With council elections cancelled this year in East Sussex, attention moves to the other side of the Rother after Kent County Council failed to be included in the government’s devolution plans. Voting takes place in May. Local democracy reporter Simon Finlay examines how voter volatility has driven a large chunk of the electorate to Reform UK.
When Indira Gandhi lost the 1977 Indian general election, one English language daily newspaper noted the “tearaway gap” inflicted by the Janata Party “pointed to the fury of the lashing wave”.
Mrs Gandhi is now restored to the affections of Mother India to such a degree it named its biggest airport after her. Today, its current prime minister, Narendra Modi, whose own BJP party is linked to her conquerors, stares down from billboards all over that vast, intricate and complicated country with a look of benign menace.
It appears the lashing wave is washing ashore here, too.
Nothing seems to slow the rise of Reform UK and it is not yet apparent where its ceiling lies. Some national polling has the party top of the heap and pollsters at Electoral Calculus now say it may take eight parliamentary seats in Kent.
At council by-elections across the country, Reform UK has started to poll 30% plus and has won a handful of seats in Kent.
It is not the numbers that matter but the symbolism. The May elections to Tory-led Kent County Council (KCC) are back on after the government blocked Kent’s passage to the vaunted devolution “priority programme”.
Some Conservative backbenchers are bracing themselves for heavy defeats, not least because the national picture is so dire but also because many popular incumbents (perhaps up to 30) are standing down.
It is said that some private polling carried out by the Conservatives in Kent seems to paint a rosier picture; that the party could retain control of KCC. This is based on Labour voters deserting to Reform, as the survey suggests, and Reform supporters voting Tory. The polling sample is said to be large and implies Labour could be wiped out at County Hall. Whether it comes to pass will become apparent on May 1.
Reform UK, like UKIP before it, is unproven and if it does win power anywhere, it will have to prove to the people it has the wherewithal to turn rhetoric into discipline and prudent administration.
Nationally, Labour and Conservatives need not fear Reform UK but the lashing wave. The electorate has become mutinous, intolerant and vexatious. Volatility has morphed into a weird normality, confounding accepted mores and inducing panic in the established order.
In short, people are broke and feel let down.
The disaffected feel ill-served, treated as chattels not individuals with their own worlds, desires and aspirations. To them, life can sometimes appear cruel and unfair. They do not trust the new boss, any more than they respect the old boss.
Sir Keir Starmer has hardly been given a chance and, given his mandate, deserves that chance. But the discontented have no patience for any of it, some spurred on by social media’s instant gratification and puddle-deep public discourse.
No one understands this sentiment better than Reform’s leader, Nigel Farage.
These are perilous times. How the old order counters the threat from the lashing wave is a far greater challenge than any presented by Reform UK.
Far from riding the surf, both Labour and the Conservatives appear to be engulfed by it.
While Reform UK’s ship stays afloat, all it seems the captain has to do presently is prevent it being swept onto the rocks.
Image Credits: David Anstiss/Geograph https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2891403 CC https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/.
Whether people like it or not, Reform are the new party on the block, Other trying to tarnish them being far right and racist is rubbish,even their chairman is a Muslim, and they are the only party to put The Great back into Britain, the other parties have failed us, time for change for the future of all,young and old.
I agree. If someone had told me 5 years ago that I would be supporting the ethos of Nigel Farage, I would not have believed them. However, I feel that many of us are feeling that there is no alternative than to move in this direction. I do not agree with Far/Extreme Left/Right: as a country we should not be labelled for our beliefs and wishes for a greater UK.
The genius of Farage is that he doesn’t have to succeed to be politically successful. He just has to stand on the sidelines and hector the desperate electorate as other politicians continue to fail… And we’re supposed to believe that vindicates his rhetoric… Farage has never taken responsibility for anything. What has he ever delivered except division and anger? Oh, and Brexit, of course… Which by his own standards – and increasing numbers of others – failed. Farage is the wolf preying on the flock, not the shepherd guiding it to shelter… And don’t let my friend John tell you any different…
What worries me most is that a turn to Reform is a turn towards Trump’s America. Farage adores Trump and all his values. Not so relevant, perhaps, at the county government level, but Reform is a definite challenge to decent and traditional British values.
And so what is ‘indecent’ about Reforms’ challenge?
Wanting to put UK citizens first?
Wanting to sort out the disastrous NHS?
Reducing immigration so that our vastly overstretched and underfunded support services can once again function reasonably?
Wanting to cut foreign aid and divert the funds to some of the UK’s cash starved services ‘ (oops Starmer has already canned a lump of foreign aid, pity it’s going to be spent on equipment designed to kill people).
Make work pay a decent wage?
Slash wasted money, squandered by the out of control ‘blob? (Including the disastrous ‘benefits’ system)?
