May 1st is International Labour Day, but Nigel Farage hopes that, this year, it is also Reform UK’s day – local elections are due in England and his insurgent right-wing party could be the big winner. He insists May 1st has been his “whole focus” since Reform’s general election breakthrough last July.
“I wouldn’t say it is make or break, but [May 1st] is a big moment for us,” a characteristically exuberant Farage told a small gathering of political journalists at a private lunch in Westminster last week. “We have to prove that our rise in the opinion polls is actually real, out there on the ground.”
Reform eyes sweeping gains from beaten-down Tories in next month’s council votes. With a byelection also happening in the Labour heartland of Runcorn and Helsby in Cheshire, northwest England, Farage’s party goes toe to toe with prime minister Keir Starmer’s party in a crucial contest. Runcorn will prove whether Reform can hoover up red Labour votes as well as Tory blues.
“We will run them close,” said Farage of the battle with Labour in Runcorn, as he swirled his glass in the Churchill Room beneath the House of Commons. “Things will look different come May 2nd.”
It hasn’t been the smoothest five weeks or so for Reform, which had seemed on an inexorable growth path since Starmer’s Labour ousted the Tories from power in a landslide victory last July.
First, Farage’s popularity took a hit last month after his friend, US president Donald Trump, was seen as having bullied Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the White House. Britain is the most pro-Ukrainian nation in western Europe, and Starmer got to play statesman as Zelenskiy’s diplomatic interlocutor with Trump, while also portraying Reform’s leader as soft on Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Secondly, Farage also had a spectacular public falling-out with one of the five MPs elected for Reform in July. Rupert Lowe, who has a devoted online fan base of his own, criticised Farage’s leadership, dismissing Reform as “a protest party led by the Messiah”. He now sits as an independent.
Farage tried to play down the impact of the Lowe row on Reform’s electoral chances. “I can tell you that up in Doncaster [one of the boroughs voting on May 1st], they’ve never bloody heard of him.”
About 1,600 seats in 25 of England’s local authorities are up for grabs in next month’s vote. Many are in traditional Tory areas and the Conservative Party expects to lose control of almost all of the 16 councils it currently leads from among the 25 that are voting. If Reform runs the Tories close in the race to win the most seats, it bolsters Farage’s once far-fetched narrative that he can win power.
There are also six mayoral elections on May 1st. Reform’s big hope is high-profile former Tory MP and GB News presenter Andrea Jenkyns, who defected to run in Greater Lincolnshire. Then there is the Runcorn Westminster byelection. Reform is the bookies’ favourite to win. But as Farage conceded at last week’s lunch, Runcorn remains the 16th safest Labour seat in Britain. It looks too close to call.
Despite Reform’s speed wobbles of recent weeks, opinion polls give succour to Farage’s party. It is well ahead of the Tories and neck-and-neck with Labour in most polls, and even marginally on top in a few. Last July, Reform won just more than 14 per cent of the vote. Now most surveys have it in the mid-20s. Reform says it has also grown from 35,000 members last July to 220,000. If that claim is true, it is almost twice the size of the Conservatives, having built 400 local branches from a standing start.
“We are well ahead of the Conservatives in Wales, Scotland, the midlands and the north [of England],” said Farage. “At the moment, they only lead us in London, the southeast and bits of the southwest. Their days are numbered. I think they’re done. After May 1st, they will fall off a cliff.”
Their leader’s ebullience was shared among the hordes of Reform members who descended on Birmingham last week, the day after Farage’s Westminster lunch, for the official launch of the party’s local elections campaign. Farage billed it as Reform’s biggest ever rally, with 10,000 tickets sold for the Friday night jamboree at the Utilita venue. The crowd was mostly white, a mix of young and old.
As The Irish Times arrived, a modest-sized band of anti-Brexit protesters had gathered outside the city centre venue. “Look at them,” said a Reform supporter who sidled up to chat. “They’re vermin.”
Reform’s big guns showed up in Birmingham. Farage was joined on the podium by senior figures such as Jenkyns and also Lee Anderson, the MP and former Tory deputy chairman who defected before last July’s election. Anderson, a former coal miner from near Nottingham, whipped up the overwhelmingly white crowd with quips about the “smell” from the protesters outside.
Arron Banks, the millionaire businessman infamous in Britain as one of the “bad boys of Brexit”, was also revealed at the event as Reform’s candidate for mayor of West England – broadly a Bristol post. Speaking to The Irish Times beforehand, a tanned Banks said he had just returned for the event after “four months drinking wine in South Africa”.
At the packed bars on the venue’s concourse, Reform supporters, many swathed in the party’s turquoise colour, appeared to have swallowed whole Farage’s line that they could soon take power. Did they really believe he could become prime minister?
“I hope he does,” said one supporter, a former Liberal Democrat councillor from Harrow. He alluded to Farage’s recent row with Lowe: “Everybody wants to be the kingpin. But there can only be one.”
The man gave his name as Herbert Crossman – “but only sometimes,” he said, playing on his surname. Crossman, a political journeyman who once dangled himself upside down for two hours from a crane outside the Palace of Westminster, brandished home-made posters including one illustrating how mainstream politicians had buried their heads in the sand. Another poster suggested Britain was shackled with a ball and chain – “No Hope, Less Hope, Any Hope”.
“I’ve still got the actual ball and chain at home,” said Crossman, nodding towards the image.
He said the posters were his way of “getting the truth out”. He had no faith in government politicians such as the Labour climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, whom Crossman said would ruin the British tradition of fish and chips by, he alleged, forcing fast food shops to use electric fryers in pursuit of climate net-zero policies. “These people are out of touch with reality,” he said.
Another man, who gave his name as Josiah David, wore a Make Britain Great Again cap and a T-shirt emblazoned with an image of Farage. He pulled up his trouser leg to reveal Union Jack socks.
“Give me nationalism over globalism every time,” he said. “We’re not far right, but we’ve been right so far.” David said Britain, addled by immigration and bad governance, needed “tough love”.
Farage, meanwhile, rolled up to the podium on a JCB, which he said was needed to fix Britain’s potholes. The backdrop to the stage was like an agitprop theatre set, with installations such as overflowing bins and a mocked-up empty pub to illustrate the woes Reform says ail Britain.
“I don’t need a career, I don’t need a job,” said Farage, who insisted he had re-entered politics only to save Britain.
Outside, protesters chanted: “Nigel Farage, kiss my ass. You’re a puppet of the ruling class.”
After the results from May 1st, Reform supporters will be get to see who really pulls the strings.
