Has Reform UK peaked?

At their most successful, political parties are broad coalitions. The objective is to win across a wide section of the country while being identified with a tangible political outlook. It’s when parties become too narrowly focused that they fail at this major objective. Or when a ‘wing’ is lost through a split. Among the several challenges facing Reform UK is the split with Rupert Lowe, who was elected as Reform MP in 2024 but formed the Restore Party after a fall-out, explicitly pitching to the right of Farage.  

This may have gone under the radar until now. But in two recent by-elections which Reform lost badly (Makerfield, Greater Manchester), Restore came third and fourth in a two-horse race – the 6.8% and 8.7% they picked up moved Reform from a decent ‘official opposition’ non-victorious performance to not-quite-close-enough. The effect of these losses is to undermine the idea of Reform as a government-in-waiting. A major policy announcement on Channel small boats yesterday was an attempt to wrest back the political narrative.   

The solution to a split? Moving in the other direction – a merger. Rupert Lowe made the first overture: could he and Farage put “personalities and our past disagreements aside…to cooperate collectively, destroy the looming leftwing alliance that will finish off what hope remains for this country.” Strong words accompanied by five conditions for cooperation. Farage publicly stated he had reached out to Lowe, but by the evening this had collapsed into an argument about the wording of a Whatsapp message between the two, although Lowe says the door is still open. 

Since Reform established consistent national polling leads, the question of how to deal with Reform has dominated the thoughts of the Labour Party. Starmer had a strategy of encouraging tactical voting against Reform, but couldn’t fulfil it. Andy Burnham’s ascension to Prime Minister provided an expected ‘bounce’ for the Party, but as pollster John Curtice pointed out this week “it’s not massive”. Labour is now ahead of Reform, but it is still “well adrift” of its 2024 election performance and according to Curtice, “still has a long way to go before it can face the prospect of fighting a general election with confidence.” Add to that, would Labour be in the lead at all were it not for Restore?  

As Burnham heads off on holiday, he has been confronted with his first difficult issues. At Dover, an interview on small boat crossings found him less assured than in his first week of announcements. Party management also rears its head on this issue almost above all else. Time will tell whether promoting “legal and safe routes” on parity with enforcement will be credible to the electorate. The PM did “do something” on early prisoner releases, removing a few types of convicts from the rolling programme to aimed at saving prisons from overcrowding. But some murderers will still be released after half their sentence. An easier process for the government with parliament in recess, one would think.  

This all begs the question, has Reform peaked? Like the Roman Empire, does it require constant victories to keep itself going? The Conservatives, the most successful broad coalition party of all time, must still play the long game. It too knows that the right must unite. It has lost the most from the rise of Reform and so has the most to gain from any fall. Being beaten into fifth place in Manchester (from second in 2024) might not have been the best indicator, but there’s a long way to go – unless Burnham moves to capitalise on his poll bounce with an early election.