Reform’s failing charade and the three pronged attack on Westminster rule
Speymouth
Perhaps Reform UK’s bubble is about to burst. Although the private company owned by Nigel Farage is still leading in the polls in England, the far right ghouls’ polling lead has been falling in recent weeks. On Tuesday the weekly Sky News poll from YouGov put Reform on 24% across the UK as a whole, down 2% from the company’s previous polling figure. This is the lowest figure for the Farage fan club since April last year. The Conservatives have risen by one point to 20%, while Labour has gained two points to reach 19%. The Liberal Democrats remain unchanged on 16%. The Greens have slipped back by two points to 14%. The SNP are on a remarkable 4% for a second week in this UK wide poll.
In Wales, Plaid Cymru have surged ahead of Reform, enjoying a lead of 14% over Reform in a Senedd poll for ITV, also conducted by YouGov. Plaid’s projected vote share has increased from 30% in the last equivalent poll in September, to 37%. Reform’s support has dropped in this poll from 29% in September to 23% now. For Labour, this poll is catastrophic, dropping to just 10%, the same as the Tories, both behind the English and Welsh Greens on 13%.
If repeated in May’s election this would give Plaid Cymru 45 seats in the 96 seat Senedd, Reform would be on 23, the Greens would win 11, Labour would be on 8, the Tories 6, and the Lib Dems 3. Plaid would be able to form a majority government in coalition with the Greens. Plaid seems to have broken through as the party which can beat Reform. This result would be a devastating psychological blow to Starmer’s continuing control of the Labour party. Labour’s loss of Scotland is already priced in, but Wales has been politically dominated by Labour for over a hundred years.
It’s a symptom of the intense malaise which now afflicts the Labour party that the man touted as Starmer’s most likely successor is the private healthcare companies’ pet politician Wes Streeting, who is if anything even further to the right than Starmer.
This means that following the Scottish and Welsh elections in May, if the polls are correct, both Scotland and Wales could be governed by majority coalition governments between their respective independence parties and Green parties which also support independence. The Welsh branch of the Green Party of England and Wales is in favour of Welsh independence seeing it as essential to the full development of Wales. While support for independence in Wales is at a lower level than it is in Scotland, interest in Welsh independence is growing and continues to rise.
Meanwhile the Stormont elections are due in 2027. Sinn Fein is currently favoured to form the next government, and should they do so pressure for a poll on Irish reunification would become irresistible. Within two years all the non-English parts of the UK could be governed by parties which favour independence from Westminster rule. Co-ordinated clamour from Belfast, Cardiff, and Edinburgh for referendums on the futures of the north of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland would be much harder for a weakened Starmer to resist, as would a co-ordinated approach from the devolved governments to push back against Westminster’s attempts to undermine or subvert the devolution settlement.
This would all come to a head following the next UK general election at which, on current polling, the SNP is set to trounce the anti-independence parties in Scotland. A seat projection from that YouGov poll would give the SNP 51 out of Scotland’s 57 Westminster seats with none for Reform the Lib Dems on 5, the Tories on 1 and Labour would be facing a 1997 Tory style extinction level event.
But there are some crumbs of comfort for Keir Starmer. It’s well known that Starmer is as popular as standing in dog crap in your bare feet, but another poll found that when asked to choose between Starmer and Farage as prime minister, 36% of respondents said they would prefer Starmer, easily beating the 29% who chose Farage.
Of course nothing can be taken for granted but it bodes well for the Holyrood election in May that Reform’s ‘insurgency’ shtick is already wearing thin. You cannot credibly claim to be the party which is going to shake things up in British politics when you are stuffed to the gills with the sleazy and out of touch Tories who were responsible for running the UK into the ground over the last sixteen years. No one is going to believe that former Tory chancellor and party chair Nadhim Zahawi is the face of a new politics. The exact same applies to former Tory peer Malcolm Offord, the man expected to be anointed on Thursday as Farage’s spokesghoul in Scotland. I won’t insult you by referring to him as Reform’s Scottish ‘leader’. Offord won’t be a leader, he has no independent authority, he’s Farage’s hand picked puppet. Reform doesn’t even bother with the pretence of internal party democracy.
Farage is even less popular in Scotland than he is across the UK as a whole, and that gives the SNP an invaluable weapon in the coming campaign. Offord may pose as a party leader but he has no mandate and no standing other than the deeply unpopular Farage hand picking him as the front man who will do his bidding in Scotland. He’s nothing more than Nigel’s little helper, a man utterly bereft of democratic legitimacy who has the nerve to claim he stands for democratic renewal.
Offord tried and failed to buy his way into Holyrood with the Tories so now he’s trying with Reform. Get in the sea. Vote Reform get Tory is literally true. Reform is stuffed full of opportunistic Tories who saw that the writing is on the wall for their former political vehicle. They are not defectors, they’re just defects. A party consisting of the dregs of the Tory party and apologists for Donald Trump will only produce a government even more chaotic and corrupt than the Tory administrations they were a part of not so long ago. Voters are increasingly seeing through Reform UK’s charade and the end of the UK is coming into focus.
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