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November 24, 2024 - 8:00am
Before this year’s general election, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said his aim was to follow in the footsteps of the Right-wing party that usurped Canada’s Progressive Conservatives in the early Nineties. “They are the model. That’s the plan,” he claimed, even naming his own party after the Canadian upstarts.
When the Progressive Conservatives were defeated in 1993, the Reform Party won a staggering 26 times as many seats as the established party of the Right. In the UK’s July election, the situation was almost exactly the reverse. The Conservatives, although suffering the worst defeat in their history, still won 24 times as many seats as Reform. But while the Tories remain the principal centre-right party, Reform’s success at recent by-elections shows that the party might not have to wait until the next election to shake up the British political system.
Some 2,240 councillors are up for election in May, more than half of whom are Conservatives elected in the heady days when Boris Johnson was popular and the Tories were receiving credit for the Covid-19 vaccine rollout. Reform barely featured in the contest and won just two seats. They are determined to be a bigger force this time, having snapped up two victories in recent council by-elections in Kent.
Farage has said that he will be “throwing the kitchen sink” at next May’s elections and has pledged to stand in every single English County Council seat. Analysis by Election Maps UK shows the net impact they could have. Since the election, in seats where Reform hasn’t stood a candidate, the Tories have recovered and gained 3.6% of the vote share; where Reform has been on the ballot, the Conservatives have lost 2.8%. A repeat of those results would certainly get in the way of the Conservative Party recovering its electoral strength.
Of course, Reform could lose salience with a good performance from new Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and her fresh shadow cabinet. And playing the role of spoiler to a Tory recovery could also pose a risk for Farage’s popularity. It could associate Reform not with taking on the government or the “establishment” but with enabling Labour and the Lib Dems. To coin a phrase: if you come for the Tories, you better not miss. If you do, as so far Farage has, you will simply fracture the Right and embolden the Left. Reform voters may grow disillusioned with voting Reform and getting Labour or the Lib Dems.
Farage will be hoping that 2024’s election, which saw the party pick up four million votes, could merely be a stepping stone to their eventual dominance of the Right. Instead of England’s local elections, Wales’ Senedd contest in 2026 may be their best opportunity. Back in July, Reform were nipping at the Tories’ heels in Leave-voting Wales, polling just 17,000 fewer votes. (Reform could have been closer still; the party failed to nominate a candidate in Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney, where their candidate withdrew after allegations of reposting racist content online.)
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SubscribeThe road from protest vote to main stream party in a first past the post electoral system is an extremely hard and rocky one.
The advantage that reform has over the conservatives is that they are clear about what they stand for and have articulated what they would do in their manifesto (albeit only at the first derivative level, there is a lot of detail missing) and they have a charismatic leader who can connect with people.
The conservatives, on the other hand, are currently not clear about what they stand for but have the benefit of being the current right wing incumbent, with reasonably strong local representation and a long established party machine (although how well this still functions is debatable) but their new leader is as yet unproven.
It will be interesting to see how the local elections unfold. If reform do well and the tories do not then Badenoch will become vulnerable and might be ousted. Yet another change of leader would be a strong indicator that the party has truly lost its way and could provide provide the catalyst reform needs to cement itself into the publics mind as the the true heirs of the right.
Maybe. There are an awful lot of ifs and maybes and coulds in here, the crystal ball is very cloudy. The one thing one can be sure of is that labour will continue to be an unmitigated distaste and will suffer hugely in May 2025 at the local elections.
Reform must take on labour not the Tories. Labour is in control so let’s hear what reform will do.
The Conservatives have been sabotaged from within. That is clear now especially after Nadine Dorries has supplied all the evidence. She asked at the end of The Plot “Has Gove’s 22 year quest to burn the party to the ground finally come to fruition?” Obviously so. The Tories, or what’s left of them after the manufactured media scandals, the toppling of leaders, Ian Duncan Smith, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, are toast. The right wingers have been culled. The Tories have morphed into the Left, accepting all the their values. On finances, on immigration, on the Left’s Theory of Gender and Race, hate crime, non-crime. They are now what Gove and Cummings and his Movement friends wanted all along, a new party, a woke copy of labour.
Will Reform get their act together in four short years? How can they? They lack experience of working in Westminster. They will need time to build up their activist base, their MPs, their support, their policies. Even if they did all this the vote of the Right will still be split. Many will vote conservative out of loyalty, not realising their party is no more.
Expect two terms of Starmer. God help the UK. You’ll need it.
One of the clear silver-linings for Starmer right now is this inevitable face off between Kemi and Nige.
Kemi’s had a relatively weak start, underwhelming endorsement from fellow MPs and she’s got a really difficult position to defend given the 14 year nightmare Tory rule that’ll be rightly played back at her repeatedly. Nige too though got v little to offer beyond rhetoric on immigration and his own persona. Soon as a broader policy offering needed and more of the loons Reform attract as candidates illuminated the combination will sink them. Maybe having a few Councils to run will aid that illumination, and just perhaps move a few beyond the adolescent tripe they spout. For example let’s see how they manage a social care budget.
Starmer has reduced industrial disruption and reduced strikes, helped renters worried about eviction, doctors a decent catch -up pay rise, the path to reducing waiting times set, an uplift in minimum wage for those most struggling and better employment protections, and next year the breakfast clubs will start helping parents and kids nutrition. However an overwhelmingly right wing media will continue to fixate on the fact some v advantaged types are having to pay a bit more – wealthy land owners, businesses being passed on, those sending kids to private school etc, and his message can get drowned out. Which is why a Kemi vs Nige fight is doubly helpful. Long may it last.