No two ways about it and no point pretending otherwise: Reform has had a good election. By mid-afternoon on Friday, the party had won nearly 900 seats. Predictions ahead of the local elections suggested they were on course for around 1,900 gains when all the results were in, and that currently seems about right.
Last year’s local elections saw them challenge the Tories by capturing traditional Tory shires. This year saw them take a shot at traditional urban Labour seats. In both cases, these are Leave-voting areas, with older, socially conservative voters who are primed for Reform support. The party demonstrated that it was able to take these seats as well.
The national equivalent vote projection (NEV), released moments ago by Sky News, paints a stark picture.
If this were a general election, Reform would win 284 seats, just 42 short of a majority. The Tories would win 96, meaning that a Tory-Reform coalition could form a government and I suspect probably would. The progressive parties would all be trailing, with Labour on 110, the Lib Dems on 80, the SNP on 36 and Plaid Cymru and the Greens on 13 each.
It seems as if a populist flood has submerged everything we once knew about British politics, as if this great and terrible wave is approaching and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. But in fact, Farage’s position is not as strong as the coverage suggests.
He benefits from the narrative of a favourable baseline. In 2022, the last time these seats were contested, Reform had only just been created. It gained exactly two seats in England. The headline results throughout Friday, then, seem hugely impressive, showing Reform up by hundreds of councillors compared to the Greens or the Lib Dems. But in fact this is a product of their youthfulness as a party rather than the extent of the triumph.
A deeper look at the NEV numbers is encouraging. Of course, the Reform performance is miles above its non-existent 2022 showing. But what happens if we compare its vote share with 2025, the last time we held local elections, when the party was an established force in British politics? It is actually slipping. Last year, it secured a vote share of 32 per cent. This year it is down five points to 27 per cent.
This confirms a recent trend in the polls. Reform was enjoying regular polling over 30 per cent in 2025, but this year has seen the party decline. The coverage from the press has been marginally less breathless. Farage made a severe misjudgement when he pushed for Britain to join the foolhardy American adventure in Iran. Questions are being raised over the £5m gift he received from a mysterious businessman based in Thailand. The party’s performance in local councils is predictably dire.
YouGov saw the party decline to 24 per cent, prompting the thin-skinned Farage to accuse the pollster of trying to “suppress the true figures”. But in fact other pollsters also saw the party’s support fall. Last month, More in Common, which had previously kept Reform on 30 per cent, saw a five-point drop for the party.
That fall in the party’s polling has now effectively been confirmed by the new NEV. Farage is still in the lead. He is still the one to beat. But now we can see that he is vulnerable and performing worse than he was this time last year. The party has a ceiling of around 30 per cent support and is currently in mild decline. It is beatable.
Local elections benefit Reform. They allow voters to go out and express their dissatisfaction without having to worry about who is going to end up in Downing Street. But that is not the case in a general election. In a general election, the prospect of Farage sitting down to his desk in No 10 will sharpen minds. He remains a deeply unpopular individual in this country, with approval ratings of -39, second only to Keir Starmer himself.
Even where voters have wanted to back a progressive candidate against Reform, as they did last year in the Caerphilly by-election, they have been unable to. It’s just not possible to work out who that candidate is.
Labour is hemorrhaging voters. The Greens have only recently begun to improve their performance and even then were derailed in a series of unforced errors over antisemitism.
But in the years ahead, the picture is likely to become clearer. Partly, that will be as a result of this election. Parties which come second in these races will use that to prove to voters that they are the best placed to take on Reform. These results are themselves the first step towards a future “stop Farage” strategy.
The polls are extremely volatile at the moment. People are desperate for change. This is the reason that Reform can skyrocket from their non-existent position four years ago to their leading one today. But that cuts both ways. It also means that progressive voters can coalesce quickly behind candidates who can halt the Reform wave.
One of Farage’s most effective tricks is to make his victory feel inevitable. It discourages his opponents and galvanises his allies. But Reform is eminently beatable. It is more vulnerable than it appears today. The electoral test the party faces in 2029 will be far harder than the one it faced this week.
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