The well-publicised schism between Nigel Farage and Elon Musk should not be a huge concern to Reform UK Party Limited. No doubt Farage would have welcomed the reported $100mn dollars that Musk was considering donating – but Reform has considerable income from both its membership fees and from generous donations. The main problem that Reform faces, and which the rest of the political community will also have to address, is that its fiscal and public services policies will not be attractive to many of its core voters. This could lead to the rise of parties further to the right.
Money for political parties
No political party would happily wave goodbye to a proffered $100mn cheque. It could have meant plush, central London offices as well as more comfortable travel and hotels, and an all-important regional network of a professional field force, regional offices and paid staff in every big city.
However, Reform UK Party Ltd is not badly off. Its reported membership is now in excess of 175,000 people. An annual subscription rate of £25 would mean an annal income of £4,375,000, although it will be less than that as it also offers a £10 subscription rate for those under 25 years old.
Additional to this, Reform received donations of £100,000 in 2023, and in the year 2024 it had received £2,656,360 by 23 September. It still doesn’t rival the donations to the Labour Party (£8.69mn in 2023) and the Conservatives (£9.9mn in 2023), but it will probably be far more than the Liberal Democrats (£2.8mn in 2023) and the Greens (£222,461 in 2023). Interestingly, Reform also received a private donation of £2mn in October 2019.
So, Reform may rue its loss of Elon Musk’s largesse, but it has plenty of resources to organise in its most promising areas – mainly those which most strongly voted for Brexit.
Reform’s problems are its policies
Reform is a right-wing party, with a populist appeal that focuses on immigration and its alleged impact on British public services such as health, social housing and education. Wrapping oneself in the flag, exploiting scandals such as child sexual exploitation and the cost-of-living crisis and adopting a xenophobic anti-EU stance are all well-worn channels for right-wing parties, and will attract a lot of votes.
However, the sort of ex-Labour voters that Reform wants to attract, particularly in the North, typically want more than that. They are driven by a sense of fairness, or more accurately by a sense of perceived unfairness, which led to them voting for Brexit and which makes them indignant about ‘immigrants taking our jobs/benefits/houses/doctors/schools’.
It is not the purpose of this article to address this indignation, but it is important to understand that the neo-liberalism of Reform will not make these services available. Quite the reverse; the low-tax, small state vision of Reform will put these services beyond the reach of most people. If you add to this the possibility of a Reform government negotiating a trade deal with the USA, with the likely consequences of private US ‘investment’ in the NHS, the Reform voter will suddenly be asking themselves what on Earth they’ve created. However, other far-right parties could provide an answer.
Alternatives on the far right
In the Middleton Park ward in South Leeds there are three Social Democratic Party (SDP) councillors. This is not the SDP of Shirley Williams, Bill Rodgers, David Owen and Roy Jenkins. That SDP was merged with the Liberals in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats. But the SDP name lived on and has taken up a different suite of policies.
It stood 122 candidates in the July 2024 general election, where it had an electoral pact with Reform UK in some seats. While it advocates a broad welfare state, public ownership of the railways and utilities, lower economic inequality, and raising defence spending, it also advocates the reintroduction of grammar schools, the abolition of the BBC licence fee, stronger criminal sentencing, a national care service, the end of ‘mass migration’, withdrawal from the European Court of Human Rights and the 1951 UN Convention of Human Rights, and steering well clear of the European Union. Its mantra is “Family, Neighbourhood and Nation”.
It may be fanciful to view this new SDP as reminiscent of the fledgling National Socialist Party of Munich in 1920, with its right-wing ‘socialist’ policies. Or it may be accurate. The German Nazis didn’t really gain popularity until 1929. History says that the SDP can afford to wait for Reform to fail.
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