The populists of Reform UK, already topping the polls, may climb higher

REFORM UK, the right-wing populist party led by Nigel Farage, won just five of the 650 seats in Britain’s parliament in last year’s elections. Yet it has since become the country’s best-polling party, with almost 30% support (see chart). If an election were held tomorrow, it would have a roughly 75% chance of winning the most seats. In a matter of months, in other words, it has raced from the periphery of politics to its very core.

Some, especially in Britain’s embattled mainstream parties, cling to the hope that Reform’s support has reached a ceiling over the past six months. It is, after all, plagued by scandals. Nathan Gill, a former Reform bigwig, was jailed for over ten years last month for taking bribes to make pro-Russian speeches. Mr Farage has appeared shifty and evasive over claims that he subjected classmates at school to racist taunts. Yet new research suggests that Reform still has lots of scope to grow.

Jane Green of the Nuffield Politics Research Centre at the University of Oxford and Marta Miori of the University of Manchester have looked at data from the British Election Study, which interviews the same people over time to track how political attitudes change. Most of Reform’s gains have come from voters who previously supported the Conservative Party, Britain’s main right-wing party for over a century. Almost 40% of the remaining Conservative voters say they may also switch to Reform. In addition, there is a pool of former Conservative voters who claim to be undecided but appear open to Reform.

The proportion who will actually switch is unknowable, but the researchers note that defectors to Reform tended to underestimate how likely they were to switch before they did so. Only 69% of those who broke ranks in the year after the election had indicated that they might do so. Some eventual defectors had claimed they were very unlikely to switch.

This is not a forecast, stresses Professor Green, but a best-case scenario for Reform. Potential defectors may sour on Mr Farage if the scandals grow. Above all, a further mass migration of Conservative voters hinges on the perception that Reform is more capable of ousting the current Labour government. The cues that voters take from Reform’s performance in elections in May for the Welsh and Scottish parliaments and for local councils in much of England will be vital. Success may beget electoral success. “We could see Nigel Farage saying, ‘You’re wasting your vote with the Conservatives, if you want to keep out Labour,’” says Professor Green.

That would constitute a revolution in British politics. Labour won the election last year in a landslide because the right was divided. If Reform were to reunite it, it could sweep to power while sidelining the Conservatives, hitherto one of the world’s most successful political parties.

How different would that world be in practical terms? In some respects, radically. Mr Farage’s electioneering already owes much to the fireworks and thundering music of Donald Trump’s stadium rallies. He would also govern in a more presidential style, appointing a cabinet of business executives, generals and doctors since Reform has so few tested MPs to call on.

Some policy reversals would be jarring. Reform wants to deport an average of 120,000 people a year that it says have no right to be in Britain, a plan it dubs “Operation Restoring Justice”. It would also like to deregulate cryptocurrencies and create a “sovereign Bitcoin reserve”. Zia Yusuf, its head of policy and Mr Farage’s right-hand man, insists the party would remain “strong supporters” of Ukraine, but other figures speak disdainfully of mainstream politicians suffering from “Ukraine brain”.

Yet Reform still has much in common with the Conservatives. Its ranks are slowly filling with defectors from them. There is Malcolm Offord, a former minister; Danny Kruger, once a speechwriter for David Cameron, a former prime minister; and a raft of jobless former MPs. Reform’s biggest recruit is Christopher Harborne, a businessman and former Conservative donor, who has given the party £9m ($12m)—a fortune by the shoestring standards of British politics.

Reform’s ideology reflects the synthesis on the right in Britain, as the old ideas of the Conservative Party fuse with Mr Farage’s nationalist populism. In a bid to stem the loss of voters, the Conservatives have adopted Mr Farage’s main ideas, including hostility to immigration, the European Union and the European Convention on Human Rights, disdain for the civil service and suspicion of greenery. The Conservatives have also embraced populist gimmicks: when last in government, the party toyed with installing wave machines in the English Channel to repel migrant boats.

Reform, meanwhile, is looking more like the Tories as it seeks power. Mr Farage’s past promises of lavish tax cuts have been dropped for a pledge of fiscal responsibility. The party’s staff are more professional. In Mr Yusuf’s telling, what has failed is not conservative causes such as support for the family, free enterprise and national defence, but the institution of the Conservative Party in living up to them. “Those ideas live on through us,” he declares. The resulting agenda—fiscally conservative, tech-friendly, hawkish on migration and shrill on culture—describes the most recent Conservative government. To see where Reform would begin, look at where the Tories ended. ■