Nigel Farage, the Brexiteer, has secured a beachhead in the British parliament, and his Reform UK party is projected to be the country’s third-largest party by vote share in Thursday’s general election.
Update 0400 — Reform UK’s Richard Tice elected to Parliament
Nigel Farage’s deputy leader and Reform Party leader Richard Tice won seats in Boston and Skegness, becoming the fourth person to win so far, following Mr Farage in Clacton, former Conservative MP Lee Anderson in Ashfield and Rupert Lowe in Great Yarmouth.
The original story continues like this…
Just over a month after coming out of retirement to take back the leadership of Reform UK (formerly the Brexit Party), Nigel Farage has once again upended the British political landscape, finally heading to the House of Commons as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Clacton, where he won by a landslide victory, defeating his Conservative opponent Giles Watling by 21,225 votes to 12,820.
Farage is arguably Britain’s most important politician since World War II, having spearheaded the Brexit movement to free Britain from the shackles of the globalist EU project, but he has failed to win a seat in Parliament seven times and has not been able to do so for a long time.
But victory in Clacton, the working-class constituency in the south-east of England that was one of the strongest supporters of Brexit, gives the Reform UK leader a beachhead in Parliament from which he will launch a five-year campaign to win the 2029 general election.
“I will do everything in my power to put Clacton on the map,” Mr Farage said in his victory speech, adding: “It’s been four weeks and three days since I came out of retirement to decide to run and I think what Reform UK has achieved in the last few weeks is incredible.”
“There’s something very fundamental going on. It’s not just disillusionment with the Conservative party. There’s a vacuum on the right of centre in British politics and my job is to fill that and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”
“My plan is to build a massive national movement over the next few years, hopefully large enough to challenge in the 2029 general election. There is no enthusiasm for the Labour party, no enthusiasm for Starmer, in fact half the voters are simply anti-Conservative. This Labour government will soon be in trouble. We are going after the Labour vote now. We are going after the Labour party, there’s no doubt about that.”
“This is just the first step of things that will surprise you,” Farage concluded.
This gives the Reform Party a strong base from which to build a national movement to compete for control of Downing Street in the next election. According to the first exit polls, the party is expected to receive 17.6% of the vote, the third most of any party so far, just 3% behind the Conservatives. This is a surprising result for an upstart party. The initial projections, which are still subject to change, put the Reform Party on pace to win 13 seats in Parliament, and the party has repeatedly placed second nationally.
Farage says reform ‘bridge’ needs to be built in Parliament to hold Labour government to account https://t.co/0jtHTTqr1N
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 9, 2024
The populist parties’ future strategy is not only to win over more Conservative voters as we enter into an expected political civil war over the future of the Conservative party, but also to convince disaffected Labour voters that an increasingly London-centric, elitist left-wing party does not serve their interests, especially on issues such as immigration.
One of the key reforms the party would advocate is changing the voting system from the current single-member district system to a proportional representation system that allocates seats to parties based on the number of votes they receive.
Farage’s party is on pace to receive 1 million votes nationwide, perhaps the third or second highest, but is projected to win just 13 seats in Parliament, behind the Liberal Democrats’ 61, despite winning significantly more votes than the anti-EU party led by Ed Davey.
Labour has traditionally supported changing the electoral system to proportional representation, but even if the party’s base supports the idea, it is unclear whether it would be willing to make changes that could increase Reform’s ability to challenge Labour in the next general election.
Reform UK wins its first MP tonight, with Lee Anderson re-elected in Ashfield https://t.co/eYry7WKiS4 pic.twitter.com/uMyfpEnh2p
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 5, 2024
Farage has also signaled that his party will pursue a much more nationalist economic policy than the laissez-faire Thatcherite model favoured by former Reform Party leader Richard Tice. Like his overseas ally Donald Trump, Farage may seek to undermine Labour’s support in working-class areas by challenging globalist trade policies with countries like Communist China in favour of boosting domestic industry.
Speaking to Breitbart London ahead of the election, Mr Farage said Thatcherite thinking was “irrelevant” to the modern realities facing the UK.
“Over the past few decades, the power of big corporations has grown and grown. Capitalism is dead, it has ceased to exist, and we live in corporatism, an unholy alliance of big corporations, big banks and big government… I truly believe that if a country is controlled by six huge multinational corporations, none of which pays tax within the country, there can be no economic growth.”
Environmental policy will be key to countering Labour on this front: Farage told the publication it was a “scam”, arguing that the government could claim it was reducing carbon emissions by closing down domestic industries such as steel and heavy shipbuilding, when in reality the emissions were just being shipped to other countries.
“There’s been massive job losses with no environmental gains,” Mr Farage said.
The end of the Conservatives? Farage’s Reform Party closes gap with mainstream Conservatives to just 2 points https://t.co/rNxZDUH9Xl
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 6, 2024
