit, Farage has in the past kept some far right agitators such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (who stirs hatred under the name Tommy Robinson) out of Reform. But the party is now moving even further to the right to try to neutralise Restore.

Strategically, this is almost certainly a fatal mistake. Britain is not the United States, and the next UK general election will not be won by appealing to a small band of racist, homophobic nativists. Reform’s only hope is to win over people who’ve previously seen it as beyond the pale. (A little like Keir Starmer won people back who’d shunned Labour while Jeremy Corbyn was leader.) Moving towards the far right end of the spectrum will have the opposite effect. Tim Montgomerie, the founder of Conservative Home who defected to Reform in 2024, talked of the strategic imperative of Reform appealing to this broader audience on Not Another One, the entertaining political podcast he hosts with Miranda Green, Iain Martin and Steve Richards, (Although, bizarrely, he repeatedly referred to the Makersfield by-election, misnaming the best known constituency in British political history.)

if Andy Burnham succeeds as prime minister, with the economy starting to grow, and smart measures to reverse Starmer and Reeves’ catastrophic taxes on employment, Reform is likely to slide further in the polls. (The reverse would obviously apply if Burnham proves as incapable as Starmer in making change happen, despite talking about change more eloquently.)

Why might Farage resign?

Despite all this, Reform still has a chance of forming a government in 2029. So why would Farage walk away?

It’s what he does. He stepped down as UKIP leader the day after the Brexit referendum in June 2016. He resigned as Brexit Party leader in 2021. These are not the only times he has walked away from party leadership.

He’s a campaigner not a leader. Few could dispute Farage is a hugely successful campaigner. Brexit wouldn’t have happened without his genius for campaigning. At his strongest, he can identify an issue and turn it into political gold dust. But he’s not temperamentally suited for the hard, bruising grind of government. His star would fade as swiftly as Keir Starmer’s has if he were to become PM. He is a destroyer not a builder, a merchant of anger not hope. He would find it excruciating defending a Reform government’s record of chaos and failure.

Winning and keeping power requires teamwork

Farage is notorious for falling out with colleagues, most recently with Rupert Lowe. That spat was the latest of a catalogue of confrontations over the years, dating back to his feud with UKIP founder Alan Sked. You don’t have to assume that he has always been the culprit in these bust ups to think this track record might be a problem for Reform in the coming months. Keir Starmer and Liz Truss have shown that leaders who burn through allies tend to crash and burn. I suspect Tories who defected to Reform such as Danny Kruger and Suella Braverman are finding life on Planet Farage far less congenial than they expected, especially as Kemi Badenoch is proving a cannier Tory leader than seemed likely. (Unlike Reform at Makerfield, Badenoch’s Tory party won a by-election last week – Aberdeen South, their first by-election win in Scotland for 59 years.)

Farage would hate the humiliation of losing

Farage’s peevish reaction to losing Makerfield to Andy Burnham showed that he hates losing. But it also suggested that he doesn’t have the temperament to learn the lessons of Makerfield – any more than Keir Starmer was able to learn from his mistakes in government. I suspect he’s more self aware than most people realise. That may lead him to the conclusion that things can only get worse, win or lose, and his best bet is to step down as leader, and heckle from the sidelines by resuming his lucrative broadcasting career. (Let’s hope Andy Burnham proves more robust than Keir Starmer in telling Ofcom to enforce broadcasting impartiality rules on GB News.)

This prediction may prove hopelessly wrong. Farage may enter Number 10 as PM in 2029 in triumph as Britain’s first non Labour or Conservative PM since 1922. But I can’t see that happening unless Andy Burnham proves a disastrous premier. It may not happen until 2028, but don’t be surprised to see Farage making his latest resignation speech in 2028.