CHANGE, the title of its manifesto, was the stand-out slogan of Labour’s campaign earlier this year against a lost fourteen years of Conservative rule. But when didn’t a political party or candidate promise change? Voters’ thirst for political change seems to have accelerated in the last year as, in democratic elections across the world, incumbency has ceased to confer an automatic advantage.
So what of the change promised by Keir Starmer? Voters don’t seem impressed: only 27 per cent are satisfied with his performance while 61 per cent express dissatisfaction, resulting in an approval rating of -34, a 45-point drop from the +11 rating Starmer enjoyed just after the July election. A popular petition for a new general election has garnered over three million signatures and will be debated in Westminster Hall on 6th January.
Indeed, rather than departing from the approaches of previous Conservative governments, Labour appears to have supercharged them. Where the Tories raised the tax burden to a 70-year high, the Labour budget raised it even higher; where the Tories introduced Net Zero, Labour is now pursuing the impossible 2030 target with missionary zeal at no expense spared; where the Tories allowed an exponential rise in illegal and legal migration, Labour looks to be utterly ineffectual in turning back the tide, whatever its rhetoric to the contrary.
Change is also key to understanding the appeal and inexorable rise of Reform UK. The party promises a genuinely fresh prospectus like no other party can, precisely because it lacks the baggage of having been in government. This is why Kemi Badenoch cannot stand up convincingly to Keir Starmer, demonstrated so painfully at a recent Prime Minister’s Questions when Starmer retorted with her own words favouring immigration. Regardless of the issue – be it immigration, taxation or Net Zero – the Tories started, indeed entrenched, the rot. There is no way to avoid looking hypocritical and untrustworthy when they criticise Labour for the same policies. Only Reform UK has clean hands.
Reform UK’s other great advantage is its self-styling as an anti-establishment disruptor. This speaks to a deeper malaise on the part of voters beyond dissatisfaction with recent governments. This year’s general election saw the lowest turnout for twenty years; confidence in Britain’s system of government is at a record low. A party with a charismatic, upbeat leader who breaks the mould of the establishment or legacy parties – watch some of the videos on Nigel Farage’s million-follower-strong TikTok channel for a taste of this – reaches potential voters Starmer and Badenoch can only dream of. Put another way, Reform appeals to those who would vote “None of the above” or have stayed away from the polls in the past.
Little wonder, then, that the party won more than four million votes – 14.3 per cent – in the July general election, though first past the post only gave Reform five seats in the Commons, while the LibDems won 72 seats with 12 per cent of the vote.
Since the last election Reform UK has risen exponentially, welcoming high-profile Tory defections such as former MP Dame Andrea Jenkyns, Conservative Home founder Tim Montgomerie and Rael Braverman, husband of former Home Secretary Suella Braverman. Council by-elections have also seen a stream of defections and wins, bringing the current total number of Reform councillors in the UK to 50. Reform also seems to be attracting significant donors, recently appointing billionaire property developer and former Conservative donor Nick Candy as treasurer; it enjoys cosy relations with Elon Musk, rumoured to be pledging a $100million donation to the party.
Just before noon on Boxing Day, Reform UK’s membership surpassed 131,680, the number of members declared by the Tories in their recent leadership election. As I write, Reform’s membership ticker shows 163,856 members, but it will doubtless be higher by the time you read this. The number was boosted by the party introducing a £10 joining fee for people under 25, seeking to build on the support it has been receiving from Gen Z since the general election campaign.
The first poll since the general election on a constituency-by-constituency basis shows Reform UK as the third-largest party if a general election were held now, winning 72 seats on 21 per cent of the vote. Given that this does not factor in local seat-targeting by Reform, a well-resourced ground operation with thousands of volunteers and further decline in the fortunes of Labour, Tories and SNP – all of which seem extremely likely – it is possible to extrapolate a Reform victory at the next general election. Bookies have been slashing the odds on Farage as the next PM.
