FTI Consulting UK Public Affairs Snapshot- Mr Rightside: Nigel Farage turbocharges the Reform UK election campaign 

For Nigel Farage, destiny is calling once more for him to play the role of the right-wing insurgent in the UK’s General Election campaign.  

There are many constants in modern British elections: TV debates, battle buses, gaffes, the Monster Raving Loonies – and also, Nigel Farage’s magnetic ability to grab the political headlines like few others. His recent decision, to return once more to the fray as leader of Reform UK and stand for Parliament in Clacton, proudly carries on this tradition.  

This is, quite evidently, bad news for the embattled Conservatives. Under Richard Tice, Reform UK had been doing solidly enough in the polls, hovering between 11-13% in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls for the last three months. Conservative strategists breathed a sigh of relief on 23rd May when Farage announced he would not stand: justification, it was said, of the Prime Minister’s decision to call the election early. Evidence from the doorstep in the days that followed was that Con/Reform waverers were tentatively switching back. With Farage having now changed his mind, that is no longer the case. 

This matters for two reasons. Most obviously, it costs the Conservatives seats, with Telegraph polling having previously suggested that a 5 point uplift in Reform votes (from 9% to 14%) would lead to the loss of a further 29 Conservative MPs. Indeed, the two post-Farage polls make for bleak reading for Conservative HQ. One poll by YouGov (5 June) has put Reform at 17%, just 2 points behind the Conservatives on 19%. Meanwhile, Survation, on 6 June put Reform at 15% in the polls, this alone representing a 7-point jump in support. These numbers are exacerbated by the fact that there are many seats in which Reform did not stand in 2019, and which went Conservative for the first time. 

It also gives the Conservatives a major tactical headache: whether to bet the house by lurching to the right and risk looking desperate and losing more moderate voters, or plough gamely on in the hope that voters will ultimately prefer their ‘steady-as-she-goes’ approach.   

Some Conservative strategists will argue that the more voters engage with Reform UK’s actual policies, the less they will like what they see. Thus far, Reform’s programme for government has been set out in a working document titled Our Contract With You – a set of what they term “common sense” policies that the Party claims “stand up for British culture, identity and values” and “take back control over our borders, our money and our laws”.  

Central to Reform’s argument is that the current system is broken and that neither the Conservatives nor Labour can fix it. They propose the rawest of red meat from the political butchers’ counter: lower taxes, a smaller state, crackdowns on waste, welfare and ‘wokery’, the scrapping of net zero policies, and more spending on defence and policing. These are all policies that have immense appeal with the Conservative Party’s core vote.  

In particular, the document focuses on grappling with what the Party terms “uncontrolled mass immigration” that “has pushed Britain to breaking point.” Channeling the 2016 EU referendum, we should expect immigration to continue being a major theme for Reform throughout the campaign, with Reform contrasting their purity of thought with the Conservatives’ largely unsuccessful attempts to “stop the boats”. It is also likely that net zero will serve as a major line of attack, once again allowing Reform to portray the Conservatives as ineffectual.  

Having this week ruled out any prospect of a future deal with the Conservatives, the Reform tactic is instead one of vulture politics, swooping down and taking electoral bites from the wounded Conservative animal. With all the pint-swigging, tweed wearing chutzpah he can muster, Farage (who has already stood seven times for Parliament) now poses a threat from the right that Rishi Sunak has precious little political ammunition left to repel.  

Farage has spoken of his desire to conduct a “reverse takeover” of the Conservatives, and has called the choice between the two major parties at this election as “uninspiring”. Under a First Past the Post electoral system, it is unlikely that Reform will be able to secure anything more than a handful of seats. Yet, Farage has stressed his belief that there is still “a path to meaningful power” for his Party.  

However, this would not be in the sense of entering government via a Commons majority, but rather through the secondary effects that a surge in support for the Reform UK platform could deliver – first, by losing the Conservatives tens of seats, and second, through the sheer number of votes they hope to win across the country. 4 million was UKIP’s high water mark, but this year the target is considerably greater. 

This hold on the Conservatives’ vote share, even if with a relatively small presence in the Commons, would deliver a (potentially) newly elected Farage a powerful position from which to influence in the Commons whoever is left on the Conservative benches post-4 July. It may well also be the catalyst for debate about the merits of the First Past the Post voting system. 

It is, of course, unlikely that any of the policies in Reform UK’s working document and eventual manifesto will see the light of day any time soon. Certainly, it’s easy to pick holes in the economic assumptions, or the practicalities of implementation. But that’s not the point. Rather, it’s to prove – in as eye-catching a way as possible – to Conservative voters and members currently wondering “how did it end up like this?” that there is a right-wing alternative that many quite like and that the Party’s leaders may do well to adopt.