Perhaps the most important reasons those with pro-European and progressive outlooks should fear Reform UK Ltd are that, if it wins the next general election, two things are likely to happen.
Likely effects of a Reform win
Firstly, it will destroy the Conservative Party , ensuring that from then on, the principal representative of the right in British politics is no longer a party committed to the rule of law and constitutional government, but one not fully subscribed to the principles of liberal democracy. The change might be permanent, for far-right populists specialise in the constant stoking of anger and resentment. Consequently, although their policy offerings are frequently incoherent, experience elsewhere reveals that ‘poor performance in government does not lead to poor election results’.
Secondly, a progressive, prosperous and peaceful future depends on reversing Brexit and advancing European integration, since no such future is conceivable without political structures large and cross-national enough to regulate global markets and big tech. Yet if Reform UK were to win the next election with an overall majority, it would almost certainly frame the outcome as the third election in a row at which the electorate had confirmed the decision taken in the 2016 EU referendum.
What is to be done?
Part of the answer is about the message: attacking the credibility of Reform UK’s programme (particularly on migration); drawing attention to performance failures in the local councils it already controls, but also – crucially – offering a positive and hopeful alternative. With voters turning to Reform UK because they have lost faith in the main parties, they will almost certainly try and frame the next election as one pitting ‘the people against the establishment’. In that sense, the vote will be a re-run of 2016, when experience revealed that negative campaigning (so-called ‘project fear’ -remember that?) on its own is ineffective.
Another part of the answer is to encourage debate about how effectively to collaborate among supporters of mainstream parties opposed to Reform UK.. Of the 677 local-council seats Reform won in May, 221 were secured with a share of the vote smaller than the share of two or three of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens combined. Had these parties come together behind common candidates, it is possible, if not probable, that Reform’s gains would have been smaller by about a third.
Tactical voting is a gamble
Such collaboration is not guaranteed to work. There is no guarantee that those willing to vote Labour and those willing to vote, for example, Liberal Democrat would all be willing to vote for a single candidate supported by both parties. Such single, or joint, candidates would represent a different political offering to those represented by the parties when they ran separately at the last election.
Collaboration is difficult to organise. Local constituency associations select candidates, while the electoral system engenders a strong commitment to the idea that MPs and candidates are accountable to their local communities. Thus, on the rare occasions that national-level party organisations do attempt to interfere with constituency-level candidate selection processes, local activists often resist strongly. Moreover, the electoral system ensures that one or other of the two best-placed parties in each constituency – provided they are also the two best placed nationally – can reasonably expect to win an overall parliamentary majority. Therefore, the credibility of any nationwide arrangement would depend on the capacity of the coalesced parties to agree, in advance, a joint manifesto or programme for government. This is something that a large party, like Labour, can always be expected to resist if it believes it has an at-least-even chance of being able to win an overall majority single-handedly.
Brexit changed the political climate
However, in the increasingly fluid political and electoral environment that has emerged since Brexit, the difficulties may be lessening.
- Firstly, voter allegiances, as is well known, are much weaker and more volatile than they have been in the past.
- Secondly, small parties – Reform, obviously, but also the Greens – are achieving an unusual degree of media attention, threatening Labour from both right and left. Given this, it is interesting to speculate how Labour would react if the Conservatives and Reform concluded that it was in their mutual interests to reach some sort of pact in the run-up to the next general election. If, for, instance the two parties decided to collaborate in the 202 constituencies where in 2024 they split the vote and enabled a progressive candidate to win, then the stakes at the next election would rise dramatically.
- Thirdly, within the Labour party, campaigners supported by Compass have sought to bring about a rule change that would give local parties themselves the power to decide whether or not to field candidates.
- Finally, progressive parties might collaborate informally, as happened in 2024. ‘Through an obvious backroom deal between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, both parties stood full slates of candidates but targeted their resources only in seats they could win’. So, if an official national-level electoral coalition of all of the parties of the centre left is difficult to imagine, then unofficial, local-level understandings may not be impossible to envisage.
Tactical voting is becoming more accepted by voters
It seems likely that voters will be willing to collaborate through tactical voting, especially given the growing popularity of tactical-voting websites such as ‘Get Voting’, or ‘Stop the Tories’. The work of organisations such as Compass – whose raison d’être is to facilitate collaborative action in civil society in support of progressive change – is also important here. It seems reasonable to anticipate growing numbers willing to vote tactically to defeat the populist authoritarians given that tactical voting was already much in evidence in 2024,when it was used as a means of defeating Conservatives. Such action might also be encouraged by progressive candidates themselves — especially by front-runners.
These can be expected to try and encourage defections from other parties precisely by posing as the ones best placed to stop Reform. And if a hung parliament looked likely, with Labour coming under pressure from journalists keen to ask about the post-election coalition arrangements that the party might be willing to entertain, then this, too, would encourage tactical voting as it would entail an implicit framing of the contest as a ‘stop Farage’ election.
Those who have switched to Reform UK have done so more out of disappointment (in the case of former Labour voters) or tactics (in the case of former Conservatives) than ideology. They can, therefore, potentially be won back.
Right wing populism cannot solve society’s problems
Coming under increasing pressure as the next general election approaches to demonstrate credibility as a potential governing party, Reform UK may concomitantly lose its capacity to act as a party of protest and to increase its support by stoking anger. By then, the experience of Trump in office and of Reform’s local councillors may have consolidated the message ‘that right-wing populism cannot solve society’s problems’.
On the other hand, the scale of the task involved in resisting Reform is not to be underestimated, given its resources and given the power of its backers, power enhanced by the changing media landscape.
Given what Reform UK represents, the stakes involved in the next election currently appear higher than those involved in any other UK election in living memory. There is no time to lose.
