Nigel Farage is far less bothered than many politicians about taking his own trips abroad while parliament is sitting. Refreshed and relaxed, he can then spend the summer recess in Westminster, dominating the scene while his opponents are on their sunloungers and the news agenda is light.
The Reform UK leader has been at the helm of five press conferences, one every week of recess, and has just managed two more in the final week. Most of them have been on Mondays, with announcements on migration and crime trailed into the weekend papers and his live appearances on news channels sometimes lasting longer than an hour.
Those Monday conferences have prompted debates and backlash which run for days. Each week there has been a raft of defections, from a police and crime commissioner, former MPs and on Wednesday Reform UK’s first MSP. He has featured on at least 22 front pages.
Farage speaks off-script, dismissing the questions he cannot answer, but taking dozens. Unlike a government press conference, he luxuriates in the time he has available, with long rambling answers which contain a multitude of half-truths and pet theories that could be turned into news stories.
And – some would say even commendably – he takes questions from every journalist present, even magazine writers and podcasters who have sometimes seemed caught off guard by having their name called by Farage from the podium when they had attended primarily to record the atmosphere.
Each event has led to a string of news stories, from demands for the release of details of criminal suspects’ ethnicity and migration status to the proliferation of flags. And then there was his final major intervention of recess: an extensive plan for mass deportations.
At that launch, he took dozens of questions again, brushing aside any scrutiny on detail. It might be a sad indictment of our politics, but tripping up on practicalities does not yet seem to be the way he might eventually come a cropper. Farage can be brazen where another politician would simply look shifty.
There is also an unspoken element to these staged events and press conferences which is impressing the Westminster pack: just how much money the party clearly has to be spending on all these summer stunts. A far cry from early chaotic press conferences in hired rooms, where Lee Anderson positioned himself directly behind a billowing flag, giving the impression of a headless speaker.
Now in Millbank Tower, the weekly press conference room glistens with professional kit. The launch of the deportation plan involved the bussing of journalists to an Oxfordshire airport, with towering screens and a mock departure board for deportation flights.
Gawain Towler, Farage’s former director of communications, said the Reform leader’s strategy over the summer had been to position himself as a prime minister-in-waiting. “He needs to be able to see the whole battlefield and not get bogged down in a single skirmish,” he said. “What we are seeing is Farage growing up, quickly.”
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And what of the government? There has been a far from coherent agenda, no press conferences from cabinet ministers or any major policy developments, some updates on plans for reforms of asylum appeals or the operational status of the agreement with the French to return some of the arrivals from small boats.
A smattering of press releases on planning and environmental changes have not troubled many newspaper front pages. Starmer’s single opportunity to steal back the spotlight came yet again on the international stage, as he joined European leaders in Washington as support for Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy.
Faced with the Farage barrage, there is a wall of silence. No cabinet minister is taking the role of attack dog. Starmer took this approach in the election campaign when it came to the Tory offensive: that he should never be pulled on to his opponent’s territory. Those close to the prime minister expect him eventually to respond but on his own terms, using the language of Labour values, when parliament returns.
But as Reform UK’s poll lead holds firm and immigration begins to outpace even the economy and health as the top concern of voters, No 10 might come to regret that it allowed Farage the space to make the summer entirely his own.