As news broke of the latest setback for Britain’s beleaguered Labour government, there was jubilation 120 miles north of London, where the anti-immigration party led by Nigel Farage was on Friday gathering for its annual conference.
So with less than a half-hour’s notice, Mr. Farage advanced the time of his big set-piece speech by three hours — calculating, perhaps, that he should to try to exploit the turmoil in London, where the deputy prime minister had just announced her resignation.
Welcomed to the stage in Birmingham, England, to the heavy beat of a dance track and fireworks, Mr. Farage claimed that the government was in “deep crisis,” adding that the cabinet was made up of “wholly unqualified people to run our country.”
Mr. Farage, a veteran political disrupter who gained international prominence campaigning for Brexit, is probably the biggest beneficiary of the latest government crisis because his upstart party is well ahead in opinion polls.
Its main rival on the right, the opposition Conservative Party, remains unpopular after its heavy defeat in last year’s election. The approval ratings of the governing Labour Party, meanwhile, have collapsed amid political missteps and a weak economy.
Against those competitors, Mr. Farage’s party, Reform U.K., has found increasing support in its effort to cleave open Britain’s two-party system. A huge cheer rang around the cavernous indoor arena hosting the conference on Friday when thousands of attendees heard that the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, had quit for underpaying tax on a property purchase.
But the timing of Ms. Rayner’s announcement was a mixed blessing for Mr. Farage, giving a boost to his supporters but also dominating the news agenda just as he prepared to address his biggest party conference yet.
Mr. Farage has addressed a series of slick MAGA-style rallies around Britain recently, but Reform’s two-day conference in Birmingham is significantly bigger than its 2024 gathering.
In his speech, Mr. Farage said that Reform now has 450 branches around Britain and its membership had surged from 30,000 members to 240,000.
Since the Brexit vote, Mr. Farage has also cultivated ties with the American right. Earlier this week he was in the United States, meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office and testifying to a congressional committee, where he compared Britain’s free speech rules to North Korea’s.
Echoing the president’s rhetoric on Friday, Mr. Farage promised to “make Britain great again,” and vowed to end the arrival in Britain of asylum seekers on small boats from France “within two weeks” of a Reform general election victory.
But it remains unclear how easily Reform U.K. will capitalize on its poll lead in national elections. Mr. Farage has previously led two other parties that were sometime fractious and ill-disciplined, and some of their annual meetings had an anarchic feel.
In 2013, when Mr. Farage led the U.K. Independence Party, one of his senior colleagues, Godfrey Bloom, swiped a TV reporter around the head with a party document and provoked an outcry by referring to women as “sluts.”
Reform has spent the last year trying to professionalize its operations, create a network of activists around the country and expand its appeal to voters.
In his speech, Mr. Farage predicted that the race to replace Ms. Rayner as deputy leader of Labour would split the party, and claimed that there was “every chance of a general election happening in 2027.”
That seems unlikely because, under Britain’s electoral rules, Prime Minister Keir Starmer need not call a vote until 2029.
Despite the crowd’s enthusiasm, there were still signs that Reform U.K.’s more hard-line positions, like its recent promise to deport 600,000 migrants, would alienate some British voters.
When Mr. Farage addressed the meeting for a second time later on Friday, several protesters were removed. And while there was a bigger business presence at the conference than last year’s event, only a handful of companies and organizations were promoting their brands in this year’s exhibition area, unlike the crowded scenes at other British political conferences.
But supporters were optimistic. They variously dressed in business attire, the colors of the British flag or soccer shirts in Reform’s party color — turquoise — with “Farage” and “10” emblazoned on the back (a reference to 10 Downing Street, the residence of the prime minister).
Among those cheering Mr. Farage’s speech was Shakaina Khan, 54, a technology sales worker from Bedfordshire and a former Conservative activist, who said membership of Reform felt like being “part of a family.”
Julia Dillingham, 59, another former Conservative voter from Bedfordshire, said that as the party gained popularity, people were more willing to admit openly to supporting Reform without the fear of being greeted with surprise or hostility.
She said she had placed a small wager on Ms. Rayner resigning and described her downfall as “a bit of good news for us.”
Asked about the mood at the conference following the resignation, Ms. Dillingham said it was a little early to judge, adding, with a laugh, “You wait until later when we have all had a few beers.”
Stephen Castle is a London correspondent of The Times, writing widely about Britain, its politics and the country’s relationship with Europe.
The post After a Resignation in London, Farage Seeks to Capitalize on Labour’s Turmoil appeared first on New York Times.
