Sky Views: Electric Farage highlights Remainers' Europe confusion

By Lewis Goodall, political correspondent

I spent Saturday with Nigel Farage. I suspect it's not a prospect some of you might relish.

But for those who can think of little else more fun, I can alas confirm it wasn't a night on the tiles, puffing, supping and fulminating away, but instead a chance to hear him speak to thousands, in my home city of Birmingham, without so much as half an ale in sight.

Only the second event of his new Brexit Party in the second city.

He was electric.

He is a folk hero to his adherents and many who despise him don't understand his power.

But it wasn't just the usual crowd. I've been to plenty of UKIP conferences in my time; I know the vibe there - the half-colonels, the half-crazed and the half-cut.

But this was a bit different, and some of the people were different: couples, families, younger voters too.

An odd coalition of the curious and the angry, those who rightly or wrongly deeply feel that democracy has been subverted.

They all took a Brexit Party placard home.

I watched them each take one and leave enthused, clear what they are fighting for.

Initially I had thought that shorn of UKIP and its organisational spine, Farage might struggle.

Instead, I came to see it as his biggest advantage yet.

UKIP, to some, to many, always had unsavoury connotations.

This new party is a blanker slate - a potentially better vehicle for his ambition.

It explains why Farage barely mentioned immigration and didn't talk about Europe as much as you'd think.

Instead, his message was one of political transformation. Of fulfilling the true potential of the 2016 revolt. Of draining the swamp; that the failure to implement the referendum proves why it was necessary in the first place.

His is now a simpler and broader message - that Britain has been humiliated, that Westminster is rotten, that the system is rigged, that parliament doesn't represent you and it is only he who can do something about it and make us proud again.

For Nigel Farage - this Dulwich school boy, denizen of the political scene for decades - is doing something.

If the cards fall right, the simplicity and power of his vision, his branding and operation could mean he ends up in a position with the Leave vote much to himself.

Under his opponents' noses, he is seizing the change mantle, even from those with the word in their name.

As a result, in many Euro polls he has already overtaken his old party UKIP and is snapping at the heels of the Tories.

If the cards fall right, the simplicity and power of his vision, his branding and operation could mean he ends up in a position with the Leave vote much to himself.

And as I sat there, watching Farage play old tunes and new, I kept asking myself, where is the Remain equivalent of this?

For months it has been obvious that these EU elections would come - it is why Farage registered his new party months ago - yet there seems to have been little action from the other side.

Where are the rallies? Where is the cross party agreement on a joint remain ticket?

Where are the posters? The agreed messaging?

The corralling of the newly empowered pro-European demos in this country?

The targeting of EU citizens with a vote?

All seems sleepy and quiet. It is almost as if these elections have taken them by surprise.

I suspect that is because the People's Vote campaign has absorbed the creative and political energies of the Remain cause.

That enterprise has not been without profit; it has gone from pipe dream to realistic prospect in little to no time at all.

But its success, whilst impressive, has come at a cost.

Remainers, so obsessed with the project to legitimise the idea of another referendum, have ignored a landmine which could scuttle all their hopes.

Consider for a moment if Nigel Farage's Brexit party wins the European elections.

It will matter not if it's by half a hair, on half an eyebrow; it will not matter if Remain parties outnumber him in the total vote.

Should he take a party which existed not a few months ago called "the Brexit party" to victory in a national election - a feat Farage will have achieved twice - then the prospect of another plebiscite will be zero.

It will terrify any Tories thinking of committing and potentially scare Labour into finally making a deal.

All the momentum the People's Vote campaign has generated will be neutralised. If he comes second to Labour, it could have much the same effect.

Remainers point me to the march, to the petition, but the truth is, marches don't change anything and nor do names on a page - it is elections which have consequences.

Farage understands this only too well.

When I asked him why he thinks he will be successful and his opponents will fail, he replied, with a smile: "Because I know how to butter my own bread. I've done this before."

And while Farage marches, the Remainers' great hope - the Tiggers or Change UK - might lead their cause to burn.

They have ambitions beyond what they can possibly be expected to achieve.

For if they are anything, if there is any purpose, they should be the Remain party - and that is what they should have been called.

It would have been clear and it could have persuaded those who usually vote for another party to lend them their votes this time.

That they weren't speaks to the loftiness of their objectives; they see themselves not solely through the prism of Brexit but with a vaguer desire to change politics more broadly.

It is why they also - despite I'm told, entreaties from Vince Cable and the Liberal Democrats - have refused to stand on a joint Remain ticket with other parties.

Their sole aim is not just opposing Brexit but to establish themselves as an electoral force for the future.

But they need to get real; they are not going to displace the Labour Party nor the Conservatives.

The Social Democratic Party couldn't manage it 40 years ago with bigger names, more money and more auspicious circumstances.

For would not reversing the most popular referendum result of our history, stopping something which looked unstoppable, not be remarkable achievement enough?

It would guarantee its progenitors a place in the history books and the hearts of millions - the contempt of the same number too.

And if somehow they managed it, their continued success might then come.

But the fact this is not their only aim, right now, is robbing the Remain cause of the clarity they need and the simple group around which to cohere.

Had their only objective been to win these elections from the start, knowing that they could then use the legitimacy they confer as a new mandate for Remain, they might be racing up the polls now.

Instead, they can't even get their logo approved, so uncertain of their identity do they seem to be.

But Remainer delusion isn't confined to the Tiggers, nor to the European elections, but extends to parliamentary Brexit process too.

Remainer Labour MPs, mulling their options over this Easter break, seem similarly afflicted by a nasty case of Brexit myopia.

I've lost count of the numbers of times Labour MPs have spoken of not conceding or giving their votes to the government until they receive assurances a future Tory leader will not renege on May's undertakings on labour laws, on the environment and the rest.

That those areas of policy, which for so long have been set in stone in Europe, cannot be changed in the future.

Yet they seem not to reckon with a very simple fact: that is the very meaning of Brexit.

To apply Brexit is to take back control of swathes of policy currently reserved to Brussels; it would be odd, if having done that, they were left in perpetuity exactly the same.

Theresa May can give all the solemn undertakings she likes; she can even put things into law.

But she is powerless to prevent a future Tory leader with a future majority Conservative government - which will in the end come - from changing anything she devises with Labour today.

The truth is, the one thing which binds a Tory government is the thing we are leaving: the European Union.

It is why the unions and the Labour Party itself came to love the project - why they sang Frère Jacques to Jacques Delors.

Labour MPs must be clear that when they vote to leave the EU, any promises they've won are just that, promises - and they should stop wasting everyone's time.

If they cannot bear to open up those areas of policy, they cannot bear to write a blank cheque.

Then a referendum to reverse the decision is the only possible outcome and it is what they must resile themselves to vote for.

A referendum which, to return us to our first theme, will never come if Mr Farage tops the European polls.

Remainer readers may dislike Mr Farage - they may dislike his style, his rhetoric, his approach - but he cannot be faulted for his appreciation of strategy.

If his opponents don't up their game - and fast - he will beat them, just as he did before.

Sky Views is a series of comment pieces by Sky News editors and correspondents, published every morning.

Previously on Sky Views: Hannah Thomas-Peter - The Democrats have a new 'it' boy - but what are his chances?