Nigel Farage will face his biggest political test since the Brexit referendum at Thursday’s elections as his Reform UK party seeks to overturn the two-party Westminster establishment and build a base to bring populist governance to Downing Street.
Voters in England will head to the polls for the first time since last July on Thursday to decide the fate of over 1,600 council seats across 23 local authorities, six mayoralties, and the parliamentary constituency of Runcorn and Helsby.
The elections will allow citizens to give their verdict on the performance of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government and on the fledgling leadership of Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, who was installed at the helm of the traditional party of government last November in the wake of its disastrous defeat to Starmer at the general election.
However, perhaps most significantly, the local contests will mark the first major test for Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party as it seeks to demonstrate that it is ready for prime time and capable of challenging the neo-liberal Westminster duopoly at the national level. The stars are electorally aligned for Farage and Reform: the pressure is on as his new party reaches its now-or-never moment.
Shortly before the snap elections called by failed Conservative PM Rishi Sunak last year, Mr Farage came out of retirement from frontline politics to spearhead Reform’s campaign. Yet, with just several weeks to run, the upstart party had little time to build out a national campaign and chose instead to focus on establishing a “beachhead” in Parliament.
The party succeeded on that front, winning 14 per cent of the vote with over four million votes, placing it in third place behind Labour and the Tories, and sending five candidates to the House of Commons, including Mr Farage for the first time in his long political career. While the first-past-the-post system hindered Reform, allowing the fourth-place Liberal Democrats to pick up more seats, it provided Reform with a platform in London to wage its first real campaign for this week’s local elections and build a national party infrastructure.
Just ten months on and the party has done just that, establishing local offices across the country and managing to field candidates for over 99 per cent of all races this week, more than any other party in England. Meanwhile, the party’s message, focusing on the detrimental effects of mass migration and the failures of the neo-liberal parties to deliver prosperity for the working class of the country, Reform has shot to the top of the polls, consistently outperforming both Labour and the Tories at the national level.
Another great poll showing @reformparty_uk leading
— Richard Tice MP 🇬🇧 (@TiceRichard) April 30, 2025
If you want change, vote for it! https://t.co/YYa3g4E3W2
Reform’s rise has not been without its controversy, however. The party has faced criticism from the online populist right over moves to sideline fan-favourite figures, such as former deputy leader Ben Habib, after he failed to win a seat in parliament last year.
Popular Reform MP Rupert Lowe was also suspended in March amid allegations he threatened party chairman Zia Yusuf. The allegations emerged shortly after Lowe had publicly criticised Farage’s leadership style, leading some to suggest that he was ousted over concerns that Lowe might seek to take over the party, given support expressed for such a coup by X boss Elon Musk.
Mr Farage also faced criticism over an interview with GB News, in which he stated that he was not interested in launching a mass deportation campaign if Reform wins the 2029 general election.
Perhaps in a bid to assuage concerns, the Reform boss recently vowed that if elected PM, he would establish a Ministry of Deportations with the sole focus of removing the estimated million-plus illegals living in the country.
Despite the controversies, the party has not suffered in the polls, as it has successfully managed to pull supporters away from both major parties, by taking advantage of the failures by Labour and the Tories to stem the tide of mass migration or turn around the struggling British economy, effectively squandering the opportunities that the Brexit independence from the European Union affords the UK.
The political landscape, in which there appears to be little difference between the two major parties, has created an opening for Farage and Reform. Indeed, top British pollster Sir John Curtice said last week that the country is on the precipice of “the biggest challenge to the political conventions of British politics since the 1920s,” which marked the last time an establishment party— the Liberals —collapsed in favour of the insurgent Labour Party bolstered by the support of the working class.
Professor Curtice predicted that Reform will win upwards of a “few hundred” seats on Thursday, while other projections have the Tories potentially losing over 500 seats. Yet, it is possible that fear of Farage’s rise could incentivise leftist and centrist voters to cast ballots tactically to try to stymie Reform as is frequently done against populist parties throughout Europe.
Farage has previously led other national campaigns, such as the 2019 European Parliament elections, the victory in which ultimately precipitated the collapse of the Theresa May Tory government.
However, this week’s elections will be his biggest political test since the 2016 EU referendum. A significant win will be crucial for building the momentum necessary to undertake the Herculean task of dethroning the establishment and finally delivering on the promises of Brexit.
At the launch of the campaign last month, Mr Farage said: “Nobody is pretending that any of this is easy, it isn’t. We are taking on the vested interests, we are taking on the establishment. What we’ve done already is truly historic, but I believe in our potential as the voice of the silent, ignored, put-upon, and frequently insulted silent majority of this country. I believe that we are their voice, and I believe that we can make history in a way that perhaps has never been seen before.”