Has Reform peaked too soon? In the wake of Rishi Sunak’s D-Day debacle, the party was riding high in the polls. Successive surveys suggested that they were neck-and-neck with the Tories. After one poll even showed Reform ahead, Nigel Farage hailed it as a ‘crossover moment’. He jokingly referred to himself as the ‘Leader of the Opposition’, declaring he ‘absolutely’ believed Reform would win more votes than the Conservatives.
A fortnight on, things now look a little less rosy for Reform. Following Farage’s interview with Nick Robinson – in which he suggested the West helped provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – the party faced an onslaught of cross-party criticism. Reform’s response was to go on the attack. Farage criticised Boris Johnson and the Mail newspapers and tried to frame the row as an indictment of the establishment’s foreign policy failings.
Reform is now playing defence, not attack, on a series of diversions
It wasn’t long before Reform was embroiled in a fresh scandal: Channel 4 broadcast secret recordings last Thursday which showed supporters making a series of offensive comments. Rather than simply sack the offenders and play down the row, the party leadership again chose to go on the offensive. Richard Tice, the party chairman, suggested darkly that one of the activists was a paid actor and pledged to refer Channel 4 to the Electoral Commission.
In the days since then, there has been a steady stream of newspaper stories featuring various Reform candidates making offensive comments. Several have now announced they are quitting the party in protest, with the latest being Georgie David – the Reform nominee for West Ham and Beckton. She defected to the Tories this morning, claiming the ‘vast majority’ of her fellow candidates are ‘racist, misogynistic and bigoted’.
Reform’s response has been to insinuate dark forces are at play. ‘Desperate toxic Tories sent us some Trojan horse candidates,’ tweeted Tice, ‘by offering jobs, safe council seats etc to spread lies.’ Such Machiavellian machinations might seem a little implausible, given the state of the rest of the Tory campaign. It serves though as another example of Reform hitting back hard at any criticism – at the risk of endangering their central message by becoming embroiled in minor spats.
It remains to be seen whether these distractions have cost the party votes but it appears to have checked their previous momentum. YouGov has Reform down from 19 points to 17, while Savanta, JL Partners and Deltapoll have them dropping a point each to 13, 16 and 16 per cent respectively. Rather than punching the Tory immigration bruise, Reform is now playing defence, not attack, on a series of diversions – some by their leadership’s own design.
Listen to more analysis from Fraser Nelson, Katy Balls, and James Heale on Coffee House Shots:
Comments