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People will sneer at Farage, as they always do. But his political antennae are among the best in politics. There is a gap in the political marketplace for (what polls tell us) is a small but not insignificant portion of the electorate: lockdown sceptics. https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1323015020641456128
Biggest problem (ironically enough for Farage) is that without the European Parliament it will be very very hard to gain an electoral foothold for a new party. Rallies will also be difficult. But Farage has a very dedicated following and is a gifted communicator.
They don’t need to win any elections to rattle the Tories and change the conversation. Given the BXP’s large e-mail database, party infrastructure and experience (note their v successful/effective digital work) very credible to imagine them get a decent showing in the polls.
Even shaving 5ish points off the Tories will be enough to scare plenty of Tory MPs and convince the already lockdown squeamish that they were right all along. That small group of lockdown sceptics we see in the polling could grow rapidly when economic damage grows further.
We’re seeing unrest and dissent around restrictions on the increase throughout Europe. Easy to imagine how that increases over time and that this would be a British (probably English) receptacle of that.
Bigger problem for Farage is that young people will be most likely to suffer from the economic insecurity of lockdown and well Farage isn’t the ideal person to appeal to many of them. That said, as I say, he doesn’t need a huge number of people to make an impact.
