Nigel Farage has been in Davos, putting the “global elites on notice”.

Unfortunately for him, it’s not the Illuminati bug salesmen Europe is worried about right now, but Donald Trump. It’s therefore doubly unfortunate that Farage took to the stage in the “USA House” — a privately-sponsored, but officially sanctioned, venue for the American delegation at this year’s World Economic Forum. Unfortunately, the timing has only reinforced the Reform leader’s image as being too closely aligned with King Donald.

Reform UK’s lead in the polls is already softening. The latest from Focaldata shows the party down three points and the Tories up by two. But it could get worse. For a proper nightmare scenario, Farage should look at what happened in Canada to another populist leader, Pierre Poilievre.

The parallels aren’t exact, of course. For instance, Poilievre led his populist revolution from within the Canadian Conservative Party. But there was no mistaking the Farage-like swagger of his appeal — and for a while it was wildly successful. For most of 2024, the Canadian Tories enjoyed a commanding lead over Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and looked set to form the first Conservative government in almost a decade. But then Donald Trump was re-elected as President of the United States, and almost immediately engaged in threats to Canada’s sovereignty, even suggesting it should become the 51st state.

The impact on Canadian public opinion was convulsive. In a matter of months, a 20-point lead for the Conservatives at the end of 2024 was reduced into a slim advantage for the Liberals by polling day on 28 April 2025. To cap it all, Poilievre lost his seat.

The irony is that Poilievre, unlike Farage, had never made a point of cozying up to Trump. Nevertheless, the rally-round-the-flag effect was enough to win the election for Trudeau’s successor as PM, Mark Carney.

So what are the chances of a similar dynamic playing out in the UK? Well, Farage can cling to the fact that Trump has yet to be as nasty to Britain as he has been to Canada or Denmark (where polls are also shifting Leftwards). Furthermore, Keir Starmer’s chances of getting his Love Actually moment are low thanks to his own history of sidling up to Trump.

Nevertheless, if the reckless gambits of the US President do end up wrecking Nato — or dragging the UK into a transatlantic trade war, then Reform and its leader could become scapegoats.

Farage needs a countering strategy. For a start, he can forget about posing as a “Trump-whisperer”. The US President only respects power and for the time being Farage doesn’t have any. Nor does Trump care about the political harm he puts his fellow populists. For instance, when he met Mark Carney in Washington DC after the latter’s election victory over Poilievre, Trump merrily joked about having been the “greatest thing that happened” to the Liberal campaign.

Instead of parading himself in the American camp, Farage needs a serious policy response to the new realities. He should look us in the eye and tell us the time has come for Britain to stand on its own two feet. The pitch would be that only Reform is ready and willing to shift sufficient resources to the defense and industrial strategy budgets — by making the necessary cuts elsewhere.

That way he can tell his opponents that talk is cheap. If they want to put sufficient distance between this country and Trump — not to mention Putin and Xi too — then we will have to pay the price.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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