Reform UK’s rise may yet open a path to power

Hefty donations, high-profile defections, a disillusionment with traditional parties and a pledge to curb immigration.

Nigel Farage has been enjoying himself. ‘Reform is not a rescue charity for every panicky Tory MP,’ he wrote in the Telegraph on 17 January. Since the July 2024 general election, 23 Conservative MPs or ex-MPs have joined the far-right party, which is currently leading in the opinion polls. All the new recruits – including Suella Braverman and Nadhim Zahawi, former home secretary and chancellor respectively – have first had to publicly acknowledge their old party’s role in creating a ‘broken Britain’. The balance of power seems to be tipping in Farage’s favour. Finally elected to the House of Commons in 2024 after seven unsuccessful attempts (first with the UK Independence Party, then the Brexit Party, which became Reform UK in 2021), the divisive Farage has changed both his status and his style: gone are the tweed jackets and sardonic laugh; in their place are classic suits and affable smiles. But will that be enough to win Downing Street?

The first step would be to achieve the goal set at the party conference in Birmingham last September to broaden its support base: ‘We have to model ourselves on the Liberal Democrats,’ he urged his party. ‘The Liberal Democrats build branches … The Liberal Democrats build on that strength [and] put literature and leaflets through doors repeatedly in their target areas’.

This strategy, which works well with the first-past-the-post electoral system, allowed the centrist Liberal Democrats to win 72 seats in 2024, whereas Reform only managed to get five candidates elected, despite winning a higher share of the national vote. At the next general election, however, it will be able to rely on the support of its 677 local councillors elected in 2025, who accounted for 42% of the contested seats (with an average of a quarter of seats recontested in any given year).

In the 2025 local elections the Conservatives lost 676 of their 993 council seats, even in their heartlands, along with control of all (…)

Full article: 1 226 words.