Nigel Farage won’t become prime minister

The problem for Reform is the gap between its positions and those of the country.

Uncomfortable though it is to acknowledge, now is a very good time for Reform UK. One recent poll put the party ahead of Labour and it is only marginally behind the Conservatives. There have been a few notable Tory defections in former MP Andrea Jenkyns and ConservativeHome founder Tim Montgomerie, and, inevitably, talk of more to come. And immigration is in the news following the announcement that net migration for the previous two years reached 1.6 million people.

Perhaps, above all, events in the US have given Nigel Farage and his party a boost. Farage’s friendship with president-elect Donald Trump gives the Reform leader the ability to speak with authority on US policy and the opportunity to create mischief. His links with Elon Musk could also give Reform access to financial resources well beyond anything available to other parties. Musk’s new-found obsession with UK politics, uninhibited by knowledge or mature judgement, may prove to be one of the most consequential developments of recent months.

Trump’s election victory in itself shows that a party of the populist right could win an election in a first-past-the-post system. Trump and Farage share not just a similar policy agenda but a similar political style – macho, disruptive, willing to outrage, capable of deploying humour. If a swaggering celebrity can win nearly 50 per cent of the vote in the US, the argument goes, why can Reform not win here?

The central argument of this article is that this probably will not happen but there is no denying that Farage and Reform have an opportunity. At the last election, Reform emerged from almost nowhere. In its previous form – the Brexit Party – it failed to win a single seat at the 2019 general election and did not even stand in the more than 300 constituencies that the Tories defended, including four of the five seats that Reform won in the following election. It now sits in second place in 98 seats, 89 of them held by Labour.

Analysis by the pollster Peter Kellner has shown that in the Red Wall – the 31 traditionally safe Labour seats captured by the Tories in 2019 but won back by Keir Starmer in 2024 – the Labour vote actually fell. Even with Jeremy Corbyn off the scene and Brexit much less of an issue, parts of the country drifted away from Labour even as it won a landslide.

There is no particular reason to believe that this trend can be easily reversed. There is a part of the electorate who feel alienated and angry and who want change. This desire drove them to vote for Brexit in 2016 and for Boris Johnson in 2019. Some of these voters switched to Reform in 2024 and there is every chance that more will follow next time. Labour may have only recovered the Red Wall temporarily.

There is, however, a world of difference between winning dozens of seats at the next election and winning hundreds, as Farage suggests is on the cards.

For a start, the UK is not the US. The Democrats alienated many of their traditional voters on cultural issues in a manner that Labour has generally avoided. The US system also means that voters have little choice but to vote for one of two parties. From the outside, it is remarkable that the Republican coalition of support fell in behind someone who tried to overturn an election, but that partly reflects the binary nature of American politics. In a multi-party system, the ceiling of support for the populist right is lower.

On the subject of the US, Farage’s closeness to Trump is double-edged. It does give Farage status but he will also be exposed if it goes wrong for Trump, which is more likely than not. Trump is not popular in the UK, other than with Reform supporters.

This takes us to a wider problem for Reform. Their supporters are different to the rest of the country. On their attitudes to Trump or the anti-immigration riots of the summer, most of the country takes one view and Reform supporters take another. That might change but, at the moment, this also limits the party’s potential appeal.

An offer on the economy and public services might help but these are difficult issues for Farage when trying to appeal to new voters. He favours lower public spending to allow for tax cuts and has little time for the NHS. Whatever the merits of his opinions, they are not ideally suited to winning over large parts of the electorate who lean left on these issues.

Another leader might be better placed to address this vulnerability but, at present, there is no one else in the party who comes close to matching Farage’s abilities. In reality, Reform’s prospects are dependent on his ability and desire to lead it even if this leaves the party exposed on important issues.

None of this is to minimise the impact that Reform is likely to have on the course of the next parliament. Labour is struggling to respond to the demands of office; the Conservatives have had the stuffing knocked out of them; living standards are barely rising and public discontent may well grow. There is an opportunity for an insurgent populist party to emerge as a proper parliamentary force at the next election, further fracturing our political system.

This in itself is a significant development. But are we on the cusp of a Farage-led government? No, that still appears to be a distant prospect.