MAGA (Make America Great Again) obtained its own passport.
It landed in the UK wearing pinstripes, clutching a pint, and answering to the name Nigel Farage.
Farage’s Reform UK Party, once laughed off as a fringe experiment, recently steamrolled the competition in England’s local elections, winning 677 of 1,641 seats.
Not bad for a six-year-old party with only four members of Parliament to its name.
By the end of the night, Reform had taken control of 10 local councils, two mayoralties and added a fifth MP to its ranks thanks to a razor-thin, six-vote win in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election.
That victory makes Farage’s party the first non-Labour party to represent Runcorn in over 50 years.
Maybe it was populism. Maybe it was just a protest vote.
Or maybe it was the “Farage Factor.”
Either way, Reform UK and Farage are no longer electoral flukes. If this momentum holds, Downing Street could be next.
While most of Reform’s gains this past election came at the expense of the Conservatives, the once-dominant center-right party in the UK, Labour didn’t walk away unscathed either.
They managed a paltry 98 seats, finishing fourth, behind Reform, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.
Talk about a fall from grace for a party that spent 14 years in opposition and has been back in government for less than one.
But Reform’s better-than-expected performance shouldn’t have come as a shock.
Farage has spent years fine-tuning his case against unchecked immigration, globalization, and overbearing regulation.
He’s not some accidental populist who stumbled into relevance; he’s been building a grassroots movement since he entered the European Parliament in 1999.
From turning Brexit from a mere dream of “Eurosceptics” into a political reality, Farage has mastered something the establishment still can’t grasp,
how to speak human.
Instead of giving stump speeches exclusively to donors in carefully controlled environments, he meets voters at the local pub. Instead of poll-testing talking points, he weaponizes common sense.
And while other parties lecture voters about carbon footprints and the supposed necessity of mass immigration, legal or not, Farage taps into something far more powerful: the deep frustration of ordinary people who are sick of being ignored, condescended to and sacrificed at the altar of political correctness.
Sound familiar? It should.
Just as Trump reshaped and rebranded the Republican Party, Farage is now reshaping the British right, from the outside in.
Like Trump, Farage spent years being treated as a punchline by the political class. Both were mocked and written off.
But the same people who did all the laughing and mocking are now the ones losing their political careers and their grip on power.
Farage’s rise should sound alarm bells and offer a blueprint for conservatives here at home.
Just like in the UK, American voters feel abandoned and betrayed by the political class. They’re tired of being told by elites in both parties that the border can’t be secured, that factory jobs aren’t coming back, and that their concerns about crime are somehow bigoted.
Nigel Farage gets it.
So does President Donald Trump.
Whether the media or establishment likes it, or not, voters respond to leaders who don’t apologize for putting their own country first.
What’s happening in Britain isn’t just about one man. It’s about the collapse of Britain’s two-party system, which for decades has kept power comfortably bouncing between Labour and the Conservatives, while everyday Brits were left behind.
Now? Reform is blowing that arrangement to pieces.
Labour looks lost.
The Conservatives are out-of-touch, aloof and on their fourth leader in less than three years.
Reform, like MAGA in 2016, has the momentum, the message, and the muscle to smash through the old guard.
Farage didn’t ask for permission from party leaders. He didn’t wait for the green light from the donor class. He built a movement from the ground up, and it’s working.
To the Republicans still clinging to the pre-2016 playbook, note that populism isn’t a phase. It’s a reckoning.
If the UK is any indication, the two-party era is on life support.
Nigel Farage doesn’t have the crown yet. But after these local election results, it’s clear he doesn’t need one to rule the airwaves or rewrite the rules of the game.
Now, just like Trump in 2016, he’s the one driving the bus while the old guard scrambles for a seat.
America has Trump.
Britain has Nigel.
Who’s next?
Jacob Lane is a Republican strategist and school choice activist. He has worked for GOP campaigns at the federal, state, and local levels. He has also worked with various PACs and nonprofits. Read Jacob Lane’s Reports — More Here.
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