Nigel Farage is nothing if not media friendly. As has been noted by other writers for Yorkshire Bylines, Farage is one of the most frequent guests on BBC Question Time in the programme’s history, averaging around 1.5 appearances per year since 2000. He is the sixth highest appearance-maker in the programme’s broadcast history. This may not sound impressive, until you take into account the fact that he made his first appearance in the year 2000 and that the other five highest appearance-makers had a 15 or 20 year head start on him.
A recent University of Cardiff study looking at the last general election found that over 25% of BBC News at Ten bulletins featured Reform UK. An extraordinary feat for a party which returned five MPs, just one more than Plaid Cymru. For a minority party, the amount of media exposure Reform garnered was immense.
The level of media exposure given to Reform, combined with feverish mass hysteria on the right about immigration which has rolled on during the summer of 2025, has contributed to a sense in some quarters that Reform’s march is unstoppable. A YouGov poll in September 2025 suggested Reform could be the largest party at the next election. For many people who read Yorkshire Bylines, this will strike them as a terrifying prospect. But if all this seems too good to be true for Reform, that’s because it is.Underneath the apparent air of invulnerability that surrounds Reform, the party, and its leader, Farage, is weaker than many pundits currently think. In other words, Reform’s soar-away path to Number 10 is exactly what it seems, a mirage.
The international right continues to underperform
The dust has settled on the Caerphilly by-election, and it seems that Reform’s air of impregnability has been forgotten as quickly as a thousand inaccurate pre-election forecasts. A week before the election, the bookies had Reform as the odds-on favourite to win the Caerphilly by-election. The electors of Caerphilly, however, had other ideas. Reform UK was beaten into a distant second, coming 11 percentage points behind Plaid Cymru according to the by-election results. Predictions for Reform UK’s share of the vote were also massively overstated – a Survation poll put them at 42%, but their vote fell to 36% on the night.
Since Caerphilly, there have been further electoral setbacks for the far right on the continent. In the recent Dutch elections, Gert Wilder’s radical right party was beaten by Dutch centrists. This follows a pattern of the radical right underperforming on election day and, with a few exceptions such as Argentina, that trend has largely continued from 2024 through most of 2025. The right-wing media and the loudest voices on the populist right like to project an aura of invincibility, but what if they are more vulnerable than their reputation would have us believe?
Electoral surprises in New York City
Even in the United States, the right continues to underperform expectations. In New York, the self-described democratic socialist, Zohran Mamdani, a charismatic Asian millennial, ran on a campaign focused on the cost of living and affordability with an excellent social media campaign. He won a massive victory in New York City, winning over 50% of the vote. This may not sound impressive given that New York is one of the most liberal cities in America, but what has been overlooked is that 12 months ago New York was seen as fertile ground for a new generation of emerging right-wing voters. It may be that hopes that young men between 18 and 30 will be the saviour of declining Conservatism on both sides of the Atlantic are premature.
Reform’s path to power has a serious flaw
The media hype around Reform can be deafening: only this week the left-leaning magazine New Statesman put out a podcast with the title ‘Nigel Farage is preparing for Power’. But in light of the international right’s tendency to underperform at elections, is the path to power really that smooth? The answer is no. Here are three good reasons not to believe the hype.
First, the eye-catching polling predicting a landslide victory for Farage at the next general election doesn’t consider the fact that under first-past-the-post (FPTP), British voters rarely vote for the party they actually want to get elected. Very often, British voters are forced to make a pragmatic choice to vote for the least objectionable candidate. All the favourable polling for Reform overlooks the fact that when focus groups are asked ‘If there was an election tomorrow who would you vote for?’ it is a different question to ‘What is the least objectionable vote for me and my family?’, which is a different political calculation. The polling showing Reform on course for a historic landslide at the next general election doesn’t take this into account.
Overdependency on older, white voters
Second, while Reform can channel the anger and disaffection with modern Britain, a real limitation for Reform is that – despite the hype around young men and Gen Z voters moving to the right – it is still massively overdependent on older, white men. In the recent elections in the United States, Gen Z voters have fallen into typical voting patterns. An important factor that has been disregarded is that these older, often male voters are often financially comfortable, and will not be personally affected by Reform’s proposed slashing of income tax, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) provision and other public services, whereas the sections of the electorate that Reform need to win over to form a majority will be disproportionately impacted by such austerity. This presents a profound challenge to Reform’s path to power.
Third, Reform’s economic policy remains confused. The party cannot decide on an economic direction for Britain. Farage is a pro-free-market, anti-trade union former metals trader. Reform promises to increase defence spending within 100 days of coming to power, but the party’s tax policies would make this a fanciful prospect. More in Common has conducted some illuminating polling that has shown that Reform can put together a coalition of two things: immigration and a sense of malaise with modern Britain. However, when it comes to taxation, the economy and public spending, Reform’s coalition becomes much more fractious.
Cracks in Reform’s coalition can be the party’s undoing
Those saying that Reform’s path to power is unstoppable overlook the fact that, despite what is claimed by the media, immigration is not the priority concern for the key section of the electorate that Reform needs to win over – namely, urban, multi-racial, often younger voters. These are the kinds of voters Reform needs to win over to command an electoral majority and these voters are exactly the ones who have felt the pressure of the two-fold squeeze of austerity and an ageing population.
Mainstream commentators don’t like to hear that angry, older white male voters, many of whom are retired, will not be enough to take Farage to Downing Street, but that is what the evidence suggests. If the so-called north-west faction of the Labour Party, which gathers around Andy Burnham, were to gain ascendency, if Zack Polanski’s Green Party continues to grow in urban areas, and if the Lib Dems continue to pick up seats in Cathedral cities and among the business classes of Southern England, it would not be at all surprising to see this tripartite collection of parties on the centre-left take Reform on and beat them.
