The rise of Reform UK from fringe Brexiteers to mainstream challengers

Some polling suggests Nigel Farage’s party could become the main opposition (Picture: PA)

The return of Nigel Farage to frontline politics is a major headache for the Tories, and has a whiff of déjà vu for many voters.

He became a household name by playing a key role in turning Brexit from fantasy to reality as UKIP leader.

The party siphoned off Eurosceptic voters from the Tories until David Cameron decided to try and head off the threat with a referendum, sparking a chain of events that sent Farage back to the fringes.

Now, as head of Reform UK, he is again eating away at the Tory vote with a pledge to slash immigration – and there’s no clear answer for Rishi Sunak, who has overseen a record rise in net migration.

Despite having its roots in the Farage brand, Reform UK has made a lot of this headway without him. Here’s how it made it to the mainstream:

Who are Reform UK and where did they come from?

What is now Reform UK was born as the Brexit Party in 2019, when the government was fraught with infighting over how exactly to leave the EU.

It was co-founded by Farage and Catherine Blaiklock, a former mid-level UKIP figure who was quickly forced out of her new party over racist and Islamophobic tweets she’d made in the past.

The party campaigned for the UK to leave the EU without a deal and abandon the ongoing talks to agree favourable trading arrangements.

The party became mainstream without Farage’s leadership (Picture: PA)

After Boris Johnson replaced Theresa May as prime minister that year, he took a tougher stance against the EU and ‘turbo-charged’ preparations for a no-deal exit in case the talks collapsed.

Farage tried to forge a ‘Leave alliance’ with the Tories in the 2019 general election, believing his popularity on the right could force Boris to commit to a ‘hard’ Brexit.

Even though his offer was refused, he ordered the Brexit Party to only field candidates in Labour-held seats.

They failed to win anywhere and won just 2.0% of the vote.

Richard Tice helmed the party while Farage worked for Trump (Picture: Shutterstock)

The party slid into irrelevance as Farage left the UK to work for Donald Trump as a warm-up speaker for his unsuccessful 2020 campaign.

During that time he became increasingly outspoken against Covid restrictions (although he initially supported lockdowns).

He decided to dip his toe back into British politics by rebranding his party as Reform UK, which would now campaign mainly against further lockdowns.

The party also vowed to take on ‘powerful vested interests’, naming the House of Lords and BBC as examples, and cut tax.

Reform UK has come along way since its inception as an anti-lockdown party (Picture: Shutterstock)

Leadership was handed over to Richard Tice when the rebrand was completed in 2021, and Farage announced he was ‘retiring’ from politics altogether.

Reform UK gained its first sitting politician when Tory-turned-independent MSP Michelle Ballantyne joined, but she was voted out of Holyrood in 2021.

The party remained firmly on the fringes over the next two years, gaining just 10 council seats after securing some Tory defections and winning around 6% of votes where it stood in the 2023 local elections.

It began making headlines after the high-profile defection of Tory MP Lee Anderson in Ashford earlier this year.

A timeline of some key dates in Reform UK’s journey (Picture: Metro.co.uk)

Although his candidates fared poorly in later by-elections, Tice hailed the 2024 local elections – where Reform won 11% of the vote – as proof his party was becoming ‘the real opposition’ to Labour.

Is Reform UK ahead of the Tories?

Reform UK has climbed steadily in the polls since then, and Farage’s shock return as leader (and party candidate for Clacton) on June 3 has been followed by further gains.

The party has now overtaken the Tories in a national poll for the first time, scoring 19% over the Conservatives’ 18% according to a June 13 YouGov survey, which put Labour on 37%.

Rishi Sunak has overseen a loss of Conservative supporters to Reform UK (Picture: Getty)

Averages of multiple national polls still put Rishi Sunak’s party clear of the challengers by at least eight percentage points, the news is a massive boost to Reform’s attempts to paint themselves as a serious alternative.

‘We are now the opposition to Labour,’ Farage declared in an ITV election event on Thursday.

What are Reform UK’s key policies?

Farage’s charisma and controversial claims about migrants and asylum seekers have made him something of a spiritual leader among voters who see immigration as a problem.

Reform’s success is heavily tied to that issue, although the party claims it is not against immigration generally.

The party has pledged to freeze ‘non-essential immigration’ and favours a ‘one in, one out’ policy.

It hasn’t clarified who would count as ‘essential’ migrants or how a Reform government would enforce a numbers-based migration quota.

Reform wants to push immigration and asylum seekers up the agenda (Picture: PA)

It has also vowed to ‘stop’ small boat arrivals and place all asylum seekers in ‘secure detention’.

Reform UK’s website says it would ‘Pick up Migrants out of Boats and Take Back to France’, set up ‘offshore processing for illegal arrivals’, and leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to avoid any challenges.

Reform also says it would raise the income tax threshold from £12,500 to £20,000, scrap VAT on energy bills, slash fuel duty and stamp duty, and axe inheritance tax.

Nigel Farage says his tax cuts, which would cost the Treasury £40 billion, will be funded through a stealth levy on the Bank of England.

Farage says his policies can be paid for via stealth charges on Bank of England financing (Picture: Reuters)

Economists, including the director of Institute for Fiscal studies, have warned the move would raise much less money than Farage claims and that the amount raised would drop off rapidly, requiring tax rises or spending increases later on.

Reform has also vowed to ban ‘transgender ideology’, ‘gender questioning’, ‘social transitioning’ and ‘pronoun swapping’.

This would have to involve a major crackdown on free speech, which is protected under English common law and not just the ECHR.

Reform’s success may depend on whether right-wing voters care enough about immigration to hand power to a party with no government experience.

In bygone times, the Tories might have snuffed his ambitions by pointing out that votes for Reform will all but secure a landslide for Labour.

But Keir Starmer’s chances of becoming the next PM may now appear so high thatvoters have no qualms about punishing the Tories.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.