This article originally appeared in our Elevenses newsletter.
Nigel Farage will head to Wales to launch Reform UK’s manifesto today as his “crusade to defend British values” steps into full policy mode. To the surprise of absolutely no one, the party is expected to fight the election on the thorny issue of overpopulation, introducing a freeze on lawful immigration – good luck, business! – and taking the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights to allow Britain to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Russia and Belarus. In its place will be a ‘contract with the people’, which given that many will have their rights eroded as a direct result of Reform UK policy, is the very definition of turkeys voting for Christmas.
But, alas, we have been here before. In 2019, Mr Farage used the forgotten villages and towns of South Wales to launch the Brexit Party’s policy platform, capitalising on the political alienation felt in the Valleys, even though they were among the biggest beneficiaries of EU funding. It showed, as the Guardian noted at the time, that anti-Westminster sentiment stretched far beyond an economic and social contract with our European neighbours and constituted a wholesale rebellion against the establishment. “A feeling that politics is broken”, as Farage described it in 2019, pointing to a “detachment between Westminster and ordinary folk”. It’s no surprise, therefore, that the same people will continue to side with the most rebellious man in politics at this election, even when his pet project failed to deliver on the fabled reset he promised.
Fast forward five years and the rebranded ‘Reform UK Party’ has now overtaken the Conservatives in one national poll, and threatens to take a 15 per cent share of the vote in next month’s General Election. If the polls prove accurate it could hand Labour more than 450 seats and leave Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives with well under 100 seats in parliament, with Reform UK likely to bag around five seats or just 0.7 per cent of those up for grabs. But Sir Keir Starmer can ill afford to rest on his laurels. Opinium’s James Crouch is one of several political commentators pointing to a seismic shift in political allegiances, with voters turning away from the two major parties in a huge break with the trend seen in the 2019 general election campaign when the smaller parties’ votes were squeezed. It echoes similar observations on the media front, where Loughborough University researchers note a “plague on both your houses” approach in the press, starkly contrasting to previous elections.
Should reform get a 0.7 per cent return on its 15 per cent share of the vote, it seems likely that Mr Farage will put electoral reform at the top of his agenda for the next five years. The Reform UK man has made much of parallels with the Canadian General Election in 1993, where the ruling Tory government not only lost its majority but lost all but two seats and spent years puzzling over how to rebuild. But as PR campaigner Alan Story tells me, he might be better off looking at New Zealand, where despite gaining over 20 per cent of the vote nationally, right-leaning Social Credit gained just two seats in parliament in 1981 and helped spark support for electoral reform. By 1993, New Zealand brought in PR, even though most MPs were against it, going to show that sometimes you can find the answer to the most pressing political problems in the unlikeliest of places.
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