The established parties and mainstream media have reacted to Reform UK’s success largely with denial. The penny finally seemed to drop in early December when Nigel Farage won ‘Newcomer of the Year’ at The Spectator‘s Parliamentarian of the Year awards, Westminster’s version of the Oscars. At first the assembled great and good of the media and political worlds chortled at the announcement, as Andrew Neil reported:
“ ‘I’ve got a bit of a shock for you,’ he [Nigel Farage] said while collecting his trophy. ‘If you think that I and four other newcomers [his fellow Reform MPs] were a shock, I’m very sorry. At the next election in 2029 or before, there will be hundreds of newcomers under the Reform UK label.
‘We are about to witness a political revolution the likes of which we have not seen since Labour after the First World War,’ he went on, referring to how in the 1920s and 1930s Labour replaced the Liberals as the country’s alternative to the Tories. ‘Politics is about to change in the most astonishing way. Newcomers will win the next election.
‘Farage returned to his seat in silence. He has few friends among this sort of audience. But it wasn’t so much a silent protest as a stunned silence. It had dawned on the room that he might well be right.’ ”
Upon learning that Reform UK membership had overtaken that of her party, Kemi Badenoch reacted by claiming Reform’s website counter was rigged. Since then, its authenticity has been verified by various media outlets and the egg has congealed on Badenoch’s face. Worse, her reaction suggests the Tories are still in denial, reliant on simple disparagement and unable to square up to the threat Reform UK represents. Badenoch’s bad-tempered dismissal highlights not only the Conservatives’ lack of strategy to counter Reform, but its failure to form an effective opposition – compare, for example, Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe’s tweets and FOI onslaughts on the current government.
As Sarah Vine argues in an implicit acknowledgement of the dead-end facing the Tories, Badenoch seems not to realise she needs a Farage to counter Farage – and she has next to no chance of finding one. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that Badenoch and her party have been missing in action. The whole membership numbers episode, still playing out on social media, has been a terrific PR coup for Farage. It’s also created momentum: the party gained 20,000 members since the Badenoch-Farage row broke. If the current 6,000-a-day rate continues, Reform UK will overtake Labour to become the UK’s biggest party in February 2026.
…and in Scotland?
What of Reform UK in Scotland? The party took 7 per cent of the Scottish vote at July’s general election, beating the Conservatives in 25 seats, despite very little campaigning and little party infrastructure in Scotland. It’s worth noting that Reform across the UK achieved a similar vote share in 2024 as that of UKIP in 2015, but in Scotland got four or five times as many votes as UKIP in 2015. As Holyrood Magazine’s Louise Wilson remarked: “That seal has been broken and we are seeing Reform going up in the polls”.
Since July, Reform UK’s success in Scotland may have been more modest than in England, but it has also been constant and steady, attracting four councillor defections (all from the Tories) and an average vote of 11.36 per cent in the nineteen council by-elections it has run in. In Fraserburgh it hit 25.9 per cent, 2.5 points behind the SNP in second place. As BBC journalist Philip Sim has analysed, 11.36 per cent is enough to win list seats at Holyrood on its own, but good second and third placings in council elections suggest Reform taking seats off smaller parties. Poll after poll now gives Reform 12 to 14 seats at the Holyrood election in May 2026, leapfrogging both the LibDems and the Greens.
The early blanking of Reform UK’s success in Scotland by the mainstream parties and media is breaking down. Even the National has argued that Reform’s popularity spells the end of Scottish exceptionalism (the fantasy that Scotland is inherently more “progressive” than the rest of the UK), now regularly casting Nigel Farage as the ultimate unionist bogeyman.
In a significant interview with Times Radio two weeks ago, John Swinney addressed the threat of Reform “as a factor we’ve all got to recognise in our politics […] You either mimic the approach of Reform, which is what the Conservatives are now currently doing, and I have absolutely no intention of doing that whatsoever. Or you have to engage on the issues that might attract voters to Reform and provide solutions, real substantial solutions to those issues”.
