Reform Are Riding High In The Polls, So Why Are They Having A Meltdown?

Reform UK should be flying high right now.

Less than a month ago, Nigel Farage’s party won almost 1,500 new councillors in England’s local elections, became the second largest group in the Welsh parliament and broke through in Scotland by securing the same number of seats as Labour in Holyrood.

The party has also held onto a very comfortable lead in the last 300 national opinion polls, despite having just eight MPs.

And on June 18, Reform could very well strike a shattering blow to Labour by winning the Makerfield by-election.

Voters in the seat returned Reform councillors in all eight of its council wards, and two-thirds of them voted Leave in the Brexit referendum a decade ago.

Of course, they have to contend with the fact that the Labour candidate is the highly-popular Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, who is currently the bookies’ favourite to become the constituency’s new MP.

The by-election was triggered by ex-minister Josh Simons, who took the unusual step of resigning as Makerfield’s MP to give Burnham a path to parliament.

If he wins the seat, he is expected to stage a coup to oust Keir Starmer and become Britain’s new prime minister.

The first opinion poll of the by-election, from Survation, gave Burnham a lead of just three points over Reform’s Robert Kenyon, a deficit which the right-wing party should be confident of overturning in the next two weeks.

Yet something strange is happening within Reform.

Party leader Farage, normally at the forefront of UK politics, has become unusually camera-shy.

He has not held any press conferences or agreed to any TV interviews recently, and has even missed the last 77 votes in parliament.

Aside from an “emergency” 10-minute YouTube statement on the Henry Nowak murder, and one brief appearance in the Commons to criticise what he says is “two-tier policing” in Britain, Farage has mostly avoided the spotlight.

His absence comes after the parliamentary watchdog announced it was investigating the £5 million donation Farage received from a Thailand-basedf crypto billionaire just before he decided to run to be an MP in 2024.

The Clacton MP failed to declare the lump sum when he was elected, but insists that he is not guilty of any wrongdoing.

Reform’s other senior politicians seem to be struggling, too.

The party’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf publicly humiliated Reform’s Treasury spokesperson Robert Jenrick for getting their deportation policy wrong.

Yusuf is also using increasingly aggressive language online, calling Labour and Conservative politicians “traitors” – even though more than 20 ex-Tory MPs have defected to Reform’s ranks.

To make matters even worse, Reform’s Makerfield candidate Robert Kenyon has been attracting the wrong kind of publicity in recent weeks after his deleted-social media history was unearthed.

It emerged he had shared a series of sexist, anti-vax, anti-abortion and pro-Russia comments online over the years – including lewd remarks about presenter Carol Vorderman and confusing statements about whether he even voted for Brexit himself.

The party has tried to do damage control, insisting that it does not care about “establishment hit jobs”, but Kenyon was barely able to defend himself in a car crash  interview with the BBC’s Chris Mason.

Meanwhile, Reform is also worried by the rise of right-wing splinter party Restore Britain, which is led by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe.

The Great Yarmouth MP has developed a cult following online with his extremist anti-migrant policies.

Reform is undoubtedly rattled, and has warned voters in Makerfield that a vote for Restore risks letting Burnham in through the back door.

Farage’s party is also taking a noticeably tougher line on immigration and so-called “anti-white prejudice” in an apparent attempt to win back voters tempted to switch to Restore.

In this week’s Commons People podcast, we examine what this all means for Reform’s future and assess whether bit will scupper the party’s chances of a historic victory in Makerfield.

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