As 2024 draws to a close, Nigel Farage's UK Reform Party is drawing money, both from billionaire donors and from gamblers betting that the populist party is about to turn British politics on its head.
At Ladbrokes now Farage As the 5/2 favorite to succeed Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister, ahead of Kemi Badenoch, Leader of the Conservative Opposition.
This week's real estate mogul is Nick Candy He turned his support From Conservative to Reform, he took on a fundraising role and pledged to bring “tens of millions” to the party.
Farage may have the momentum, but can he turn a fragile nascent party with just five MPs into a serious tool for power? Professor Sir John Curtis, an election expert, said: “Farage can express the disappointment of the British people better than any other political leader.” “But can he create a political party?”
As deputy leader Richard Tice points out, the reform movement has “reached its limit” in a war of attrition on the airwaves and social media. He added: “We need a match on the ground, and this requires money.”
Next year will be vital in building that ground operation – particularly with local elections in May – and trying to prove that Reform UK can become a viable national party and government in waiting before the next general election, which is expected to be held in 2029.
What works in Reform's favor is the fact that British voters are more volatile than at any time in modern history, with five UK-wide parties in the 2024 election: Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Reform and Greens.
Polls now show Labour Neck and neck With the Conservative Party, by about 26 percent, while the Reform percentage rose from about 14 percent at the time of the general elections, to 21 percent.
The threat facing Britain's two major parties is clear to see. For Badenoch, who is trying to rebuild from the ashes of electoral defeat in July, Farage poses a clear danger to the right. But Farage poses a threat to Labor too, especially in working-class heartlands.
“If you ask me where the future increase in votes will come from, I think Labor will come more from that position than from the Conservatives,” Farage said this month, adding that there had been a “realignment of how voters viewed the old left-right spectrum.” The party is in second place with 98 seats, of which the Labor Party won 89.
“Could the UK Reform Party win the next election? Yes, but that is unlikely,” said one Starmer ally. “We have to show we are succeeding. “There is no blueprint for how a center-left party can win over a right-wing populist party.”
To this day, Britain's majoritarian electoral system has prevented rebel parties from taking power by rewarding intense support rather than distributing votes widely.
One poll last week showed Reform ahead of Labor for the first time, with 24 per cent support, but even a 10-point shift towards Reform in each constituency would leave Farage out of power.
When the poll was run through a seat prediction model created by Ben Ansell, a professor at Oxford University, the party won just 99 seats, compared to 199 for Labor and 233 for the Conservatives.
Ansell believes there is less than a 10 per cent chance that Farage will win a majority in the next general election.
But for that to happen, he says, reform needs to do three things at once: First, target seats aggressively in the Danelaw areas – the area of northern and eastern England once colonized by Vikings – where they already have a strong base.
Second, it must dramatically increase its national vote share to win a narrow majority in a three-way margin; Third, the party needs to mobilize voters who do not usually go to the polls.
The conditions must be just right, with the Conservative Party still in tatters and Labour's votes severely in decline.
Tice claims that the ceiling for support for the Conservatives in the next general election will be 30 per cent, and that Labor could fall to between 20 and 25 per cent. He added: “You only need 33% of the vote to get a big majority, as Labor has shown us.”
“We are polling at a point where the majoritarian system stops holding the party back and starts helping it,” Zia Yusuf, the party’s president, told the Financial Times.
Since the summer, Youssef has been tasked with building an effective political party from scratch that can mobilize members to run, distribute leaflets, and collect data. The party now has 400 branches across the UK and more than 100,000 members.
Many analysts believe Farage's most likely path to Downing Street will be a hung parliament in which some form of agreement is reached between the Conservatives and Reform – although both parties completely reject the idea at the moment.
Money will not be a big problem for Reform now that he has the support of Candy, who has in the past given more than £300,000 to the Conservative Party. The two main parties typically spend between £30m and £50m a year outside elections, but senior reform figures believe they can fund their growth with £10m a year – even without Elon Musk's announced plan, which Donald Trump's adviser has since denied. To give the party $100 million.
If membership doubles over the next year to 200,000, the party could receive up to £5 million in annual membership fees, which would be supplemented by significant donations from wealthier individuals. Kandi pledged to donate a seven-figure sum to the party himself.
The reform received around £1.6 million during the six-week general election campaign, the bulk of which came from companies owned by Tice, Youssef and city financier Jeremy Hosking.
“We would be happy to support any major player of ours, whether it's Elon Musk or anyone else,” Tice said, adding that Musk has serious business in the UK which means he “can easily donate here.” Candy claimed he exchanged messages with Musk on Tuesday after his appointment was announced.
Tice charted his party's path to power. He added that this would include fielding candidates for 90% of the 2,240 seats that will be contested in local elections across England next year, with the hope of winning between 200 and 300 seats, and at least one mayor.
Dame Andrea Jenkins, a former Tory minister, hopes to become the elected Mayor of Lincolnshire and the Reform Party's most important executive.
Next, the party hopes to make huge inroads in Wales – where support has increased significantly – at the next SEND election in 2026. “It's not impossible that we can win in Wales,” Tice said.
The party has been boosted in recent weeks by high-profile defections from the Conservative Party, including Candy, Jenkins, Tory founder Tim Montgomery and Rael Braverman, the husband of former Home Secretary and Tory MP Suella Braverman.
Most of these votes were fringe from the hard right of the Conservative Party, but there is growing concern among Conservatives that the trickle could turn into a deluge.
David Campbell-Bannerman, a prominent Tory campaigner and head of the Conservative Democratic Organisation, who used to be deputy leader of UKIP, said: “Reform UK is rapidly emerging as another Conservative party – one that many Tories see as being closer to the Conservative Party.” . “Something real.”
The bulk of support for reform still comes from former governors, who many claim are placing a hard cap on growth prospects.
A recent analysis by academics at Royal Holloway, University of London, found that “one of the striking features of reform voting in 2024 is Similarity to the UKIP vote in the 2015 electionAlthough he noted there was some evidence that the party had “deepened its base in those areas where UKIP was most popular”.
Tice believes Labour's weakness is its zero-sum politics, and attacking the government on environmental issues would allow Reform to expand its support beyond the anti-immigration base it has nurtured over the past decade.
Here he believes Farage's friendship with Trump and Musk will be of greater value to the party, helping to amplify and legitimize Reform's message that there is an anti-environmental path to prosperity.
On the other hand, Farage believes that he can expand his electoral coalition by attracting young people, just as Trump did in the United States.
“The very exciting thing we have to do is turn that enthusiasm into people actually registering and getting out and voting,” Farage said this month of his TikTok following and support among young people.
Chris Hopkins, a pollster at Savanta, is skeptical that under-25s can move the dial in any UK election, given they make up less than 5 per cent of the electorate. He argues that reform at the moment is “fishing in the same pond as the Tories, so it is difficult to see how they can win power mathematically”.
“But if there's anyone who can do it, it's Nigel Farage.”
Visualizations and Mapping by Jonathan Vincent
