With more than 650 councillors and a new MP to boot, Nigel Farage’s teal army is clearly on the up. But while Reform UK is always happy to call out others’ volte faces – including Starmer’s Brexit ‘betrayal’ – Farage’s party now appears to be U-turning on one of its own manifesto promises: voting reform. Reform’s ‘Contract with You’, published last July, promised:
Proportional Representation Voting for the House of Commons. Large numbers of voters have no representation in parliament and new parties are shut out of the political system. Voter turnout could be some 10 per cent higher with PR. A referendum is needed.
But during the Spectator’s latest Coffee House Shots Live podcast event at the Emmanuel Centre in London, party chairman Zia Yusuf was quizzed by an audience member about whether Reform still supports changing the electoral system to proportional representation. ‘To turn [Britain] around, it will take us winning under a first past the post system,’ he responded matter-of-factly.
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