LONDON—Nigel Farage’s MAGA-inspired Reform party pulled off a political breakthrough in Britain on Thursday.
The populist right-wing party, which was only set up four years ago, was on course to win 13 seats in parliament, according to the exit poll. That would be a stunning turn-up for a party that was only expected to win two or three seats in total.
As the votes were counted it looked as though the exit poll may have overestimated their return across the country, but Farage easily won a seat in the House of Commons for himself, providing him a huge opportunity to spread his message.
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“My plan is to build a mass national movement over the course of the next few years and hopefully be big enough to challenge at the General Election properly in 2029,” he said in his victory speech. “This is just the first step of something that is going to stun all of you.”
Farage, an active supporter of former President Donald Trump who has campaigned with him for years, became a lawmaker in the “mother of parliaments” for the first time after seven previous failed attempts. Like in the United States, Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system makes it difficult for smaller and more radical parties to win seats compared to many other European nations. There is no history of a party on the radical right building a large presence in the British parliament.
Lee Anderson, another Reform candidate, also won a handsome victory and will join the party leader in Westminster, along with Rupert Lowe, guaranteeing at least three lawmakers.
Farage dreams of emulating Marine Le Pen in France and Georgia Meloni in Italy who have taken fringe populist parties and turned them into potential parties of government. In Meloni’s case, she has already succeeded and been elected prime minister. The French far-right will have their chance in elections this Sunday.
In an interview with The Daily Beast last week, Farage paid tribute to Trump—the undisputed leader of global populism—who looks on course for re-election, according to recent polls.
Not satisfied with conventional campaigning, Farage hit the pub to watch England play soccer in the Euros.
Oli Scarff / AFP via Getty Images“I think in terms of where the world is, and in terms of worries about war etc, I think he’s a very important figure,” he said. “We’re in the worst situation since the Cuban Missile Crisis… We’ve got war in the Middle East, a war in Ukraine, and who knows what’s going to happen in Taiwan? The world is not in a good place. And, you know, history teaches us that peace comes through strength, not weakness—and Biden, I’m afraid, ever since Kabul, has been a bit of a disaster.”
Trump returned the favor, taking to his Truth Social platform soon after the result to say: “Congratulations to Nigel Farage on his big WIN of a Parliament Seat Amid Reform UK Election Success. Nigel is a man who truly loves his Country!”
The surge in support for Reform, which was rebranded from the Brexit Party after Britain formally exited the European Union, has been a major contributory factor in the collapse of the ruling Conservative Party who were ousted by a Labour landslide Thursday.
Former Conservative voters on the Brexit wing of the party swung further right after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak failed to keep his promises on reducing immigration. Sunak’s abysmal election campaign, which included carelessly insulting Second World War veterans, also put off traditionalists. In many seats, splitting the right-wing vote was expected to hand victory to Labour over the Conservatives but a shock exit poll predicted that the party would win more than a dozen seats outright.
A former Conservative minister told The Daily Beast this week that his party would now have to resist grassroots’ pressure to merge with the Reform Party. “The only way for the Conservative Party to recover is to re-establish its intellectual credibility in the mid-right of British politics without the bigoted nastiness of much of Reform’s thinking,” he said. “If the Conservative Party becomes Reform under a different name, it’ll be dead forever.”
Farage rejected the idea that it was his party’s fault that the Conservatives had blown their majority in spectacular fashion after 14 years of chaotic rule.
“The Conservatives killed themselves already, completely killed themselves already,” he told The Daily Beast.
