There is a little doubt anymore that the right-wing populist party of Nigel Farage’s, Reform UK, is going to be one of the most important players in British politics this year. The party has secured its first ever seat in parliament and further eroded conservative vote share in the results. In Clacton, Farage himself clinched Reform UK’s second victory of the evening with an excellent show against all odds, overruling a big 25k plus Tory majority.
Ashfield (East Midlands) was won by Lee Anderson who used to be a Conservative before joining Reform back on March 2022. He got 34% of votes while the Tories were relegated to fourth place with only 8.2%. Anderson had previously represented Conservatives as a Member for Ashfield in 2019 when he obtained 39% of votes.
In many safe Labour seats, preliminary results also demonstrated good things for Reform, often pushing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives into third place. After two counts, Reform managed to get twenty nine and twenty seven percent respectively leading to such a statement by Farage’s: “That is way more than any possible prediction or projection; it’s almost unbelievable.”
Reform had not won any seats before this election since its founding as Brexit Party in 2018 and subsequent rebranding just last year. Farage is running his campaign at Clacton where in June 2016 one of the largest pro-Brexit majorities was recorded.
The party seeks to reform British politics like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is doing within France through adopting stringent immigration policies and demanding return of illegal boat migrants from France.
As tricky as it may be politically speaking, these developments have exposed a weak flank for the Tories which failed to live up to Sunak’s promise of “the boats will stop.” Moreover, before elections were called off, their plan involved repatriating asylum seekers among other things that should send them to Rwanda.
Reform UK was predicted to secure 13 seats out of 650 in the House of Commons based on exit poll. Though this may be a small fraction in terms of percentage, Farage’s wants to use that as a launching pad for challenging the Conservative party and making it the leading right leaning option besides Labour.
