Reform UK hopes to capitalise on Tory failures as Nigel Farage looms large

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Good morning. Stephen is away this week roaming around London’s galleries, which has inspired me to focus on high culture in today’s edition. Starting with Nigel Farage’s stint on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and what threat he and Reform pose to the Tories.

Out of the jungle and into Westminster

The Conservative benches and Inside Politics readers might be interested to know whether Nigel Farage is planning a political comeback. After all, the arch-Brexiter is a keenly felt presence despite stepping away from frontline politics two years ago. Appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain today, he didn’t dismiss the idea, saying “never say never” as he warned that the Conservatives were heading for “total defeat”.

Richard Tice, Farage’s Reform UK (née Brexit Party) bedmate and current leader, has been making loud noises about wanting his predecessor to come back to galvanise the party’s voter base and take the fight to the Conservatives.

The possibility of Farage returning to lead Reform into an election next year will add to the headache being experienced by beleaguered premier Rishi Sunak. A crunch vote on the government’s Rwanda bill tomorrow threatens to cement the fault lines between the Conservative party’s moderate centre and its right wing. Tory MPs are wary that current infighting will offer Farage an opportunity to wedge himself into a divisive immigration debate.

Farage of course has form for zoning in on immigration and he remains a bogeyman for many Tory MPs, who fear that their party won’t stand a chance if it’s unable to win back the few thousand voters it is currently losing to Reform. In two recent-by elections where the Conservatives lost to Labour, Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire, Reform secured enough votes that may otherwise have enabled a Tory majority in those seats.

The fear is that this threat will multiply next year with Reform standing in the way of Conservative wins as moderate voters rally around Labour and the Liberal Democrats (Labour’s political momentum is also threatened by a protest vote by some Muslims over its stance on Gaza, as I reported last month).

Tice insists that the party, which has no MPs, is on a mission to take votes from the Conservatives next year and will not repeat the decision to stand down candidates in Tory seats as it did in 2019. The battle lines are being drawn along the lines of “punishing” the Tories over various failures even if it means facilitating a Labour whitewash at the next election.

Though Reform might spy an opportunity to be a disruptive force, it’s struggling to make sufficient inroads in local and by-elections. With only 11 councillors to its name, the party has been unable to reach the lofty heights of a Farageist Ukip, which managed to take more than 160 council seats. Reform is also struggling for donations.

Farage’s appearance on I’m a Celebrity over the past six weeks has produced a range of interesting snippets, including his desperation for air time. “If you do the challenges, it’s 25 per cent of the airtime. I’m looking at reaching a whole new audience,” Farage lamented to fellow campers as audiences voted to subject another contestant to electric shocks.

But coming out of the jungle, there’s a difficult question over how much focus to give Reform. Tice has boasted that the party is polling upwards of 11 per cent, but the ever-present mismatch between these numbers and its actual performance — crossing 5 per cent in only two by-elections since 2019 — has led to some interesting conversations among pollsters.  

Opinion polls measure Reform’s support in a variety of ways. Peter Kellner, former president of pollsters YouGov, wrote in Prospect that the differences between its polling vote share and actual results might have something to do with the way the question is framed. He noted that while some list Reform alongside major parties, others such as Ipsos require individuals to select “other party” in a narrow poll of large parties before spelling out who they’d vote for in a second round.

This produces a stark difference in results: Ipsos has Reform at about 4 per cent, most have it at about 8 per cent. 

Ipsos’s Keiran Pedley said the pollster hoped its approach captured actual Reform voters and prevented the party’s poll numbers being inflated. He noted that Reform had struggled to beat these numbers in actual elections and added that the same method applied to other third parties including the Greens. Pedley argued that the challenge with Reform was managing highly engaged Conservative voters who might select the party out of protest despite having zero intention of voting that way in an election. 

Drilling down into the polling numbers and Reform’s actual performance might help explain why Tice is eager for Farage to return to the party’s helm. Reform risks being squeezed at the next election, while Farage’s prolonged absence risks the party falling the way of Ukip in 2018, when the arch-brexiter moved on to his next political project.

Now try this

I’ve recently started tuning in to Tortoise’s Eight Years Hard Labour podcast with David Aaronovitch and Cat Neilan on Labour under Jeremy Corbyn. It’s a particularly excellent canter through the period with plenty of party attachés to help flesh out the narrative. 

Top stories today