Nigel Farage declared earlier this year that ‘economics might be bigger than immigration for us at the next election’. Most people at Westminster didn’t take him particularly seriously. After all, Reform UK is all about immigration, right?
Westminster didn’t take Farage seriously. After all, Reform UK is all about immigration, right?
When Farage based his local election campaign on an overt pitch to working-class Labour voters by talking about trade unions and reindustrialisation, some parts of the political village were still dismissive. How could a Thatcherite public schoolboy and former City trader ever sell left-wing economics to the electorate?
The results of those elections, and the by-election in Runcorn, mean that Reform’s economic pitch to Labour supporters – and the wider electorate – now needs to be taken very seriously.
To be fair, there were two groups who always saw the importance of Reform on economics. First, the people who run Labour’s political strategy. The likes of Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, have long accepted that a populist offer to protect British jobs and traditional industries, mixed with some economic nationalist swipes at foreign owners and even a bit of nationalisation, could play well with parts of the electorate.
Some Labour policies have been sold as a direct appeal to that electorate. GB Energy, the state-owned energy firm, was set up to stop billpayers’ money going to foreign (French, Danish) energy firms. The theatrical rescue of British Steel was also pitched directly at Labour voters tempted by Reform.
The other group who have been taking Reform’s economic impact seriously are businesses and investors. I know this because these days my day job is advising them on politics and policy. For most of this year, I’ve had a steady stream of questions from corporate friends about what the growing popularity of Reform will mean for business and for economic policy.
Because today’s election results were fairly easy to predict, we had time to do some work to answer those questions about Reform and business. Apella Advisors worked with the pollsters at Find Out Now to run a big survey to explore how Reform voters – and potential Reform voters – think about economic and business issues.
As well as the usual 2,000-person sample of the general electorate, we added in a booster sample of about 1,000 Reform voters. The result is one of the biggest polls of Reform backers carried out in recent months – our fieldwork was done last week, so after Farage’s Old Left economic campaigning.
The headline finding is that Reform UK voters are quite open to a left-wing economic agenda of nationalising utilities and restricting foreign ownership of British business. In fact, they’re more likely to support such positions than the average voter.
They’re also quite keen on protecting British companies from foreign competition – and think that big business doesn’t pay enough tax.
An economic cocktail of Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn might sound unlikely, but it’s notable that Farage is happy to praise both men as he sketches out Reform’s new economic agenda. As so often, he appears to have sensed where his voters are too.
To put this in numbers, we found that 67 per cent of Reform UK voters support the public ownership of the water, rail and energy sectors, 69 per cent of Reform UK supporters believe foreign ownership of British firms is bad for the country.
Three quarters of Reform voters believe that ‘Britain should protect its key industries from foreign competition.’ And 68 per cent of Reform backers believe that big companies don’t pay enough tax.
On all of those questions, the Reform number was higher than the one for the general public – Reform voters are further left on those questions than the typical British voter.
We also polled the views of Labour voters who say they are considering voting Reform – roughly one in ten people who backed Labour in 2024 say they could now switch to Farage.
Those potential switchers also tend to lean left: 81 per cent of them favour nationalisation, while 73 per cent think business should pay more tax.
How will this shape Labour’s policies? Well, a government that wants to win back supporters from Farage’s party appears unlikely to steer to the Right on economics – I’d expect more protectionist and interventionist noises from Labour, as well as intensifying efforts to cast Farage as a closet Thatcherite. Reform’s positions on employment rights and the NHS are certain to come under even more frequent attack from Labour.
There’s another lesson in the Find Out Now data too, for Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives. That lesson is that Reform voters definitely aren’t just disaffected Tories who will come home when the Conservatives offer traditional Tory positions on things like tax and spend.
In fact, Reform voters are significantly to the left of Conservatives on some big economic questions. On all of those issues – nationalisation, foreign ownership, protection from competition and business tax – Conservative voters are further right than the typical voter, while Reform voters are further left.
How can the Conservative party win back Reform voters who favour protectionism and interventionist economic policies? Purists might argue that the only way forward is to persuade those voters of the virtues of the free market. But others might push for the Conservatives to follow Farage down the protectionist road.
The Tory story that began with the Corn Laws isn’t over yet. Nor is the political career of Boris Johnson, the only senior Tory of recent times who is comfortable with an agenda that leans right on culture but left on economics. A ‘Brexity Hezza’ is surely what’s needed to reunite Tory and Reform voters?
But the return of Boris is a story for another day. For now, the trend to watch is how the rise of Reform shifts UK economic policies and norms to the left. Maybe, just maybe, Nigel Farage will do to economic policy what he did to the political consensus on immigration.
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