Britain’s new political party is surging in the polls.
Like the United States, the United Kingdom has a first-past-the-post voting system. This tends to entrench a two-party system. It takes a lot for other rivals to break through. The resulting culture of complacency and entitlement by the main parties is certainly less than ideal.
In the UK, politics has been dominated by the Conservative and Labour Parties for the last century. In 1922, Labour overtook the Liberal Party. By 1924, the Liberal Party’s support had collapsed. Our opinion polling suggests that just over a hundred years later, British politics is having another shake-up. An insurgent party called Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, a friend of Donald Trump’s, has a commanding lead in the polls, and has done so since the end of April last year. That is remarkable. At the last General Election in 2024, they won just five seats in the House of Commons out of 650—and have since increased their presence to eight, following high-profile defections from the Conservative Party, including their former home secretary Suella Braverman and immigration minister Robert Jenrick.
Local elections on May 7th this year will be a big test for them. (Although some elections have been canceled, most are proceeding.) It’s not quite like the US midterms. No seats in the UK Parliament are up for election. But there are elections for the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales and for local authorities in most of England. Pundits expect that Reform UK will do better than either the Conservatives or Labour.
The situation reflects the exasperation of the electorate. Conservatives were dismayed that a supposedly Conservative Government had pursued socialist policies, with even the new Conservative Party leader admitting that the party “talked right but governed left.” In their nearly 15 years of government, the party increased public spending, resulting in punitive levels of taxation and a growing mountain of Government debt, high energy bills caused by a commitment to “net zero” energy policies, and wealth creators being penalized by ever tighter regulations that make it harder to raise finance and riskier to hire staff. Voters who believe in free markets were left with few options.
The Labour Party has also alienated many of its traditional supporters. Working-class and older voters who had previously supported Labour found a party more interested in “woke” issues than the cost of living. At a time when many voters are feeling the squeeze financially, economic policies are often the main motivator when they make their choice at the ballot box.
These voters believe in the value of work, that honest employment should pay a living wage, and that only those who really need it should be living off welfare benefits. They thought that the Labour Party championed the workers, and were dismayed instead to find it lecturing people over their use of pronouns and shaming those who flew the national flag. Incredulity turned to anger as Labour, once the party of the blue collar, became the party of those with well-paid employment in the public sector.
Some of these erstwhile Labour voters would never contemplate voting for the Conservative Party due to family loyalty or because they disliked the Conservative “brand” as too snobbish or stuffy. But they were open to an alternative.
Along comes Reform UK. Seen by some as an energetic new party with a Conservative outlook, but without the baggage of the Conservative Party, it is a more attractive proposition. But what would a Reform government actually look like?
We are not required to have a General Election in the UK for another three years (though the Prime Minister does retain the prerogative to call for an early election). Much could happen in that time. It is hard to imagine the current Labour Government recovering in popularity. But there is increased support for the extreme left-wing Green Party, which could pull away votes from Labour’s left. The Conservative Party might yet recover.
But what if Reform UK perform as well as opinion polls suggest, and form a government? What direction would the country take with Nigel Farage as Prime Minister?
Farage is, by instinct, a free-marketeer, as shown by his statements over many years, and temperamentally someone willing to confront the establishment to pursue his beliefs. On the other hand, he is a politician sensitive to what public opinion will accept. A wealthy man, who makes significant earnings from his media work, he has called for a cultural change where success is celebrated rather than denigrated. He has consistently highlighted entrepreneurs emigrating from the UK as one of his great concerns.
Yet he is more popular with low-income voters than the rich, which could lead to some inconsistencies. In a sop to “Old Labour”style voters, Reform UK has indicated its willingness on propping up loss-making traditional industries such as coal and steel with subsidies.
Another concern is that Reform UK has failed in its initial test with the local authorities, where it has already won power. In last year’s elections, it took charge in several English county councils, promising bold action to cut wasteful spending. No specific promises were made on the tax cuts that would result, but it was implicit that they would be significant. Instead, the Reform UK councils have put tax up even higher.
Farage puts this local setback down to inexperience and has used that to justify welcoming in some defectors from the Conservative Party with experience of Government office. But how new can a party be when most of its recognizable faces are Tories who just switched their team jersey?
Yet there is one principal reason why a Reform government could take a free-market course: economic reality. In three years’ time, there will be no alternative. Public spending will have to be cut. Economic growth has already ground to a halt, and further tax increases are planned. The tax-and-spend journey has reached a dead end. Welfare spending has been rising out of control in a way that is unsustainable.
If these underlying problems are not tackled, then the alternative will be crude emergency spending cuts as the money runs out. A bold program of enlightened reform, brought in by someone who believes in what he is doing, would be less painful.
