This article by Mike Morrissey first appeared in Unity, the weekly publication of the Irish Communist Party.
IN early November, Nigel Farage’s Reform party reached a key milestone – leading all other parties in150 polls in a row. Aditya Chakrabortty argues that if the Starmer government falls (The Guardian, 13/11/2025), a Reform government is ‘no longer a scare story…it’s the most likely prospect’.
In many respects, this is extraordinary: For a start, it looks like Reform’s key policies have been devised on the back of a Farage beer mat. The 2024 election manifesto promised to raise the income-tax threshold to £20,000, abolish inheritance tax on estates worth less than £2 million and reduce corporation tax from 25% to 15%. It claimed such benefits would be financed by a 5% cut in total government spending (around £240 billion, 2023/24). Analysis by The Economist (03/11/2025) suggested there would be a funding gap of at least £100 billion, making Liz Truss look financially prudent. Zia Yusuf dismissed the criticism, calling The Guardian the ‘ultimate contrarian indicator’. In early November, Farage rowed back on the manifesto promises claiming they were merely an aspiration. The Economist wryly observed ‘a leader cannot be accused of breaking promises…if they are openly regarded as a joke’. Little wonder some suggest that UK gilts (government bonds) have to offer high returns (3.7% of GDP goes servicing public debt), because the markets have already priced-in the probability of a future Reform government; It’s record in local government, where it has a majority in 10, has been equally worrying. In the flagship council, Kent, a video was widely circulated of the leader, Linden Kemkaran, telling her own councillors to ‘suck it up’ if they disagreed with her. Five councillors have been expelled from the party there. Warwickshire is led by a 19 year old, Geroge Finch. Private Eye (14-27/Nov.2025) has been tracking the number of Reform councillors who have been expelled, suspended or resigned since May – the total is nearly 40. The big promise was to cut local authority spending, particularly relating to net zero or DEI, for which a ‘DOGE’ unit was set up. Like in the US, the promise has not remotely matched the reality. It has faced multiple difficulties in accessing confidential information. Equally, almost three quarters of local government spending in England goes on statutory obligations like social care and child services, already suffering funding stress. Savings have already cut such services to the bone. Adjusting for inflation, local authority funding has fallen by around 10% since 2010. The Local Government Association estimates an £8.4 billion overall funding gap by 2028/29. Stuart Hoddinott (Local Government Association) concludes ‘They’ve found things that are just so tiny to be completely insignificant or are cutting programmes that might actually end up saving money in the longer run’. Tony Travers (LSE) argues ‘the truth is, the constraints of real government would be just as real if they got in at Westminster’ (Alex Forsyth, BBC News App, 05/11/2025).;
When it comes to the membership, it’s hard not to recall David Cameron’s depiction of UKIP members – ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists mostly’ – think of Lee Anderson or Sarah Pochin. It recently appointed an honorary president (Matthew Goodwin) of its new student organisation who has argued that UK-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds are not necessarily British; if elected, it would almost certainly import Trump-like policies – eviscerating the public sector while paramilitarised police snatched people off the streets. Yet, this is the party that most observers think could form the next government.
Context
The context is important. The UK never fully recovered from the 2008 financial crash; productivity collapsed, while austerity simultaneously failed to fix the economy and wrecked public services. Covid was a further systemic shock pressuring both services and public finances followed by energy inflation with the outbreak of European war. Then Trump arrived to start global trade wars and insist that allies spend 5% of GDP on defence, a posture supported by those peddling the fantasy that Russian forces are about to sweep across the continent.
In short, the UK is a state with significant patterns of inequality, an aging population and a stagnant economy buffeted by geopolitical uncertainty. Labour promised much in opposition, but delivered little in government, even allowing for its inheritance.
Similar patterns have appeared across Europe and in the US, exacerbated there by it’s decline as the global hegemon because of China’s rise. Unsurprisingly, people are grasping at simple solutions, convincingly spun by those pitching themselves as tribunes waging war against the elites, even when no simple solutions exist to complex problems.
