Why are Reform UK so popular and what do they actually stand for?

If you’re vaguely familiar with British politics, you’ve probably heard of the new kids on the block — Reform UK. Reform’s rise to prominence has been nothing short of staggeringly fast, and now they seem to be in a position to break the Labour-Conservative duopoly that has dominated politics for the last century. Starting life as the Brexit Party in early 2019, they rebranded following the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union and began their steady march up the opinion polls which culminated in 4 million votes and 14% of the vote share at the 2024 election which produced 5 seats in Parliament. Since then, Reform have further exploited the Conservatives’ status as a floundering entity without a clear identity and Labour’s spectacular popularity collapse. Reform therefore have largely had an open goal, but they’ve seized it in such a way that has left the Liberal Democrats and Greens in their dust. This is likely a result of Nigel Farage’s undeniable charisma but also the mastery the party has over being able to control the narrative in the media and on social media, especially when tackling the rising concern around immigration. Everybody knows Reform UK stands against mass immigration, and that’s likely why they’re doing so well in the current political climate — the baffling thing is though, they seem to be suffering from a similar problem to Badenoch’s Tories and Starmer’s Labour in the sense that people don’t seem to know what else they stand for. So, what does Reform UK actually stand for?

Firstly, there’s the ideological side of things. Reform UK are a right-wing populist party grounded in conservatism. Populism is effectively the political portrayal of a supposed battle between the people and ‘elites’ or some other entity. This is of course evident in Reform’s immigration rhetoric, and present in Farage’s severe criticisms of both Labour and Conservative governments since 1997 which heralded significantly increased immigration levels. Populism may be characterised effectively as an ‘us versus them’ style of politics, or the political equivalent of divide and conquer. This is one of the reasons why Reform’s rise to prominence, if not officially power yet, has been so controversial and divisive; the likes of Farage hold considerable influence because of the attention that their rhetoric demands.

Populism also has a tendency to thrive in areas where there is a perception of economic decline. That’s why Farage’s spiritual predecessor to Reform, UKIP, had a surge in popularity between 2010 and 2015 during the Cameron-Clegg coalition years — the impacts of austerity hit lower-income areas particularly hard and unsurprisingly UKIP saw a surge in support in these areas. For an international parallel look no further than the support for Donald Trump in 2016, when he took power off the back of unusually high levels of support for a Republican in the Midwest which could be attributed largely to his rhetoric of restoring growth in areas that had suffered from regional economic decline. In the UK, stubbornly low growth paired with high inflation have created a nationwide picture that is ripe for a populist movement to exploit, and sure enough…

One argument that is easy to make against populism is it contributes to a significant decline in the standard of political discourse and debate — the USA has suffered particularly from this. It would not be surprising if the UK started to suffer from this too, though perhaps not to the same extent. The reality is populism’s us versus them approach often stifles genuine political debate by offering answers that are too good to be true. It is obvious that having less immigration is not the answer to many of this country’s economic woes, even if it may play a role in being the answer to a few — and even those will have trade-offs such as a smaller workforce or less national productivity. Inedeed the biggest problem with populism is this: it’s incredibly easy to peddle populist rhetoric from the sidelines but quite another to actually govern. So, what would Reform actually do if they did end up in government?

There are of course clues to this in their 2024 manifesto, which they called ‘Our Contract With You’ — a typically populist title it has to be said. Reform have many policies and trying to outline all of them would not be an especially productive exercise but here’s a summary. As mentioned earlier, Reform’s right-wing populism is grounded in conservatism. Whilst the populism part has now been explained, to understand what the rest of this means, we should take a moment to briefly outline conservatism at a philosophical level — an ideology that promotes the rights and freedom of the individual, limits the power of the state, promotes traditional values, and is pragmatic in its approach to change. There’s been an increasing trend in recent years towards big-state conservatism, with the Tories in this country growing the size of the state through things such as independent government agencies (e.g. NHS England); additionally there has been an increasingly radical element internationally which aims to use the power of the state to enforce conservative values by preventing or even reversing societal progress, which ironically isn’t very conservative in its purest sense at all.

Reform is a party that, for the most part, embraces genuine small-state conservatism. Whilst its proposals do emphasise the state’s power when it comes to detaining illegal immigrants, the party claims to be doing this in the name of public safety which is not at odds with conservative principles. It should be briefly noted though that on occasion, it has indicated support for ideas such as limited nationalisation where it believes that would be beneficial which shows that there is room for some flexibility despite this conservatism. Additionally, Reform have pledged sweeping tax cuts across the board including raising the tax-free personal allowance to £20,000 which could put several hundreds of pounds a year straight into the bank accounts of those on low-incomes in this country. You can probably see why that carrot-on-a-stick is very appealing to a lot of people in modern Britain. Reform say tax cuts are the way to kickstart and power growth in the UK, which makes sense in theory. The only problem with the idea is whether the UK can afford these tax cuts.

If you cast your mind back to the short tenure of Liz Truss as PM, she had made a similar calculation. The fatal error of Truss wasn’t the tax cuts themselves however, it was the gamble she took by hoping the cuts would incentivise enough investment to be able to dismiss doubts about the long-term fiscal sustainability of a budget which slashed government revenue but actually expanded government spending. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the private sector wasn’t convinced by this gamble due to fears about the UK economy being propped up by huge amounts of government borrowing and the near-crisis that followed led to the removal of Truss. Reform therefore have two options: either risk this again or find spending to cut. Reform appear to, wisely, be choosing the latter option — the only problem with this is it’s not clear what they can cut. The UK has now suffered 15 years of near-continous austerity, which is now continuing under the Labour government. The consequences of this is a public sector that is heavily bruised and stretched to its limits, with the NHS in particular in rough shape. Reform say they want to scrap net zero targets and associated spending (we’ll ignore the stupidity of such a policy in the long-term in this article), scrap diversity initiatives and other ‘woke’ spending as well as further cuts to government departments. The reality is, it’s difficult to see whether this will claw back the deficit caused by their tax cuts but also difficult to see how government departments could continue to operate effectively with their budgets stretched even further still.

To summarise then, Reform have exploited a national climate ripe for the rise of populism with the result being a sustained lead at the top of the UK’s opinion polls. It’s positions are mostly regarding shrinking the state and it aims to achieve this through broad tax cuts and further government spending cuts which raises questions about the feasibility of their proposals, especially when this seems not too unlike the policy positions that have led to this country’s economic decline in the first place — just more aggressive and wrapped in different rhetoric. The success of Reform in government will depend on whether those tax cuts can get the economy growing, but Reform getting in to government will depend on Labour’s success in curing the country’s economic woes to lessen the appeal for populism in the UK.