Farage must learn about power

"Reform’s plans to cut overseas aid and reduce Britain’s influence in fragile regions could increase the migration pressures it rallies against."

Unless Britain has an anti-Le Pen moment and tactical voting suppresses Reform’s rise Nigel Farage could plausibly become our next Prime Minister. That alone should focus minds. It is therefore right that we scrutinise what he says today, because it may be national policy tomorrow.

A Farage premiership, however, is likely to be short-lived unless he moves beyond populist slogans that rally anger and apportion blame and begins offering serious policies equal to the challenges Britain now faces.

Populist slogans may win elections, but without substance a leader is quickly found out and thrown out. True leadership means telling the nation what it needs to hear, not what it wants to hear - and taking the country to places it did not expect to go.

Elections are usually won on domestic issues, not foreign policy or security. Perhaps that explains why Reform has had little to say about either. Yet the first thing a Prime Minister Farage would encounter after waving to the cameras outside No. 10 is a national security briefing that would shock him. Britain is not safe. We are unprepared. And we are increasingly under sustained, multi-domain attack.

The global balance of power is shifting. The West has failed to update the international rules-based order that once kept the peace. As a result, our world is now splintering into two spheres: China, Russia, and much of the Global South tied into Beijing’s Belt and Road on one side; an overstretched, shrinking West on the other.

In this context, the penny would quickly drop for a new Prime Minister: our economy is dangerously exposed to global headwinds. The more turbulent the world becomes, the more strain is placed on the Treasury. Britain is already in a grey-zone conflict, vulnerable to sabotage of shipping lanes, cyber-attacks, and disruption to the undersea cables that carry 95% of our data. If we cannot defend these arteries, the economy bleeds.

The recent Defence Review offers an overdue plan to upgrade our posture, but completion is not expected until 2035. By then, the strategic landscape will be unrecognisable.

Globalisation, once the solution to global instability, is in retreat. Nations are scrambling for minerals, energy and secure supply chains. Strength matters again - hard and soft.

Does the Reform Party understand this? Their headline proposal to slash overseas aid to £1 billion suggests not. As US Marine General Jim Mattis famously warned: “If you cut funding for diplomacy, you’ll have to buy me more ammunition.” Aid is not charity. It is strategic insurance.

Reform’s proposal reflects a poor grasp of foreign policy and a misunderstanding of soft power. It also trades on the myth that overseas aid is a luxury to be sacrificed when domestic pressures rise.

Many Britons will cheer the cut. But what happens when weak governance abroad breeds extremism, pandemics, cybercrime, or mass migration that eventually reaches our own shores?

Does terrorism, Ebola, ransomware or disrupted trade not harm the British economy? You cannot firewall off global instability. And hard power alone cannot solve problems that originate elsewhere.

Deterrence is not just about military might but also the foresight to prevent threats before they materialise. That is the purpose of soft power.

Indeed, it is soft power, the very budget Reform wants to cut, that shapes the conditions preventing mass migration, Farage’s signature political issue. British programmes that build governance and security reduce the collapse of fragile states and the exodus that follows. Pull these supports and we should not be surprised when extremists or migrants arrive in greater numbers. Reform’s plan would therefore increase the very migration pressures it rallies against.

It would also create a vacuum in fragile states, one that Russia and China would be only too happy to fill, often to secure mineral monopolies or political leverage deeply misaligned with our interests.

Britain has long been a soft-power superpower. Our influence stabilises fragile regions, promotes development, and strengthens trade partnerships. Weak governance breeds radicalisation, pandemics, mass migration, threats no tank or jet can fix. Without engagement abroad, we merely store up larger, costlier problems at home.

If Reform wants to be taken seriously as a governing party, it must demonstrate it understands Britain’s place in a dangerous world, not retreat from it. Hard power must be rebuilt, yes, but soft power is the force multiplier that makes deterrence credible and conflict less likely.

The world is entering a more precarious era. Britain cannot afford illusions. Nor can it afford leaders who mistake slogans for strategy. The special relationship is under strain, our alliances are fraying, and adversaries are testing every weakness. Britain must relearn the Atlantic Charter values that once anchored the free world, or others will define the future in our place.

END

Article first published in The Telegraph on 20th November 2025.