‘While voters are disenchanted with Labour, they’re not necessarily willing to go back to Tories’

‘While voters are disenchanted with Labour, they’re not necessarily willing to go back to Tories’

And for more on these local elections in England, we can welcome Ben Williams, who’s a lecturer in politics at Manchester Metropolitan University. Good morning, Ben, and thank you for joining us. Uh Nigel Faraj’s Reform UK party is heading the polls by a bit of a distance going into these elections. Might we see them make an electoral breakthrough? Yeah, I think it is possible. Um the polls at the moment in the UK are showing a very tight spread of support and Reform UK have come from effectively a very low base and are competing at the moment with the two established parties and in fact a a number of polls in the last few weeks have put Reform UK actually ahead of Labor and Conservatives. So it is possible that they could make a breakthrough but it’s still quite unpredictable at the moment and today will show us a lot more uh when we see the results later on. And if reform were to gain control of any of the 24 local authorities that are up for grabs, it would put them in a position of holding office for the first time. Uh in your opinion, is Reform UK ready for this? Um that is a very good question and I suppose we don’t really know the answer to that because um there is of course Nigel Farage who’s at the head of Reform UK and he’s a fairly experienced politician. He’s been an MEP and he’s been around for some time but there are quite a lot of newer figures inexperienced figures who have not got that much political experience. So that is I suppose a disadvantage in some ways. Um however he has managed to kind of bring over with him recently some defectors. So there are quite a number of prominent conservative defectors for example standing for some of the key positions. So I suppose with some more experienced figures on board who are elected who’ve got experience from other parties that might hold them in goodstead. But as I say, it’s something of a leap in the dark because they are such a new party. Uh and people really don’t know what’s going to happen, I suppose, until they get into power in certain councils to see what they can do. Now, uh there have been concerns about large foreign donations being made to reform, circumventing fairly lacks uh election lacks regulations on party funding in the UK. Uh, could this be decisive for Faraj’s party either today or in the future? Well, yeah. I mean, obviously any new party starting out in politics in in most countries is is going to have a disadvantage to the established parties because they won’t have the funding that the established parties have, you know, and Labor and Conservative in the UK have a kind of solid historical stream of donorship. Um so of course an a party like reform will need money to compete. Um now there has been talk of foreign donations. I know Elon Musk went on Twitter earlier this year to indicate he might be willing to do so and make some foreign donations. The slight problem is there are limitations on foreign donations in UK politics uh that have been in place for some time and there is talk of tightening it up. So uh it could be that foreign donations actually are restricted anyway and that you know essentially reform UK will have to get donors of their own. Now there have already been some recent examples of for example former conservative donors moving over to Reform UK and giving them money domestically. So it could be that they don’t need foreign donors in the same context and they can rely on some quite wealthy people in Britain to support them as with is the case with the other parties. Now Labor are going to take a bit of a hit in these polls um as is often the case with incumbent governments but the big loser is likely to be the tries who hold the most seats nationwide in local authorities. Have reforms stolen the to the Tories thunder? Well, in many ways the answer to that is yes because you do normally expect that when the main uh incumbent party, which is which of course is Labour since last summer, when they become unpopular, which they have done very quickly due to various factors, it is normally the main opposition party that benefits. But the polls at the moment are actually putting the conservatives consistently in third place. Uh and as I say, it is reform who look likely to benefit and to some extent some of the smaller parties further down uh the list. So yeah, it it is a problem for the conservatives and I think you know one of the factors is they were in power for 14 years up until 2024 and there was a general consensus that they you know it ended very badly and with a lot of problems and I think people do have a memory of that and while they’re disenchanted with labor they’re not necessarily willing to go back to the conservatives given it was only last year that the conservatives were kicked out of office and that’s where reform have stepped in to take advantage message. Now, both Labor and the Tories have been making overtures to voters that might be tempted by reform by taking a rightward attack on some policies such as uh migration and transgender rights. Is British electoral politics now increasingly resembling three dogs running after the same bowl? Well, yeah. I mean, that’s a that’s a good way of putting it. And in in effect, Britain has for some time now been moving in the direction of what you might say is multi-party politics. Traditionally, it has been two parties that have been established and have alternated in power. But the signs in recent years have been that that is weakening. I mean, we can go back to 2010 when actually there was a coalition with the Conservatives and the the minority liberal democrat party who were like a third party at the time. So there is some signs definitely over the last two decades that smaller parties are making a breakthrough and this manifestation of reform is just the latest example of that. So yeah we are in interesting times. The polling is showing that the three parties conservative labor and reform are all polling anything between 20 and 25 26%. So, we’re in a multi-party era in Britain, which is something we’re not used to, something far more common in parts of Europe, and it’s something that’s going to be interesting to see how it develops in the in the months and years ahead. Thank you very much for that, Ben Williams, a lecturer in politics at Manchester Metropolitan University. Thank you. No.

As far-right parties surge in polls across Europe, analysts warn that internal divisions could pose serious challenges if they gain power. In the UK, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage continues to ride the momentum of Brexit, with polls showing his party rivaling or surpassing Labour. For deeper insight into these dynamics, Oliver Farry welcomes Dr. Ben Williams, Lecturer at the University of Manchester Metropolitan University’s School of Social Sciences.
#FarRight #England #ReformUK

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