(C) OpenDemocracy
This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
What’s next for Reform? [1]
[]
Date: 2025-05
Nigel Farage tried and failed seven times to win a parliamentary seat with his previous political vehicles, UKIP and The Brexit Party. It was only last year, three decades after his first attempt — that he finally secured a spot on the Commons’ green benches as an MP for his latest venture, the Reform Party.
Ten months on, he and Reform are going from strength to strength, with the party having developed into a political structure that could seriously disrupt the two-party system at the UK’s next general election in 2029.
Today, Reform has a strong membership base, a firm foothold in Parliament and a growing host of donors with very deep pockets. Following the local elections held across England last week, it controls ten local authorities, two mayoralties and boasts five MPs. From the Tory shires to the post-industrial ‘Labour strongholds’ in the north, the party can win almost anywhere, it seems.
But to transition from a protest vote to a party of government, Farage will have to cement an uneasy coalition of voters, and risk highlighting the contradictions in the movement. He must balance the party leadership’s small-state, Thatcherite instincts with the desires of its voters – and likely many of its members – to see public services improve, and for people to be protected against rising costs.
Get our free Daily Email Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up now
Professionalised
Reform’s successes in last week’s elections come after almost a year of rapid professionalisation. Since last summer’s general election, the party has brought on a raft of new hires, from senior organisers to interns and Westminster press officers, with many more positions still to be filled.
Party figures say this expansion, as well as its election campaign, has primarily been financed by an inarguable explosion in membership over the past nine months. Reform’s own tracker suggests it now has 230,000 members, who will have pumped millions into the party through its annual £20 fee, which is generally paid upfront.
But Reform has also won the support of plenty of big donors. It has built a significant war chest in the first quarter of this year, though its exact size will remain unknown until the latest set of ‘large donations’ data is published by the Electoral Commission next month.
Last year, Reform brought in former Conservative donor Nick Candy as its chief fundraiser. He has held lavish fundraising gigs in exclusive Mayfair members’ clubs, and already convinced several of his fellow former Tory donors to switch along with him – a trend that will only be accelerated as the local election results bolster Reform’s claims that it, not the Conservatives, is now the primary opposition party.
Candy has talked openly of enlisting ultra-wealthy people in low-tax overseas jurisdictions to fill the party’s coffers – a plan made easier by Tory reforms to the rules on overseas voters, which removed the requirement for a British citizen to have lived in the UK within the past 15 years to be able to vote.
As the party has grown, so too has the wider movement around it. A pro-Reform think tank, which is reportedly backed by donations of more than £1m, will be based in the same office building Reform now occupies – the same building from which both Labour and the Conservatives have previously organised seismic general election-winning campaigns.
Fringe groups are already looking for ways to bring in big money from the US, and a key Farage ally has set up an opaque political consultancy which experts fear could be used to funnel dark money to Reform. Going forward, the party will be well-equipped to build on its recent success.
'I'm not politically experienced'
Reform’s newest MP is Sarah Pochin, a former Conservative councillor, who won last week’s by-election in Runcorn by just six votes – overturning the 14,600 majority Labour won less than a year ago. Her victory reveals more about how Reform hopes to win big at the next election.
Both Farage and his previous political parties have made reducing immigration to the UK – and by extension, the need to leave the EU – their central electoral offering. While immigration was certainly a key part of Pochin’s campaign, she holds a notably more liberal line on other issues, particularly on prisons and the death penalty, than her parliamentary colleagues.
Pochin’s win came about in part thanks to a serious ground operation in the area. Local sources reported a huge number of Reform activists involved in the campaign – a familiar story in all the places the party targeted in England’s local and mayoral elections. Her presence in Parliament will help the party broaden its appeal slightly and will blunt criticism of the grouping as a gang of angry, middle-aged men.
Nigel Farage poses for a picture with Mayoral Candidate Luke Campbell in the Boxclub Boxing Centre on April 25, 2025 in Hull | Ryan Jenkinson / Getty Images
Similarly, Reform’s new mayor for Hull and East Yorkshire, Hull-born Luke Campbell, ran an uncontroversial campaign, hardly mentioning immigration and instead focusing on local issues and taxes. Campbell, a boxer who won gold at the 2012 Olympics, instead built appeal around his relationship to the area and his bona fides as a non-politician.
“I’m not politically experienced, but I think that is one of my strengths,” he said after his win was announced. “I will work my socks off and put my heart into this role. I have no interest in being an MP or working my way through the party, I'm here to represent the people. I understand I won’t please everybody but if I can have an impact and make a difference to our community, that's all I want to do.”
Nationally, polls show that voters are interested in Reform primarily because they represent ‘something different’ and because of their stance on immigration, but on the ground, people’s reasons for backing the party vary massively. In East Yorkshire, both Reform voters and volunteers involved in the election count told openDemocracy that the party’s policy to increase the personal tax allowance from £12,500 to £20,000 had been a big vote winner – despite being a national, rather than local policy.
Farage’s early victory speech on the night of the elections further indicated that the party hopes to continue expanding its electoral offering beyond immigration to win votes outside its traditional base.
Reform’s success in East Yorkshire had not yet been announced when he took to the stage a few hours north in Durham, where the party had just taken control of the county council – an authority that Labour held from 1925 to 2021 – and registered its highest win of the evening; 65% of the vote in the ward of Thornley and Wheatley Hill.
Buoyed by the results, Farage issued a Doge-inspired warning to Durham County Council’s staff working on either climate or diversity, or who happen to work from home – a practice that is good enough for many of Reform’s own staff, if not local government workers.
“I would advise anybody who’s working for Durham County Council on climate change initiatives or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion or… things that you go on working from home, I think you all better really be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly.
“We want to give council taxpayers better value for money. We want to reduce excessive expenditure. We want to find out who the long-term contracts are signed with and why, and reduce the scale of local government back to what it ought to be,” he said.
YouGov polling from earlier this year suggests the removal of the winter fuel allowance, the cost of living and public services are the main reasons voters are turning away from Labour, many of them towards Reform. People feel that the public realm is crumbling around them, in no small part due to massive local government cuts over the past 15 years. But given Reform’s promised ‘efficiency drive’ will find little fat to cut in council budgets, it will inevitably result in the further stripping back of services.
With the Conservatives out of contention, progressives fear Reform can soak up their support while also benefiting from Labour’s failure to show it is helping working people and its timidity on traditionally left-wing issues. Reform is keenly aware of this and has already signalled an ability to outflank Labour in this direction, with Farage calling for British Steel to be nationalised and posing for pictures with trade union posters at the site in Scunthorpe.
If Reform is to be successful at the 2029 general election, it will need to keep the support of voters who back left-wing policies, particularly those that help some of the worst off in society. As Labour MP Jake Richards highlighted on X: “61% of the most deprived wards were previously held by Labour. Now roughly 85% are held by Reform.”
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/what-next-reform-party-nigel-farage-local-elections-labour-conservatives/
Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/
