What Farage can learn from Canada’s Reform The Reform revolution may require another figurehead

Though the analogy is not exact by any means, Farage has repeatedly invoked the Canadian model of populist transformation in his campaign’s opening phase. As he told the Sunday Times: “Why do you think I called it Reform? Because of what happened in Canada — the 1992-93 precedent in Canada, where Reform comes from the outside, because the Canadian Conservatives had become social democrats like our mob here.”

But what exactly does following this model entail? The answer would depend on which standard of success Farage holds: if he wishes to influence political discourse by moving the Overton Window in the direction of certain ideas, such as dramatically curbing migration, then he could reprise the role he played as the leader of Ukip: as an ideological trendsetter rather than a wielder of power.

At the launch of yesterday’s Reform manifesto — or glibly labelled “contract with the people” — we saw glimpses of this. Pledging to “stop the boats” in 100 days is clearly not a political possibility, but suggesting you can will inevitably draw in voters’ attention. Similarly, Farage claimed his party would massively cut taxes for people on all incomes — a proposal which, when faced with the reality of public finances, is a fantasy. But for Farage and Reform who will never actually have their hands on the treasury pursestrings, it is an easy way to shift the conversation to the Right on taxes.

If he truly wishes to take the path to political hegemony laid out by Canadian Reform, then it will require considerably more work and perseverance on the part of Farage; and it will be far from certain whether he will be the one to reap the spoils of such a strategy, or whether he will end up like Manning, who paved the way for the populist Right only to be displaced by the younger and more astute Stephen Harper. In other words, the Canadian model has its pluses and pitfalls. 

Canada in the early Nineties was a country — not unlike Britain in the 2020s — reeling from a bout of political post-traumatic stress disorder, having just gone through a highly divisive and exhausting period of existential debate over the nature of Canadian federalism and sovereignty, and in particular, the question of Quebec’s status. Just as with the post-Brexit years in the UK, Canada’s leaders promised grand schemes of constitutional renewal only to fall short each time while practical economic issues, like spiralling debt and declining business confidence, seemed to go unaddressed. In addition, the Western Canadian provinces felt as if metropolitan elites in places like Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal held a vision of national unity that came at their expense. The fact that the country had been ruled by Brian Mulroney’s Tories since 1984 seemed to make little difference, for they had appeared to be just as out-of-touch as Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals had been: this was the Canadian equivalent of what is today called the “Uniparty”.

The perceived lack of attention to the concerns of ordinary voters, especially those in hinterland regions, opened up space for a new option in Canadian politics, one which could reset the terms of debate in favour of those who felt left behind. This was the gap that Preston Manning aimed to fill when he founded Reform in 1987, his goal being a “New Canada” grounded in the “the common sense of the common people”. Even as he worked to build grassroots networks out of scratch, he was for all intents and purposes the lone face of the party; the son of an evangelical former premier of Alberta, he brought a preacher’s zeal to his quest to rein in the size of government, decentralise the federation and, as he saw it, end the privileges of the Ontario and Quebec-centric metropolitan elite. Manning and Reform also raised stringent criticisms of bilingualism, multiculturalism and what it regarded as lax immigration policy. Though Manning aspired to a universalist populism, Reform was largely seen as the vehicle of Western Canadian alienation. 

And on election day, the West came out heavily for Manning’s message of revolt, trading in Tory seats for Reform en masse, just as Quebec voters lodged their protest vote with the new separatist Bloc Québecois, hollowing out the precarious Tory coalition and and handing power to the Liberals. From the opposition benches, Reform would galvanise Canadian politics Rightward, outshining the Tory rump and eventually mounting a reverse takeover of the Progressive Conservatives by merging with it a decade later in 2003.

This was the foundation of the reunified Conservative Party of Stephen Harper, a Manning lieutenant, who governed as prime minister from 2006 to 2015. Under Harper’s insistence, the new party dropped the “Progressive” moniker — and with good reason, for the post-2003 Tories are ideologically and temperamentally a different party: much more hard-edged, libertarian and rooted in prairie populism. (Its current leader and likely next Canadian prime minister, Pierre Poilievre, got his start as a young Reform activist in Calgary.)

In hindsight, it is easy to recount what happened with Canadian Reform, as Farage so often does, and imagine that its victory was preordained, with the implication being that Reform UK faces a comparably straightforward path to realigning the British Right. But Farage should take note: the opposition years were no cakewalk for either Reform or the old-line Tories.

As Canada’s Liberals governed for over a decade, it proved to be a gruelling stretch for the Canadian Right, wracked as it was by dissension, demoralisation and uncertainty. The tribal differences between the two parties were real enough that it prevented meaningful cooperation for years. Furthermore, as the Liberals won one majority after another, thanks in large part to conservative infighting, they appropriated parts of Manning’s agenda on fiscal retrenchment, debt reduction, and balanced budgets — and even dramatically tightened immigration requirements — taking the wind out of Reform’s sails and blunting its immediate appeal. It was not at all clear if Canadian conservatism would make it out of the Liberal epoch alive. Now faced with his own long odds, can Farage navigate his party through a similarly treacherous time in the wilderness? 

Much will depend on how the two camps of the British Right will regroup once the present general election campaign yields its expected result on 4 July: a Labour-majority government. Owing to the very different electoral and geographic dynamics in the UK, it is unlikely for Farage’s party to come close to anything like the clean sweep that Canadian Reform obtained when it stole the bulk of Tory seats west of Ontario. Yet it is also probable that defeat under Rishi Sunak will empower and elevate a new breed of hard-Right Tory leadership candidates who can potentially match Farage in their commitment to populist concerns around migration and law-and-order issues: the likes of Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch come to mind. In such a scenario, there is no guarantee that Farage will have a monopoly on populist energies and loyalties in the years of opposition that lie ahead.

And just as Manning’s Reform opened the political space for Canada’s Liberals to move Right on fiscal policy, so too could a highly vocal Reform presence in Westminster do the same with respect to the next Labour government’s approach to migration. For all the talk of Labour’s metropolitan base as being intractably liberal and maximalist on immigration, a restrictionist strain has arguably flowed in the party’s veins for much of the last decade, going back to Ed Miliband’s 2015 promise to restore “controls on immigration” (famously plastered on a red mug) to Keir Starmer’s current pledge to outflank Sunak and cut “sky-high” net migration. Indeed, this is generally how populist revolts work, by exerting pressure rather than exercising power directly. This was, after all, how a previous incarnation of Faragist populism got the Cameron government to hold the 2016 Brexit referendum. 

So, where could it all end for Farage? By the 2000s, Manning was seen as tired and lost a leadership race, giving way to a generation of his protégés, including Harper, who went on to take the Conservatives to electoral victory. Manning was relegated to a respected but sidelined role as elder statesman. Perhaps Farage’s fate will play out in similar terms. The British Right is said to be undergoing a profound generational shift in ideas and outlook, which he helped to make happen: Farage’s contribution to history may well be in charting a course of political realignment that will ultimately be completed by someone younger, cleverer, and more disciplined than he could ever be. 

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Michael Cuenco is a writer on policy and politics. He is Associate Editor at American Affairs.

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