World Views | Boris Johnson still has a Nigel Farage problem

A little over a week ago, Nigel Farage described the Brexit deal that U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson brought back from Brussels as a travesty and a betrayal of the 2016 referendum. He threatened to stand Brexit Party candidates in 600 constituencies against the Conservative Party in the forthcoming general election if Johnson didn’t repudiate his own agreement.

On Monday, Farage reversed course and the Conservatives cheered, as the threat of splitting the pro-Brexit vote appeared to diminish. Yet the reality of the Tory gain is less than clear cut.

In 317 Conservative-held constituencies, Farage said his party will stand down so as not to hurt the the party’s chances or produce a hung parliament that might threaten Brexit altogether. The decision came after Farage was attacked by Conservatives and the Brexit-supporting media for his purist stance. Nick Timothy, who advised the former prime minister Theresa May, wrote that Farage “has tragically turned into the Frodo Baggins of Brexit,”  likening him to the Tolkien hero who survives his perilous journey to destroy the One Ring only to succumb to its lure at the last minute and seek to possess it himself.

Sufficiently chastened, Farage took an escape route offered by Johnson on Sunday, when the prime minister declared that a Conservative government wouldn’t extend the Brexit transition period beyond 2020 — meaning a free trade agreement would have to be done by then. That promise is either insincere or folly. But it was enough to get Farage to abandon his previous threat.

The Brexit Party leader already looked a little silly with his decision not to stand as a candidate. Monday’s announcement may allow Farage to focus his firepower on fewer seats, but he’s essentially conceded the Conservative argument that backing the Brexit Party puts Brexit itself at risk.

His decision will come as a relief to Conservative lawmakers who worried that a split in the Brexit vote in their constituencies would allow either Labour or the Liberal Democrats to take advantage. Matthew Goodwin, a politics professor at the University of Kent, notes that 35 of the 50 smallest Conservative majorities are in Leave-voting seats, so Farage has removed a major threat to those members of Parliament.

Even so, there’s a danger in overdoing the Tory celebrations. The Brexit Party will still be contesting seats in Leave-voting, Labour-held parts of the country, particularly in the Midlands and the North. The whole Tory electoral strategy — its big-spending pledges, its stance on immigration and its pledge of a quick Brexit with Johnson’s deal — is based on capturing those seats.

“This announcement may help the Tories hold on slightly better against the Lib Dems, particularly in Leave-voting rural southwest England, and perhaps even against the Scottish National Party in the North East of Scotland,” notes pollster and analyst Matt Singh. “But Johnson still needs seats won last time by Labour, so Farage standing candidates in those seats is still highly likely to hurt the Conservatives.”

And even if this has become more of a two-party race and the Conservatives capture a majority, Farage can still claim a substantial victory. He may find it cold comfort personally, but his long-standing Brexit campaign, dating back to his days as the head of the U.K. Independence Party, has had an out-sized influence on the Tories. It has produced an internal revolution in which moderate Conservatives and remainers have been purged in favor of a new coalition of working class Brexit voters and traditional social conservatives. He’s as much the father of the new-look Tories as Johnson.

If we’re talking Lord of the Rings, the Brexit Party leader may be looked upon more as a sort of reconstructed Gollum, the slippery trickster of singular purpose who fell under the ring’s spell and couldn’t let it go. Gollum was destroyed ultimately at Mount Doom by his greed, but not before he helped Frodo and Sam accomplish their mission. Therese Raphael, Bloomberg