Get the timing of the ludicrous net zero program under control and make the UK energy efficient in a timely and sensible manner?
Bring back common sense including the old fashioned and traditional value that there are only two sexes, women or men?
I could go on, but there is no point when some posters only indulge in identity politics and not the reasoning behind the narrative.
One thing I do read here is that a very large majority of voters are heartily sick and tired of listening to overpaid, underperforming, pygmy politicians. Whose arrogance is of biblical proportions. This current crop are no different than the charlatans that were given the old heave-ho in the last election. What is it with this countries elected MP’s? As soon as they win a seat in parliament, they suddenly become ‘sooper-dooper’ human beings with amazingly high IQ’s. So high, the rest of the populace are reduced in their minds to intellectually challenged, no hopers that need to be taught how to pick the soap up from a shower floor and then helped to get dressed.
Voters are being and have been treated with utter contempt by what has been for many years a two party system. Bring on the third party, they surely cannot do any worse.
I fail to understand why the Green Party are not an option. They certainly don’t thrive on a divided society fuelled by fear and hatred.
Reform now have over 200,000 members and still growing.,Enough Said. Guy.
200,000 Reform ‘members’ / 28,800,000 UK voters in 2024 x 100 = 0.69% of the electorate… Reform are a tiny minority of deluded people following a populist multimillionaire Trump fan-boy who is widely dispised even in his own party! If our country wants follow the Trump US down the moral and economic toilet we know who to vote for. Enough said.
I suggest you do your research before posting your numbers. Reform took just over 4m of the vote share in 2024 or around 14% of those cast. There are approximately 48m registered voters this still gives Reform a share of 11% of the electorate as a whole. Membership v vote numbers is an apples and pears approach.
Reform came third in the vote tally meaning there were over 4m disillusioned (not deluded) voters. Up to their back teeth with two faced, dishonourable, incompetent MP’s, courtesy of our FPP electoral system. As for being despised in their own party I reckon Rachel from Accounts and the Milliband, whose lunatic net zero targets are well up the leader board in the Labour party.
Voter turnout at the 2024 general election was just 60%. To put that in perspective, a winning majority felt NONE of the political parties were worthy of their vote and fit to represent them.
With respect to Guy Harris, rather than using Rye News to take pot shots at other politicians, political parties and their supporters, he along with ALL politicians and political parties should take a good look at themselves and ask why so many people have such little confidence in them and feel their vote doesn’t matter.
I invite you to re-read what I wrote, Rod. Nowhere did I criticise Reform voters. You can take it as read that I do not think British politics is succeeding any more than you do. That’s why I dragged myself round the streets of Rye and Hastings trying to help change it… With little success! Whilst I assume we differ in the ways we’d like to transform our politics, and though I have no respect at all for Farage’s divisive style, I entirely understand why some ppl want to vote for him. And that’s their prerogative.
As for ‘using Rye News etc etc…’ this is a post about elections written by the Local Democracy Reporter. It feels like the appropriate place to have this conversation. Have good week.
Unfortunately Reform has the perfect situation to increase their appeal. Fascism is on the rise due to immigration and the rhetoric from the right wing press, typically the Daily Mail. It’s easy to hate and find the answers to our problems based on immigration and I’m find it disturbing that our country has become so intolerant.
It is very easy and dangerous to wrongly throw the word ‘fascism’ around. Both the left and right have their extremists. Both are as vile, toxic and destructive as each other.
Fortunately the vast majority of people in the UK are centrists. Some lean a little to the left, some lean a little to the right, but generally speaking most share similar values on a large range of issues. They accept sustainable levels of legal immigration. They largely welcome law abiding, genuine refugees who enter our country via legal routes and contribute to the economy. Just look at the way we have welcomed, supported and continue to support our Ukrainian friends.
I am not a Reform supporter, though I do fully understand why some feel Reform are more in touch with public sentiment on certain issues.
It is not fascism to expect our country to have control over its borders. Unfortunately our tolerance and kindness is seen by some as a weakness to be exploited. It is fundamentally wrong to afford those who break our laws the same rights as genuine refugees who enter our country legally. It emboldens the repugnant people smugglers and their victims.
A week is a long time in politics. Since this article was written Reform has started to tear itself apart from within.
There is a huge difference between being a protest group and being a party with realistic, attainable policies. A huge difference between identifiers problems and objectives and finding ways of attaining them. Reform is a million miles off being able to provide a local authority administration, let alone the UK government. I suspect the voters will realise that. We shall see when the Kent electors go to the polls. What a shame the East Sussex electors are being denied their democratic rights this May, the elections suspended pending the government’s restructuring of local government in Sussex.
One thing the voters will not be voting for is the Liberal Democrats, beaten out of sight in the last election, and more people voted for Reform aswell, than the Lib Democrats and that’s the truth of the matter Andrew, so better put your dagger away,before you fall on it.