Reform UK favourites to win next election?

Ambitious1999

It’s quite unlikely that labour will win the election in 5 years time with the cuts to winter fuel allowance and all the boats coming. Reform is growing rapidly if Trump wins the next election Reform UK will receive generous funding from the US that could make them the most powerful party in Britain. If they don’t win on their own then a coalition with the tories is quite possible. Anyone agree?

(edited 1 week ago)

Reply 1

Admit-One

Universities Forum Helper

21

More chance of me being PM.

Reply 2

hotpud

18

Original post by Ambitious1999

It’s quite unlikely that labour will in 5 years time with the cuts to winter fuel allowance and all the boats coming. Reform is growing rapidly if Trump wins the next election Reform UK will receive generous funding from the US that could make them the most powerful party in Britain. If they don’t win on their own then a coalition with the tories is quite possible. Anyone agree?

The UK is a centre-ist country despite what anyone might say. John Major, Tony Blair, David Cameron and now Kier Starmer all won on the centre ground. The press love right (Truss and Farage) and left (Corbyn and Mick Lynch) because they say outspoken things that make for great news stories. But you need to realise that the Greens (left) and Reform (right) are both polling around 7% of the vote. They are marginal outliers. If the Tories lurch to the right under someone like Badenoch, the Tories will continue to become even more marginal amongst an increasingly aging base, leaving only Labour and the Lib Dems as viable centrist parties.

Reply 3

SHallowvale

15

Reform currently have a ceiling of about 20% of the national vote (as per opinion polls), so until they can break that ceiling it would be extremely unlikely for them to win any upcoming general election.

Reply 4

Rakas21

21

Original post by Ambitious1999

It’s quite unlikely that labour will in 5 years time with the cuts to winter fuel allowance and all the boats coming. Reform is growing rapidly if Trump wins the next election Reform UK will receive generous funding from the US that could make them the most powerful party in Britain. If they don’t win on their own then a coalition with the tories is quite possible. Anyone agree?

I tend to doubt it.

When you look at Farage what you see is that he has a loyal following who have switched from Ukip to Tory to Reform but in terms of raw votes, Farage actually less in 2024 than he did in the European 2019 elections.

This to me strongly suggests that there's a cap to his support and that he probably peaked in the 2013-2019 period.

Ultimately although as a newer brand there's a little less dependency on solely Tory votes, the rise of Reform to win an election probably does require them to repeat the feat that Labour managed across the 1922-1924 period and as yet that seems unlikely. The Tory vote post election has not collapsed (i.e. Reform don't have much momentum from Tory votes currently, it's more labour voters looking to protest) and with new leadership and perhaps higher turnout, it's likely there'll be something of a recovery.

I personally think we should look at 2015 as a good analogue for the next election. There's a large Lab-Lib-Green block (52.6%) with a large Commons majority (490 ish) which is analogous to the Con-Lib block in the 2010-2015 parliament (59%, 370 ish). In the 2015 election we saw the size of the block shrink (45%) but the Tories gained vote share and thus held their seats despite a small swing to Labour. Likewise, I can see Labour doing about as well as 2024 as the votes they lose from those who gave them a chance are subsidized by 2024 green or Lib anti Tory/Reform votes. So 2015 ended up about 37-31-13-8-3 which I can see being close to the mark again (bit less for Reform and Green, bit more for Libs) and a small majority for Labour.

On Farage's potential, if he gets past 5.2m votes (2019 Brx Party total) i'll believe the threat should be taken more seriously but I doubt it.

(edited 1 week ago)

Reply 5

anarchism101

18

Original post by Ambitious1999

It’s quite unlikely that labour will win the election in 5 years time with the cuts to winter fuel allowance and all the boats coming. Reform is growing rapidly if Trump wins the next election Reform UK will receive generous funding from the US that could make them the most powerful party in Britain. If they don’t win on their own then a coalition with the tories is quite possible. Anyone agree?

Whether Labour can win the next election is really still too early to say, I think the winter fuel cut is a bad decision, but also it makes sense to make your unpopular decisions right at the start of your term. As for the whole "stop the boats" discourse, the Tories just had their worst defeat ever off the back of near-constantly ranting on about it.

UK political parties can only legally accept donations from British citizens or UK-based companies/organisations. So no, Trump won't be giving them cash, even ignoring all the American barriers to that. Besides, Reform already have plenty of wealthy donors already, money isn't a huge problem for them.

And no, a Tory-Reform coalition looks very unlikely, as they're both (at least for the moment) largely targeting the same voter bases.

Reform UK favourites to win next election?

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