Apart from the Labour Party’s landslide result, politics and the media are obsessed with one thing: Reform UK Party Limited. Virtually everyone agrees that the general election was a triumph for Reform UK and Nigel Farage. Reform UK is here to stay, they say. Farage delivered a euphoric speech in which he claimed he was coming for Labour. Dutifully, the media, having dined out on Farage’s antics for years, repeated the claim that Reform UK’s march is unstoppable.
Here’s the only problem. In this election, Reform UK massively underperformed.
The underperformance of Reform UK Party Limited
This campaign from Reform UK was a dull, dismal failure. Considering the factors in its favour, Reform UK should have performed far, far better. Reform’s performance was, at best, a modest success, at worst, a damp squib. This isn’t being reported much, but it is true. Moreover, it fits into a wider trend across Europe for the extreme right to largely underperform the polls.
Yes, you read that right. The extreme right is underperforming across Europe. There were two areas in the recent European elections where the extreme right did well, which was France and Germany. Elsewhere, the extreme right underperformed. Likewise, in the recently second round of the French election, Marie Le Pen’s National Rally party fell to a dismal third, far behind the centre left parties. This followed a week of many commentators confidently predicting a Le Pen takeover of France.
Far from being a disappointing night for the anti-Conservative vote – in which they can lick their wounds of eight years of Brexit culture war, console themselves to the reality that Keir Starmer is now leading the most pro-Brexit Labour Party ever – this election was a triumph for the forces of the Left and Centre Left. Was it an election in which they had to look in horror at all those second places finishes? Definitely not.
Quite the contrary, the underperformance of Reform should be a source of hope for the future. Let’s look at some facts.
How Reform underperformed
- Reform massively underperformed compared to the polls.The exit poll predicted Reform would win 13 seats. The British electorate had other ideas. They won five.
- Reform was expected to be the fourth party in parliament. In fact, they are the seventh, on a par with Sinn Fein.
- Farage confidently predicted on 14 June that Reform would “absolutely” win over six million votes. Their final result? Four million. Roughly the same number of votes UKIP got in 2015. With everything that has happened since, with all the advantages in terms of media exposure and money, Farage is stuck on exactly the same number of votes as he had nearly ten years ago.
- Some polls went mad and predicted Reform would be the main opposition. Remember that?
- The day before the election, Reform’s share of the vote was 17%. Their final result? 14%
- A lot has been made of Reform’s many second-place finishes across lots of constituencies – 98 to be precise. But the Green Party is trailing them in terms of second-place finishes, with a very respectable 39.
- Many of those second-place finishes were significantly far behind the Labour Party. Houghton and Sunderland South, Blyth and Ashington, Blaydon and Consett being just three examples of ‘Red Wall’ seats where Reform is trailing Labour by anywhere between roughly 6,000 and 10,000 votes or there abouts. In other words, Reform still has a mountain to climb to overcome Labour.
All of this points to a huge underperformance from Reform. Let us not forget that a Loughborough University study found that Reform UK was the only party to receive a majority of ‘good’ coverage compared to ‘bad’. Equally, Farage was the runaway winner leader of any of the minor parties for media coverage.
The wider culture has proved fertile territory for Reform following years of scapegoating of migrants and asylum seekers, demonizing Islam, culture wars and mainstream politicians enabling their extreme right-wing politics.
Even with all these factors in their favour, Reform could not maximise their vote.
Progressive alliance of the centre ground
There is a story to be taken from this election, and it is this: the centre ground in Britain is, if anything, a progressive alliance. There exists a clear consensus for a kind of social democratic ‘traffic light’ coalition government, encompassing the Red, Yellow and Green parties. Reform makes a big song and dance; the media may remain fascinated by Farage. But the fascination held by political and media circles with the populist right doesn’t do justice to the reality which is that percentage of the population which is sold on Reform’s politics is roughly 20% of the population.
No matter how volatile Farage’s politics are, it remains a truism that the populist right have consistently been unable to break this 20% ceiling on their politics. Of course, it’s easier to change the constitution when you have a craven and spineless Tory Party who will cowardly cave to your every demand because it runs scared of its own base.
But progressives should not be taken in by the chatter that this was ‘Reform’s election’. It wasn’t. Quite the opposite, the progressive parties overperformed and Reform dramatically underperformed compared to the polls. That is something to draw confidence from as we enter a dramatic and uncertain period in politics.
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