Swinney betrays no insight into the issues of immigration, Net Zero and high taxes raising the cost of living which are in fact attracting people to Reform. All these are issues championed by the SNP. The verbiage is redolent of an SNP strategy which seeks to conflate the Tories and Reform as “Far Right”.
Swinney’s remarks were prompted by the Scottish Conservative budget proposal to fully reverse the cut to the pensioners’ Winter Fuel Payment, funded by reallocating the £2 million earmarked in the SNP budget for free bus fares for asylum seekers – or illegal immigrants. By accusing the Tories of “mimicking” Reform, Swinney echoed the claim by the SNP Finance Minister and the Greens in the budget debate that the Tories were launching a “Farage-esque dog whistle attack on asylum seekers”.
In point of fact, the SNP ministers had themselves axed free bus travel in their August cuts to public spending, only to restore it when it turned out to be one of the Green Party’s red lines. For all their rhetoric about sowing division between marginalised groups by pitting “asylum seekers” against OAPs, all the parties opposing the Tory proposal conveniently ignored an obvious fact: that because public finance is necessarily limited, there is always a conflict between competing claims, and politics consists in large part of adjudicating between these claims.
Swinney’s interview prompted a furious response from Scottish Conservative MP Andrew Bowie who denounced Reform UK for “simply cosplaying as a serious political party, offering simple solutions to complex issues and will gift seats to Labour and the SNP at the next Scottish election”. This echoes UK Conservative rhetoric – looking ever more threadbare as Reform progresses in the polls – as well as the argument originated by Ruth Davidson that a vote for any party other than the Scottish Tories lets in the SNP and the prospect of a second independence referendum.
But Indyref2 is no longer an issue – and the all-consuming fear of it has evaporated. Moreover, growing support for Reform in Scotland means that there are already constituencies, such as in Glasgow, where the reverse argument now applies: polling guru Sir John Curtice has recently written that a vote for the Tories instead of Reform there will be a “wasted vote”.
The First Minister is not the only one to have noticed that the Scottish Conservatives under Russell Findlay seem to want to copy Reform. Findlay has sought to style himself as a cheeky-chappie man of the people, proclaiming common-sense politics at every turn (although, of course, he doesn’t specify how that differs from”offering simple solutions”).
Russell’s persona may play well in Holyrood against the dour Swinney, but it will come seriously unstuck as an electoral strategy: at root, the Scottish Tories still seem to be harbouring a belief in Scottish exceptionalism. There are three specific problems. First, the strategy, if it is to be anything more than superficial rhetoric, will be at odds with the Remainer / One Nation Tory bias of the Scottish Conservative Party establishment.
Second, it ignores the appalling record of the UK Tories on immigration, Net Zero and high taxation and the loss of trust in the overall Tory brand this has engendered. It is pure fantasy to imagine that these issues, although they may vary in their valency in Scotland, do not prey on Scottish voters’ minds; Findlay will run into the same problems as Badenoch if he tries to U-turn on them.
Third, why vote for a Farage-wannabe and Reform-lite when you can have the real thing, not only free of the legacy of Westminster Tory government but also the Toxic Tory label in Scotland?
Whereas the Scottish Tories have been blindsided by Reform in Scotland, Scottish Labour seems, at least publicly, to be blinded. Responding to John Swinney’s interview about Reform, Deputy Party Leader Jackie Baillie said “the fact is that the failures of the SNP and the Tories are what has driven people to Reform”. The riposte is stunning given that Reform has plainly been taking votes off Labour in Scottish council by-elections and polling across the UK.
To be fair, the bubble of Holyrood-focused politicos and journos is even more inward-looking in Scotland than in England. Despite the electoral and polling evidence, they find it difficult to comprehend how wide Reform’s appeal could be in Scotland, resorting to bien-pensant sneering reminiscent of Remainer discourse about the “gammons” who wanted Brexit.
