\u201cWe now have a new fuel in our rocket engine\ufeff: GIRL POWER,\u201d the Reform UK MP James McMurdock posted on X as the election results trickled through \ufeff Friday morning.<\/p>\n
Nigel Farage\u2019s party has its first female MP, Sarah Pochin, who won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election\ufeff, and the former Conservative minister Andrea Jenkyns was \ufeffelected Greater Lincolnshire mayor\ufeff as the \u201cbad boys of Brexit\u201d turned into a serious electoral force. Reform is no longer the party of old white men.<\/p>\n
This demographic breakthrough suggests that last week\u2019s\ufeff results may represent a permanent shift in the political landscape that requires a different response from Labour and the\ufeff Tories.<\/p>\n
For years, Farage\u2019s support base has been heavily male, Brexit\ufeff supporting, hostile to immigration, sceptical about tackling climate change and ferociously \u201canti-woke\u201d. The party\u2019s new voters are more female, less ideological and worried about energy bills rather than Europe.<\/p>\n
Since the \ufeffgeneral election, support for Reform has almost doubled among \ufeffgen X women\ufeff aged \ufeff45 \ufeffto 60. Last July, 16% of this group backed Farage\ufeff \u2013 now it is almost a third, according to analysis by the pollsters More in Common. Reform is the most popular choice for \ufeffgen X women. Across all age groups, the proportion of female voters who support Farage\u2019s party has gone up nine points.<\/p>\n
Attention has focused on the young men turning to the right, attracted by Farage\u2019s laddish TikTok videos, but there has been an equally dramatic shift among middle-aged female voters. In Runcorn, Pochin, who is a magistrate, built her campaign around \u201cfamily, community and country\u201d\ufeff \u2013 a message deliberately designed to appeal to women like her.<\/p>\n
These new Reform supporters are culturally and politically different \ufefffrom the old ones, polling and focus groups have shown\ufeff. They agree with the traditional Faragistes that \u201cBritain\u2019s best years are behind us\u201d but they are more likely to say that the advancement of women in public life has been good for society and they are less likely to think \ufeffthe \ufeffnet \ufeffzero target is a bad policy.<\/p>\n
Instead of obsessing about the European Court of Human Rights, they care about the NHS. Luke Tryl, the UK director of More in Common, says Reform\u2019s supporters now look \u201cless like an ideologically cohesive block\ufeff and more like a disillusioned broad church\u201d.<\/p>\n
Farage is benefiting from a grand coalition of the thoroughly pissed\ufeff off.<\/p>\n
Ann Widdecombe, the former Tory minister and Reform\u2019s justice spokesperson, says the shift was evident on the campaign trail. \u201cThe image we have is of a certain type of male supporting us, but it doesn\u2019t matter who you talk to \u2013 whether it\u2019s the working man, the stay\ufeff-at\ufeff-home wife or the young professional\ufeff: they can\u2019t get a doctor\u2019s appointment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are cheesed off with the Conservative party for leaving behind an unholy mess. They voted Labour in the hope they would be the champion of public services, but if anything, things have got worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Farage \u201crip tide\u201d is already dragging Labour and the Conservatives to the right as Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch compete to talk tough on immigration, welfare and crime.<\/p>\n
\u2018Cheesed off with the Tories, they voted Labour, but things have got\u00a0worse\u2019<\/p>\n
Ann Widdecombe,\u00a0Reform justice spokesperson<\/p>\n
But this misunderstands the changing identity and motivation of those switching to Reform, say analysts. The elections this week were far more a rejection of the party duopoly that has dominated \ufeffin Westminster for decades than they were an endorsement of any policies promoted by Farage. An Opinium poll for The Observer found that Reform has net negative ratings on almost all issues\ufeff apart from immigration. \ufeffIts success derives from the electorate\u2019s loss of trust in Labour and the Conservatives.<\/p>\n
As the old class-based allegiances and tribal loyalties evaporate, the era of two\ufeff-party politics appears to be over. According to \ufeffa BBC projection, on the basis of last week\u2019s results, Labour and the \ufeffTories would between them have only 35% of the vote in a general election. For the first time the Liberal Democrats beat both the Conservatives and Labour in a round of local elections\ufeff and now control more councils than the Tories. The Greens and Gaza independents are snapping at Labour\u2019s heels.<\/p>\n
