Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is once again suffering from internal problems. The latest incarnation of this is the fact that Rupert Lowe, one of the five MPs elected to Parliament last year has been suspended from the Party for alleged bullying. Nigel Farage’s party reported the Great Yarmouth MP to the Metropolitan Police on March 6th because of alleged threats of physical violence towards Zia Yusuf, the Party chair, as well as other allegations of serious bullying and verbal threats.
This follows criticisms made by Lowe of Farage, stating that the Party is a vanity project for Farage. Lowe has also threatened to sue Reform UK for libel. Lowe was previously touted by Elon Musk as a possible leader of Reform following Musk’s criticisms of Farage for distancing himself from the neo-fascist, Tommy Robinson. The relationship between Lowe and Farage has deteriorated ever since.
The Reform Party is made up of a mixture of disillusioned Tories, far-right sympathisers, disaffected mainly lower middle class business people but, according to one poll, 12% of youth voters between the ages of 18 and 24 voted for it at the last election.
The interest in Reform from younger voters is concerning. 49% of the 18 – 24 age group supported Labour at the last election but this support is slipping as the months go by. In a recent poll by Statista, Reform stood on 19% amongst the 18 – 24 age group, with Labour on 36%, a fall in support of 13%.
Reform presents itself as anti-establishment, even though Farage is deeply embedded in the British ruling class and Reform gets most of its considerable finance from elite institutions and rich individuals. The betrayals of Labour, following the collapse of the Corbyn wave, has given youth nowhere to go for a political voice. However, support for the Green Party amongst this group now stands at 22% and appears to be increasing. This could be at least in part to the Green Party’s relatively progressive manifesto and position on climate change, but more significantly youth choosing the Greens over Labour as a lesser of two evils.
As Labour continues to launch austerity measures, the latest of which is to cut £6 billion from the benefits bill, support for them will continue to fall. It will feed the anger that turns voters towards Reform UK. A Labour MP, Neil Duncan-Jordan, the MP for Poole, claimed that there would be major cuts to disability support coming from Labour. Duncan-Jordan correctly stated that, “Cuts to benefits don’t make jobs – they only make more poverty in our society…”.
Labour also has its own scandal around violent conduct by MP for Runcorn and Helsby, Mike Amesbury. Amesbury is facing a ten-week (suspended) prison sentence for punching a constituent in a late-night brawl. This situation will result in a by lection in Runcorn and Helsby. It could be that Reform UK could use this as a launch-pad for the election of another MP. Although Amesbury had a majority at the last election of 15,000, this could be overturned. The Conservatives are not a threat to Labour in Runcorn and Helsby and support for them has not increased since Kemi Badenoch replaced Rishi Sunak as leader, therefore Reform UK may be in the driving seat.
The puzzle remains that at the time of writing, and in spite of the problems and divisions in Reform UK, the British public doesn’t seem to be affected in their level of support for Reform.
Reform and Farage are constantly thrust forward by the media and although newspapers like The Guardian regularly criticise Farage, this doesn’t seem to affect Reform in the polls.
Guardian readers do not play a role in factors that might undermine Farage. They might, if they were to get behind plans to launch a new worker’s party, but as editorials in that paper showed throughout the Corbyn surge, they are not interested in actually doing anything to change the status quo. Although the antics of Farage, Robinson, Musk et al might prick their consciences, this will not change their political behaviour and sense of defeatism.
Farage positioning himself closely to Trump is affecting his popularity and in recent polls the support for Farage, rather than Reform UK is on the wane. Trump is unpopular in the UK and being associated with him does not help Farage’s popularity. According to Huffpost, Farage’s favourability rating has declined from 30% to 26% since 17th February and Trumps’ favourability rating has declined from 22% to 15% in the same period. Even amongst Reform UK voters Trump’s favourability has dropped from 66% to 45%. There is a view, that support for Reform UK has reached a level that it will find hard to improve on, being stuck on 25% for some time now. However, this level of support would make it a major player in a general election without excluding the possibility of it becoming the largest party as a result of an even bigger fall in support for Labour.
The discussions around alternatives to Labour and Reform are taking place, but tend to be amongst activists. As reported previously, Collective continues to meet, with moral support from figures on the Left but still with no concrete plans to form a new party at this stage.
As time passes the urgency for a new voice for working people grows. Of course, things can change very quickly as material conditions for ordinary people deteriorate and this deterioration would only accelerate under Reforms UK’s influence. A new Left party could emerge from an unexpected direction at any stage but it makes sense to build early for that possibility. Collective advocates building support from the base before launching. If Collective were to launch with the support of key political figures, then this would give credibility to those already trying to build in communities and would draw large numbers of youth and workers towards those groups that are currently in formation.
A nationally coordinating party would only aid the process of encouraging people back into political action and not simply protest, in order to fight for working class rights and radical socialist ideas. This party would have to be built on solid democratic foundations and borrow nothing from the bad anti-democratic practice that became endemic in the Labour Party.