To be fair, we have seen media hysteria around new political parties before. In 1981, the Social Democrats won three bye elections in a row and in some polls (with the Liberals) scored as high as 50%. There was much speculation that Roy Jenkins would be the next prime minister. However, by the 1983 election, it merely served to take almost four million votes off Labour to guarantee a major Conservative victory. It may be that Reform’s internal contradictions will become more obvious putting fracturing stresses on its electoral coalition. However, with Labour in almost permanent disarray, Starmer hardly in charge of No 10 never mind the country, the Greens and Liberal Democrats hoovering up Labour voters and an unreformed first-past-the-post election system, nothing can be guaranteed.
Who Votes Reform and Why?
In August and early September, Hope Not Hate (Who Supports Reform UK and Why) conducted the largest study of those intending to vote Reform. It found significant diversity amongst its likely voters. The largest group (Squeezed Stewards, 29%) were anxious, middle-income voters worried about immigration and the cost of living followed by the economically insecure and angry (Working Right, 26%) who feel betrayed and see immigrants as competitors for resources. Arguably, those closest to Farage’s politics consist of ‘Hardline Conservatives’ who are older, deeply opposed to worker rights and state spending (18%) while the rest are made up of ‘Reluctant Reformers’ (19%), disillusioned by all the main parties and ‘Contrarian Youth’ (9%) who are young, diverse and politically volatile (Gonzalas & Kirk, The Guardian, 13/11/2025). They are biased towards (but not exclusively to) older age groups, those without degree level qualifications, are income diverse and geographically spread.
In his article, Chakrabortty claims the evidence suggests not Farage’s strength but the weakness of the mainstream parties – reform voters are those whose ‘hopes for fulfilled lives…have run aground on the UK’s economic model’. However, it appears opposition to immigration remains the principal driver of Reform support. A study conducted by More in Common (From Protest to Power, September 2025) also found Reform voters a diverse group – largely associated with the expansion of its support base. Nevertheless: 61% of Reform supporters thought levels of immigration the most important issue facing Britain compared to 30% of the general population; 56% prioritised asylum seekers crossing the channel compared to 25%, and; 57% the cost of living compared to 65% (p.24). The report suggests that any party hoping to appeal to Reform voters would have to display ‘competence on immigration’ and the capacity to also address issues like the cost of living.
What Response?
The Home Secretary delivered the government’s response in the Commons on November 17th. It was a barnstorming performance that made much of her own experience of racist abuse, but essentially imported a range of authoritarian measures implemented in Denmark in 2020 to boost the Social Democrats’ electoral performance. It was presented as pragmatic, comprehensive and fair although its critics worry about unnecessary cruelty (particularly towards children) and about further legitimising Reform’s key election platform. Rafael Behr (The Guardian, 19/11/2025) is scathing: ‘no social policy so nauseating to the party faithful that it can’t be made grosser still with a relish of cruelty’.
For all kinds of reasons, suspicion and fear of outsiders has been historically longstanding even when migrants have been taking up difficult-to-fill labour market niches. This was the case in the 19th Century with the Irish, escaping the Famine, who paid sixpence to sit on the deck of a ship to Liverpool or Glasgow and ended up building railways and digging canals. Other migration waves, like Jews escaping the Tzarist pogroms at the start of the 20th Century, the Windrush generation, the East Asians taking unsociable shifts in Lancashire mills and those currently sustaining key parts of the NHS and social care (only 12% of immigrants are asylum-seekers) have had similar experiences. The lesson seems to be that stoking xenophobia is easy, containing it much more difficult.
Despite the reservations, the hope here is that the Labour government’s reforms do introduce a more rational system, do reduce the fury and then create the space to implement important social democratic measures. Although, with the bond markets running Britain, it’s hard to see the last. Gramsci’s ‘pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will’ comes to mind. Still, if the worst comes to the worst, those of us living in Northern Ireland do have an escape clause: it’s called a Border Poll.