The local elections last week proved to be a disappointing night for Reform UK. Prior to polling day, its leader Richard Tice had talked up the ‘huge appetite’ among voters for Reform but the party averaged a mere six per cent of the vote in the wards where it stood. It won just half a dozen seats on on Derby City Council out of 471 hand-picked seats. Ukip, its effective forerunner, lost all its remaining councillors, going from almost 500 in 2016 to zero. Tice’s response was to argue that ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ and to focus instead on the next electoral test: the London mayoralty.
Petrolhead Howard Cox, the founder of the Fair Fuel UK campaign, is running as Reform’s candidate in the capital. He wants to scrap the entire Ultra Low Emission Zone if elected, in a direct appeal to the kind of ‘white van man’ voters that the Tories need if they are to dislodge Sadiq Khan from City Hall. It is hoped that Cox will attract votes further down the ticket, enabling the party to gain one or two Assembly members like Ukip did in 2016, under the additional member system.
High taxation is expected to be a focus in the forthcoming 18 months
The bullish response was typical of the party’s strategy under Tice’s leadership: talk big and focus national. It is to some extent the opposite of the approach adopted by the Greens, who gained 241 councillors last week thanks to an emphasis on ultra-local community politics and steady gains ward-by-ward. Such a result ought to prompt reflection about whether Reform’s strategy is the right one. Admittedly, the party only stood candidates in 6 per cent of seats – but it does suggest a lack of organisation which could inhibit Reform’s chances in a general election. This is despite the party enjoying several advantages which other parties like the Greens do not. They include a wealthy donor network, the support of much of the Brexit-supporting media and weekly television shows for the party’s leader, deputy leader and president.
So far there appears to be little sign of such self-analysis. This is partly thanks to Reform’s unusual structure whereby it is run as a registered company rather than as a traditional political party, to avoid the kind of infighting and factionalism which dominated Ukip’s early years. Instead, the focus remains the same: looking ahead to the general election and damaging the Conservatives’ chances. One insider sought to downplay last week’s results and stressed the work that Reform has done in selecting its Westminster parliamentary candidates earlier than expected. Tice insists that ‘our focus has always been on the general election’ and that the Tories will be really anxious to see us making a significant inroad’; Ben Habib says their aim is to ‘obliterate’ Sunak’s party.
These anxieties do not appear to be shared by Conservative MPs in the kinds of Brexit-backing Red Wall areas where Ukip and the Brexit party did well. One says of the Tories that ‘we cannibalised their votes in 2019’ and jokes ‘I’d like to see them stand against Lee Anderson’. Another says that ‘Tice simply isn’t Nigel’ and that the Leave factor which motivated Reform target voters in 2017 and 2019 just isn’t there anymore. That could change of course if Farage did decide to make a comeback – one figure who knows him well suggests ‘he has one great campaign left in him’. But with Labour making gains in Brexit-backing areas, he could struggle to make as much of an impact with the party’s voters as he did during the Corbyn years.
Devoid of Farage and with Brexit ‘done’ in the eyes of most voters, Reform has spent the past two years switching focus between net zero, Covid restrictions and small boats crossings. High taxation is expected to be a focus in the forthcoming 18 months, amid much grumbling on the right about it reaching the highest level since the days of Stafford Cripps. But without the kind of right wing pool voters to draw from as there were in 2019, it is difficult to see Reform being able to score the kind of successes which Ukip did almost a decade ago.
As such, Reform’s results next year might not resemble so much the Brexit party in 2019 but rather the Referendum party in 1997: a protest party not powerful enough to change a major plank of policy – but strong enough to deny some Tories their seats.
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