After various incarnations as UKIP and the Brexit Party, Reform UK has become a major force in British politics. The Reform Party is the political vehicle of Nigel Farage, a longstanding political operator on the right of British politics who, although he has only just entered Parliament, has already exercised a huge influence on British politics. Through his then vehicle UKIP gaining the most seats in the European Parliament elections of any British party in 2014, he scared David Cameron into calling a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU in 2016, resulting in our exit in a ‘hard Brexit’ in 2021. At this point it seemed as if he was ready to quit British politics having apparently achieved a major all ambition, but this turned out not to be the case.  Reform UK stood candidates in the 2019 general election, but stood down many of them, to allow Brexit inclined Tory candidates a clearer run and making possible a Brexit nearer to Farage’s ambition in 2020, although he expressed discontent about the inadequacy of the rupture with Europe. Making clever use of disillusion with Brexit, Reform UK had a considerable popular success in the 2024 general election, polling over 4 million votes, making it the third largest party in terms of votes, ahead of the Liberal Democrats, although only gaining 5 seats.

It is obvious that much of Reform’s success is due to the personality and ability of Farage, but we also need to ask what policies he espouses that make him and his party so popular. Representing Reform as an anti-immigration party puts them at the cutting edge of popular resentment against high net immigration. However, Reform is only against ‘non-essential’ immigration, which begs the question as to what immigration is actually essential given that millions of Britons of working age are economically inactive. Didier Leschi, the director of the French office on Immigration and Integration said, putting his finger on the matter: “The issue for England is to have an internal system that appears to be an El Dorado – and probably wrongly so – since it’s a country where you can work very easily without having a residence permit.” In other words, a liberal and unregulated labour market is a powerful pull factor for economic migrants. No British party, including Reform, proposes to regulate the British labour market more thoroughly despite the fact that it bears a huge responsibility for attracting large numbers of economic migrants who are prepared to do low paid, low skilled and dangerous jobs that Britons do not wish to do.  Farage, to our knowledge, has never been challenged on this issue. The truth is that Farage and his party are economic liberals, deeply committed to the low wage, low skill, ‘flexible’ labour market beloved of British capitalism. The last thing that they wish to do is to interfere with the privilege of employers to employ whom they want, very often below the minimum wage on poor conditions with minimal training. The stirring up of resentment against immigration is therefore largely phony, since Reform are completely unwilling to will the means to achieve their stated ends. However, no other party can call them out on this since they are all part of the same conspiracy to maintain a lax labour market. Should we bother about this? We are told that growth is not possible without immigration and that migrants do not take jobs away from the indigenous population. However, large-scale immigration does a number of things that should concern workers. First, casual employment conditions such as zero hour contracts, bogus self-employment and lack of training opportunities degrade the labour market for everyone else, including second and third generation immigrants, making the job of developing a high-skill, high-wage economy even more difficult. We should add that many economic migrants are highly skilled, some with qualifications and some not, thus giving British employers the opportunity to employ a skilled workforce in some areas without having to train their workers, thus degrading the British vocational education system even further. Farage is perfectly ok with this just like every other member of the British political establishment.

We have established that Reform UK is a party of economic liberalism and its rhetorical opposition to large-scale immigration is hypocritical and phony. Where do they stand on other issues? Clearly they attract a lot of voters who would otherwise vote Conservative and this is not surprising since they are economic liberals and British nationalists. They are unenthusiastic about current fads such as the ‘green transition’ and identity politics (apart from British identity politics) and this reinforces their right-wing credentials. Despite being liberals and globalists they have shrewdly spotted the changing climate of opinion against globalism in the US and have shown a preference for spheres of interest foreign policy rather than the global imposition of liberal totalitarianism beloved of the Democrats in the US, the EU and the British party establishments. This puts them on the right side of the fence in the re-orientation of American foreign policy They also show some hostility to the exploitation of public utilities through control by multinational companies, wishing to bring utilities and critical national infrastructure under 50% public ownership with the other 50% owned by pension funds. Many working class Brits will find this an attractive proposition, although Reform’s ambiguous views on the future of the NHS will cause concern if they are subject to detailed scrutiny. To sum up, although Reform UK is a right-wing liberal party, its nationalism and preparedness to stick up for bringing some utilities under a form of collective ownership will have an appeal to many who would not otherwise vote for a right-wing party.

The Tories suffered a devastating loss in the 2024 general election. They lost votes to both right and left and seem to find themselves incapable of remaining the ‘broad church’ that they once were. Emotionally the membership find themselves close to the sentiments espoused by Reform and they have chosen a leader who at times appears like a pale imitation of Farage. Badenoch’s inability to make an impact either in parliament or with the electorate has alarmed many Tories and this, together with the pressure coming from Reform, has made them wonder how to resolve their problem. One possibility which cannot be excluded is the following. The Tories can no longer attract the affluent liberals who live in suburban and rural seats and they have little stomach for doing so. However, they very much see themselves as competing for votes with Reform. They would not wish to have an electoral pact with Reform as this would end their status as a national party. On the other hand, they have to deal with the existential threat posed by Farage’s party. Reform, because of its flimsy policy construction, would probably fade away without Farage. It is very difficult to run a mass political party, particularly one that has a history of attracting figures who have no appeal to the British public and Reform without Farage would probably disintegrate within a few years. However, could Farage be lured into becoming leader of the Tories, many of their problems would be solved. The threat on the right would be largely removed, the Tories would gain an influx of new members and they would gain a popular and congenial leader. Farage is, at heart, a Tory. Why not make him Tory leader?