The seasoned commentator Kenny Farquharson is a prime example. In a recent piece for the Times, he writes:
“There is, for example, a kind of Scottish nationalist whose primary motivation is an unfocused rage. It is the root of their support for independence, but in truth it is more a question of personal disposition than political analysis. The rage comes first.
“The target for this rage might be Westminster, Brussels, Holyrood, Nicola Sturgeon or workers. The voter is as much a target for Farage as a Brexit-backing Tory or a socially conservative Labour supporter. [ …]
“Reform is an equal opportunities receptacle for whatever grievance happens to bubble up to the surface of your mind, however petty and ill-informed.”
Then Farquharson catches himself – “But there I go, adopting the sneering tone that is part of the problem to which Reform is touted as the answer” – as he disingenuously continues sneering.
What lies behind this is, of course, ignorance and prejudice about the vast majority of people, those who exist outside Farquharson’s cosy Holyrood club. The failure of imagination is equally evident when Farquharson diagnoses Reform’s “issues” in pitching to Scottish voters: party personnel, and in particular “the kind of racist lowlife who would get drummed out of any self-respecting bowling club”; a Scottish leader; and Reform’s position on the constitution.
None of these are problems. Reform UK is uniquely sensitive about its candidates being under the acutest of media spotlights and has instituted the most rigorous vetting of any UK political party. A Scottish leader is not needed at this stage, as Nigel Farage is Reform UK’s leader. Scottish spokespeople will be appointed and a Scottish party leader will emerge organically from the Reform candidates who win seats at Holyrood in 2026. As for the constitution, the clue is in the name: Reform UK. The party is unequivocally unionist; like so many, Farquharson finds it difficult to move on from the constitutional obsession which saturated every aspect of Scottish politics until Humza Yousaf’s resignation.
The eminent University of Edinburgh political scientist James Mitchell evinces a similar failure to get his head around the Reform phenomenon. Like Farquharson, he views it as a traditional, long-established political party when it is more akin to a popular movement and an emergent party which is professionalising at a record pace.
What is happening at grassroots level needs to be seen to be believed. Attending the Reform UK national conference in Birmingham in September, I was blown away by the energy, enthusiasm and heady optimism of the attendees. A veteran of many party conferences as a lobbyist, the closest I had seen hitherto was the welcome accorded to Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon at the 2014 SNP conference.
The Scottish Reform UK conference in Perth in November was no different. It was packed to the rafters (literally) by hundreds of people from all parties and none who were desperate for political change. Tellingly, much of the press focused on “no show Nigel” (yet it did not affect attendance as his appearance was never planned, being committed elsewhere already) – and the embarrassingly small but noisy protest in a cordoned-off area outside. Few reporters engaged with the magnitude of what was going on inside the George Hotel.
The inaugural branch meetings I have been to were better attended than many established party branches, and there are over twenty already planned across Scotland for January. But perhaps most revealing is how Scottish membership of Reform UK is soaring at the same rate as across the UK; the Scottish number is now in touching distance of 7,000, beating the 6941 members the Scottish Tories claimed in September (the Conservative Party’s number will have been an overestimate because its records about dead and lapsed members are incomplete).
Reform in Scotland is not only eating into support for Tory and Labour, but also the SNP, even if this has yet to make itself felt decisively in polling. As the nationalist Robin McAlpine recognised, Reform is filling the anti-establishment gap left by the failed independence project. The SNP as the party of independence opposed to Westminster owed much of its success to scooping up anti-establishment feeling. Now of course the SNP is the establishment par excellence, and its stagnation, failure and corruption after almost two decades of incumbency are evident wherever one looks in public services and administration. The nationalists have no more independence cards left to play.
If anyone stands back and looks at the bigger picture, by definition, only Reform UK can claim to be the genuine party of change – and it has only just started.
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Photo of Nigel Farage and Richard Tice speaking at at Reform conference.
