Reform UK Making Waves

Reform UK is a relatively new party in Britain, led by the mercurial figure, Nigel Farage. They have five members in the House of Commons, with one of those members being a defector from the Conservative Party. They are polling well, consistently above 30% these days, leaving the much larger Labour and Conservatives scrapping over the crumbs.

I've seen many pundits simply assuming Nigel Farage will be the UK's next prime minister. But, that's unlikely, surely, as current Prime Minister Keir Starmer is deeply unpopular. More likely is that the next prime minister will come from within the ranks of the Labour government caucus.

Four years remain until the next general election, we'll have to see if Reform UK has the stamina. Many may remember the UK's Social Democratic Party of the 1980s. They were a breakaway from the Labour Party and held 32 seats at one point. They rose to as much as 25% of the popular vote. However, by the end of the 1980s they were effectively defunct and merged into the Liberals to form the Liberal Democrats, currently Britain's third largest party by seats in the House. The LibDems did form a government with David Cameron's Conservatives back in 2010, but to all intents and purposes, they've not been a major player.

Reform UK does not have the defections they need, not yet anyway, and they appear to be a party centred around one man, Nigel Farage. They did have someone else, Rupert Lowe, who now sits alone in Parliament, but he appears to have been jettisoned as he was too much of a threat to Farage. That may tell you something about Reform UK; it is a one-man band. Such organisations rely too much on one man, and they often fail. I'm going to stick my neck out and say, Reform UK is likely to fall away, and will probably merge into the Conservatives by the time of the next election. Remember, you heard it here first.