Does the Reform UK party need reforming already?

There was a time when a parliamentary by-election would result in a “shock” result for a smaller party. Much of the post-war revival of the Liberal Party and the SNP was based on unlikely early triumphs in by-elections. It does not seem the fledgling Reform UK party will manage a similar breakthrough in the forthcoming Hartlepool by-election, or indeed in the very many other electoral opportunities on 6 May.

Opinion polling suggests that the Hartlepool result may be a striking gain for the Conservatives. At the December 2019 general election Labour held on in what was a traditional stronghold with a 9 per cent margin over the Tories. The two polls taken so far suggest that that will either be greatly reduced but held by Labour (down to a slim 3 per cent margin) or converted into a comfortable win for Boris Johnson.

Although Hartlepool may be swamped a little by the many other major elections on the same day, such as Wales, Scotland, London and in English metropolitan mayoralties and councils, it is a key test of how well Sir Keir Starmer is doing in the kind of “red wall” seat he needs to win back from the Conservatives. Last time, Johnson thanks voters in such places across the Midlands and north for “lending” their vote to him. We will see if they wish to give it back to Starmer instead.

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If Labour does do badly, or perhaps more accurately, even more badly than the 38 per cent of the vote it won last time, then the omens for the next election are not encouraging, despite the twin special effects of Brexit (where Hartlepool opted by 2 to 1 to leave), and Covid. Labour will probably suffer for a certain leakage of votes to the Greens and the Northern Independence Party, a kind of continuity Corbyn organisation; but more significant will be the collapse of the old Brexit vote, and its wholesale defection to the Tories, now that Brexit is “done” (arguably).

The Brexit Party has been reconstituted as Reform UK. It has gained a new leader, Richard Tice, a businessman, and has a new emphasis on economic reform (hence the name), with a distinctly Thatcherite flavour. Reform UK has, however, lost the Brexit Party’s clear brand identity and mission (ie, Brexit), the obsession with immigration, race and identity politics, and, above all, its charismatic leader, Nigel Farage, an instantly recognisable “Marmite” personality.

Thus, according to the local polling Reform UK is either on 9 per cent or 1 per cent of the poll in Hartlepool, down from the 26 per cent that Tice garnered in 2019, when he stood in what was one of the Brexit Party’s better prospects. Reform UK’s current candidate in Hartlepool is a chap by the name of John Prescott, usually quickly qualified by the additional of “not THAT John Prescott”.

It is not difficult to see why Reform UK is having a rough time of it, because as a populist party it has been to some extent outflanked by the modern Conservatives, who are more than willing to tell people in the north and Midlands what they want to hear about not being left behind and promising to “level up”. Somehow, the Johnson Conservative Party is now winning the kind of protest “anti-establishment” vote that usually went to the old Ukip (still staggering on in places, though not standing so far in Hartlepool), or to the Farageist Brexit Party.

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Having failed to make to the Commons in 2019, Tice and Reform UK will once again suffer from the vicious way the first-past-the-post election system squeezes smaller parties out, both in Hartlepool and more widely. The irony always was that Ukip and then the Brexit Party did as well as they did because PR was used for elections to the European parliament. Without that, and on single figures in the GB-wide polling (around 2 to 3 per cent), Reform UK will win few seats in the council elections, probably mostly based on name recognition of existing/former Brexit Party/Ukip figures.

Reform UK’s policies are largely unknown, even though it does have some radical and tempting tax-cutting policies, which it is fair to say haven’t yet really cut through with the electorate. Pitching a low-tax, high-growth entrepreneurial economy, Reform UK promises to:

Whether the voters would ever believe in such a package is another matter, given the current state of the public finances. They might, conceivably, if Farage was making his usual noise and selling it, but he’s left party politics, which begs the question of what he is up to these days. The answer appears to be that he is promoting tree-planting schemes, endorsing a company offering financial guidance, selling birthday greetings on Cameo and making angry videos about immigrants arriving in dinghies at Dover. He seems lost since Brexit got done and Donald Trump got defeated, though not quite as lost as his old parties, Ukip (now led by none other than Neil Hamilton) and the Brexit Party/Reform UK.