Nicky Morgan, the former \ufeffTory cabinet minister, insists it would be foolish for Badenoch to try and head off the Reform threat by aping Farage. \u201cIf you are very shrill on issues like immigration, you put off more people than you gain,\u201d she says. \u201cNigel Farage has been very clear he wants the destruction of the Conservative party\ufeff. Anyone who says we need some sort of deal with Reform is making it easier for him to achieve that aim.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Starmer the danger of pandering to a right\ufeffwing agenda is just as great. Since the election, the party has lost more than three times as many voters to the Lib Dems as to Reform. The defection of female \ufeffgen X voters to Farage\u2019s party is mirrored by a drift to the Greens among \ufeff\ufeffgen Z women \ufeffaged \ufeff18 \ufeffto 28\ufeff.<\/p>\n
Downing Street has identified a group of target voters who have switched from Labour to other parties. Those who have gone to the centrist pro-European Lib Dems are virtually indistinguishable from those who \ufeffmoved to the right\ufeffwing Eurosceptic Reform. These \u201cVenn diagram voters\u201d have more in common with each other than they do with \ufefftraditional voters in their new political homes on left and right.<\/p>\n
All are most concerned about the cost of living and the NHS. To the extent they care about immigration, it is because they feel that successive governments have lost control, rather than because they are hostile to foreigners. \u201cIf you get a room full of gettable Labour voters and ask them about their top two or three issues, you wouldn\u2019t be able to distinguish between those who have switched to Reform and those who have gone to the Lib Dems,\u201d one strategist says.<\/p>\n
With voters impatient for results, the worst thing for all parties would be to talk tough on immigration but not deliver. Labour MPs say the issue that came up the most on the doorstep in the run\ufeff-up to last week\u2019s elections was the cut in the winter fuel allowance. That was, says one senior figure, the government\u2019s \u201coriginal sin\u201d.<\/p>\n
David Blunkett, the former Labour \ufeffcabinet minister, believes the prime minister urgently needs a new approach. \u201cLabour is doing extremely well on international policy, but nobody votes on foreign affairs,\u201d he says. \u201cThe Treasury has bound Labour in on monetarist policy, but the bond markets don\u2019t have a vote. The challenge is more than just communication. It is about visible delivery where each announcement is related to the locality in which people live. You\u2019re building more houses, but what does that mean here? Persuade me that \ufeffnet \ufeffzero is not going to damage either the family income or access to alternatives to electricity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having taken control of 10 local authorities and won two mayoralties, Farage and his party are for the first time the incumbents rather than insurgents. Analysis by Labour Together found Reform now controls \u00a310.1bn of public money. Jonathan Ashworth, the\ufeff CEO, says: \u201cThere is now no hiding place for Nigel Farage.\u201d The risk for Labour though is that Reform will claim credit for local successes and blame central government for any problems, as the Scottish National Party has done north of the border.<\/p>\n
Claire Ainsley, Starmer\u2019s former head of policy, who is directing a project on renewal of the centre\ufeff left for the US-based Public Policy Institute, says: \u201cThe political choice for Labour is less about leaning right vs left\ufeff and more about how to demonstrate the change people voted for. That has to include gripping immigration, but i\ufeffn the end it comes down to making people feel better off\ufeff and improving people\u2019s experience of public services.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senior Labour figures recently met one of the few people \ufeffworldwide who has bucked the populist trend. Martin Engell-Rossen, the former chief of staff to the Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen, helped the centre-left Social Democrats to win and then retain power. \ufeffHis advice was not to emulate Farage but \ufefffocus on reforms that will benefit ordinary people who play by the rules. In Denmark he installed a white board which maps out the government\u2019s goals, with red green and amber magnets keeping track of how well the Social Democrats were performing against their core policies. Government, he warned, can become a conspiracy of distractions and it is essential to keep driving forward to make a practical difference in voters\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n
Starmer won last year\u2019s general election with a one-word slogan\ufeff: \u201c\ufeffChange\u201d. People will keep voting for change until they believe they have got it. \u201cThe overwhelming mood in the country is one of disillusionment with politics,\u201d one \ufeffcabinet minister says. \u201cI\u2019m not sure we\u2019re doing enough to counter that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe now have a new fuel in our rocket engine\ufeff: GIRL POWER,\u201d the Reform UK MP James McMurdock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-73453","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114448773089696664","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}