The Rise and Rise of the Reform UK Party

by Louise Mclean

When Rishi Sunak announced on 22nd May 2024 that there would be a General Election being held on 4th July 2024, it came as a surprise to everybody! No one was prepared, least of all the main political parties, except perhaps the Labour Party, who were taking their orders from the World Economic Forum, knew they were on course to win it. 

Reform UK had been steadily building and creating a solid political party since it was first registered in November 2018 by the party leader of the Brexit Party, Nigel Farage, which it replaced, taking the logo and turquoise blue colour of that party with it. 

Everyone had thought that a general election would be likely to be held in the autumn, giving the smaller parties time to get themselves ready. For Reform UK, it meant a mad dash to get everything into place. They had already chosen nearly all the 650 candidates for all UK constituencies but nevertheless there remained a great deal to be done. At the time Richard Tice was party leader. 

On 3rd June 2024, Nigel Farage suddenly decided that he would stand to win a seat in the election in the Essex seaside constituency of Clacton. He also took over the party leadership from Tice. He held quite a few rallies in Clacton which were very popular. People were thrilled when they heard he was going to stand as an MP. 

Richard Tice stood for Boston and Skegness and Ben Habib for Wellingborough and Rushden. Ben had fought to stop Northern Ireland staying in the European Union and unfortunately did not win the seat, which was a great pity as he is a very decent person. Many of these people had previously been Brexit Party MEPs in May 2019 when nearly 30 of them were elected to go into the European Parliament because we hadn't yet left the EU. 

Reform held a huge rally of 5,000 people at the NEC in Birmingham, which was a huge success. The whole campaign took off like a rocket! The Establishment were dismayed as they did not like any challenges to their Uniparty of Conservatives and Labour. 

Reform decided not to have a Manifesto, like other political parties but instead a 'Contract with the People' which listed a huge number of extremely popular policies, which can be found on their website, the No.1 being to stop uncontrolled immigration.  

It was testimony to how fed up the British people were with the millions coming in to Britain that Reform UK came second in 98 constituencies in the country! Though only 5 people were elected as MPs: Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, Rupert Lowe, Lee Anderson and James McMurdock. 

Lee Anderson had previously been elected a Conservative MP for Ashfield in the 2019 General Election when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister. In March 2024 he was kicked out, when he was Deputy Chairman of the party, for making a comment about Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, saying Islamists had got control of Khan and got control of London. He refused to apologise. After that within weeks he joined Reform UK as he found their goals and values to be similar to his own. 

Lee was hugely popular with the country, as he is a man of integrity and as far as I can see, so are all five of the Reform MPs. Rupert Lowe, MP for Great Yarmouth is already donating all of his MP salary to charities and good causes in his constituency! This is what we want for Britain. Sensible policies and MPs who cannot be bought, blackmailed or bribed. 

In the end of course Labour did win the election by a huge majority, though its popularity is dropping fast after only just over 5 weeks of its 5 year term! As at yesterday's date Labour was on 33%, Reform UK on 21%, Conservatives on 20%, so Reform has already surpassed the Conservatives. 

The reason the Conservatives did so badly in the general election is that they had been in power for 14 years since 2010, had 5 different Prime Ministers (David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss briefly and Rishi Sunak) and far from reducing immigration as promised in 4 manifestos, they had massively increased it! 

In the 2024 general election, Labour added 211 seats for a total of 412 MPs, the Conservatives lost 121 seats and now have a total of 251 MPs. The unfair system of 'first past the post voting' meant that the Liberal Democrats got 76 seats with about the same number of votes as Reform who only got 5 seats!

 

Currently, party leader Nigel Farage wants to create a nationwide party infrastructure and get lots of Reform candidates on the Councils in 2025. His aim is for Reform to win the next General Election in 2029! 

Incidentally, as this is a Brexit blog, I should add that Sir Kier Starmer, our new Prime Minister, head of the Labour Party, is very much a Remainer, i.e. he would like Britain to be back in the European Union. Unfortunately as I wrote about last year, virtually all the EU legislation in the UK Parliament has not been repealed, so it would be fairly easy to slot us back in again. Hopefully this will not happen but nevertheless all the benefits and opportunities of Brexit Britain have not been utilised and so far we have had BRINO (Brexit in name only!)