Six months after former MP Mike Amesbury assaulted a man in his constituency, it was Labour’s turn to take a beating. On Thursday night, the party lost its 49th safest seat to Reform UK by just six votes and suffered a major rout in the local elections—losing 187 councillors, while Farage’s party surged to win 677 local seats across the country.
The significance of these results can hardly be overstated. Reform’s sweeping gains confirm what pollsters and commentators have been hinting at for weeks: the beginning of the end for Britain’s century-old two-party system, and a decisive shift in the political landscape.
Nigel Farage can now credibly claim that his populist-right wing party is a serious, mainstream contender. He can also argue—with growing force—that it is the Conservatives who are splitting the right-wing vote, not the other way around. The quirks of our First-Past-The-Post voting system may now begin to work in Farage’s favour as right leaning voters think carefully about how to keep out progressive MPs.
For Labour, the alarm bells must now be deafening. A recent MRP analysis by Persuasion UK projected that the party could lose as many as 123 seats if all Reform-curious voters shift to Farage. And if the party can take one of Labour’s safest seats, there’s little reason to believe the damage will be limited to marginal constituencies.
As Jake Richards, one of the leaders of the Labour caucus of Red Wall MPs, points out, the threat from Reform is not just about their electoral majority – it is about their sense of ‘moral purpose’. Winning 85% of the most deprived wards across the country, Farage’s party has come to threaten Labour’s position as the party of working people. Clearly, it is not just the Tories suffering a moment of existential doubt.
Reform UK’s gap in the political market
Reform UK has spotted a major gap in the political market. A traditionalist stance on cultural issues promising to take on a powerful, metropolitan cultural elite, combined with economically progressive rhetoric about the untamed power of big business has cut through with key voters.
As pollsters have been warning for years, this is now the winning formula that appeals to a section of the electorate that feels locked out of the nation’s wealth and disillusioned with the government’s attacks on benefits and welfare. These are indeed the ‘hero voters’ that Morgan McSweeney said ‘were worth two’’ before the election.
Although Reform’s cultural rhetoric is very much more of the same, their economic populism is not. As Times journalist Juliet Samuel wrote last week, “early UKIP was all for reheated Thatcherism”, and the core tenets of tax cuts and deregulation have formed a major part of both the Brexit party and Reform’s policy platform. It was, after all, only a year ago that Farage likened himself to Thatcher.
But the party’s neoliberal origins are now being rethought. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Nigel Farage praised trade unions for their role in protecting British workers, whilst Reform UK leader Richard Tice was spotted wearing a trade union badge in the House of Commons. At the same time, the party has dialed up Trump-style economic nationalism, calling for Scunthorpe’s Chinese-owned British Steel plant to be nationalised in order to save British jobs.
None of this is normal territory for an ex-trader and ex-CEO of an asset management firm. Nor is it in the the interests of the billionaire tax exiles which the party views as their primary source of funding. However their leftward tilt on the economy and their promise to ‘re-industrialise Britain’, is “in tune with the times”, says Samuel.
And it is certainly in line with their new median voter. As the Green’s Zack Polanski declared over the weekend when announcing a leadership challenge: “there’s an empty space in politics.” With Farage increasingly occupying and now hoovering up votes in that space, Polanksi is mounting a pushback centred around an ‘eco-populist’ vision which blends economically progressive values with environmental action.
This should be Labour’s bread and butter. But until now, the government’s attempts to quell Reform’s rise have not seen Labour loudly champion progressive social and economic policies such as enhanced employment rights and renters rights reform. This is a big missed opportunity. Indeed, according to a More in Common survey, these policies are both incredibly popular and not that visible to the average voter.
Exposing the tensions in Reform UK
Richard Tice and Nigel Farage doling out leftwing platitudes on the economy should be easy pickings for progressives. The contradictions are glaring. All of Reform UK’s (at the time) five MPs voted down the Employment Rights Bill in parliament. And a manifesto promising to slash red tape, roll back labour market protections, and cut the top rate of corporation tax to 15% now sits painfully at odds with their median voter looking for stronger rules to tackle insecurity and corporate abuse.
Farage is also promising a DOGE-style department in each new local authority to slash local bureaucracy and has railed against the government’s ‘nanny-state’ interventions on tobacco and alcohol. What’s more, a core pledge of the party’s 2024 manifesto was a promise to seize the so-called ‘Brexit dividend’ to “strip back thousands of laws that hold back British businesses.”
This deregulatory agenda is out of step with the party’s evolving base. Our polling with More in Common showed that 69% of Reform voters believe regulation is essential for a stable economy and secure society. Even more striking, 74% of 2024 Reform voters say big businesses exploit ordinary people, and the same proportion believe UK workers are vulnerable to exploitation.
Clearly, this is not an electorate animated by libertarian ideals or calls for economic deregulation. Instead, these are voters who are just as supportive of strong employment protections as they are distrustful of profiteering water companies and unaccountable tech billionaires.
Marrying a libertarian, laissez faire policy platform with an economically progressive base may ultimately prove a task too steep for Reform. Indeed, their initial attempts to come across as both pro-worker and pro-capital have not gone unnoticed. TUC chief Paul Nowak was quick to blast Farage last month for being a “political fraud” “cosplaying” as working-class champion.
But if last week’s elections are anything to go by, voters are seemingly less bothered by this contradiction.
What this means for the Protections Movement
Pushing back against the populist right is now a major challenge for progressives, especially those who believe in the importance of strong rules that protect people and the environment. Whatever their recent rhetoric, the experience both in the UK and globally shows that the rise of parties like Reform UK represent the biggest threat to a rules based economy. But whilst this challenge is huge, it is worth considering where the opportunities might lie.
Unchecked UK believes these fall into three categories. First, the current political calculus offers significant scope for influencing the current direction of the government’s economic policy. Last week’s political earthquake confirms what the polling has been telling us for decades – the public want a different economic model, one which breaks with the past by putting their interests ahead of those of big business. This means a model that is underpinned by strong regulations, and proper enforcement. We need to chime in with the growing group of Labour MPs who are now calling for change, and be ready with ideas of what change looks like.
Second, the political situation should provide us with a wake up call. As argued by More in Common, progressives need to get better at listening and engaging more deeply with those voters with whom we disagree. In this way we can develop a strategy for activating support on the issues where we share common ground – measures to clamp down on worker insecurity, tough penalties against those who profit from harm, a system whereby everyone abides by the same rules no matter how rich or powerful. It is here that the scope for deeper engagement with these key voters is greatest.
Finally, we need to align. The protections movement needs to be active in exposing the fundamental inconsistency between Reform UK’s ideology and the beliefs and interests of their target voters. Some actors have already begun doing this to great effect. And we need to do this with a sense of ambition and urgency on platforms that are trusted by those voters. This work is already starting to take shape across a range of different movements. Joining these will be essential to our success in pushing back against the populist threat.
We’re starting to create a ‘Progressive Populism Hub’ – an informal group of campaigners who are sharing intelligence and meeting regularly to exchange notes about this changing political landscape. Please email phoebe@unchecked.uk if you would like to be involved.