Farage Rise Opens UK Politics Up to European-Style Fragmentation
(Bloomberg) -- At Britain’s general election in July, the populist Reform UK Party leader Nigel Farage finally won a seat in the House of Commons at the eighth time of asking, entering Parliament with four colleagues. Now he’s setting his sights on upturning the country’s traditional two-party duopoly.
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“At the next election in 2029 or before, there will be hundreds of newcomers under the Reform UK label,” Farage promised rival politicians at a swanky London dinner earlier this month. “We are about to witness a political revolution.”
The Brexit campaigner and Donald Trump supporter is prone to grandiose statements, but as often in the past, he’s impossible to ignore. With the official Conservative opposition struggling for relevance, his right-wing party enjoys momentum off the back of faltering poll numbers for the new Labour government amid a rocky start by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Buttressed also by endorsements from billionaire Elon Musk, Reform is challenging both main parties in the polls, and Farage is now the bookmakers’ favorite to succeed Starmer as premier.
Politicians and strategists at the top of the two parties that have dominated British politics for a century told Bloomberg they are increasingly alive to the threat posed by Reform. Speaking on condition of anonymity about internal party thinking, the Tory and Labour officials expressed concern at signs the UK could be shifting toward a less predictable multi-party politics more common on the European continent.
Given Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, that’s a recipe for potential instability. While Labour in July stormed to a huge majority, securing 411 of the 650 seats in the Commons, it did so on just 33.7% of the vote, the lowest postwar share of any party forming a majority government. With the Tories on just 23.7% of the vote, Britain’s minor parties secured a record slice.
“Missed in Labour’s July landslide was just how fragmented British politics has become, as voters rebel against what they see as the broken status quo,” Luke Tryl of the More In Common think tank told Bloomberg. “That fragmentation has only accelerated” since then, Tryl said.
While Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats were the biggest beneficiaries among the minor parties of the fractured vote in July, securing 72 seats in the best performance by a third party in a century, Reform’s more modest five seats came on the back of a bigger vote share: 14.3% versus 12.2% for the Liberals. Moreover, Farage’s outfit came second in 98 seats.
Those numbers — and Labour’s poor start to its term of office — give a sense of momentum to Farage, already one of Britain’s most influential politicians of the last two decades, and an instrumental figure in the country’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union. Reform, which stands on a platform of drastically reducing immigration, slashing taxes and dropping net zero climate policies, even topped Labour in one national survey last week, albeit trailing the Tories.
Reform’s surge has come as immigration rose to become the public’s number one concern, according to data from Ipsos. Net arrivals — including those arriving legally and undocumented migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats, have surged to record levels in the past three years.
Farage’s party has also benefited from the stuttering performance of Starmer’s five-month-old government, beset by negative growth, a budget that was widely criticized by business and mounting complaints about its lack of direction. Trump team member Musk is helping Reform grab attention, repeatedly endorsing the party on his social media platform X, while panning Labour policies.
Senior Labour figures insist that with four-and-a-half years until the next general election is due, it’s too early to declare Farage an existential threat. However, they are wary of what one official described as the main danger facing Starmer: that his center-left government goes the way of Joe Biden in the US, Emmanuel Macron in France or Olaf Scholz in Germany, suffering from an incumbency factor as an ever-more cynical and anti-politics public turns to the populist right.
Addressing voters’ concerns on migration is a key priority, another official said, arguing that in terms of delivery, Labour would end up having the toughest approach of any UK government in recent history. They suggested that Starmer’s personal views on migration have changed over time. Where once he campaigned for free movement of people across Europe, after meeting voters while in opposition, he now supports lower and more controlled immigration, the person said.
The more immediate political challenge posed by Reform may be to the Conservatives under Kemi Badenoch, who became leader last month. Opposition figures are already concerned by what they described as Badenoch’s failure to take advantage of Starmer’s woes, allowing Farage to steal a march.
Badenoch is tainted by her association with unpopular former Conservative governments, isn’t right-wing enough to win back Reform voters, and is too far from the center to attract Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters, one Tory official said. Another said Musk’s backing for Reform and apparent disinterest in the Tories is concerning.
For its part, Reform will look to maintain momentum with further high-profile defections, after property magnate and former Tory donor Nick Candy became Reform’s treasurer last week, a person familiar with the plans said.
Labour and Tory aides said they don’t expect Reform to maintain its surge over the course of the parliament, noting the insurgent party is vulnerable to a drop-off in support if Trump’s imminent presidency sparks global political and economic instability. Still, that suggests that rather than devising a strategy to counter Reform, they’re simply hoping it will fall away. While some local Tory and Reform branches have discussed an informal pact ahead of May’s local elections aimed at uniting the right-wing vote against Labour, party bosses oppose any formal deal.
“Both major parties are fighting to avoid the fate of their sister parties on the continent,” Tryl said. “For Labour, the cautionary tale may lie in the fate of Scholz, elected with the promise of bringing change after years of center-right rule, but quickly disappointing and set to lose the chancellery after a single term. For the Tories, they need to avoid the path of the Republicans in France, supplanted by Marine Le Pen and reduced to a rump in the Assembly.”
The stony faces of Labour and Tory politicians when Farage made his threat at this month’s glitzy dinner suggested they’re live to the danger.
“The establishment is shell-shocked and terrified,” Richard Tice, deputy leader of Reform, told Bloomberg of his party’s rising popularity. “Reform is the force to be reckoned with in UK politics.”
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