Things are starting to get scary for the British Conservatives. Not only are they falling further and further behind the opposition Labor Party. A completely new danger has recently arisen for them on the right. The right-wing populist party Reform UK, founded by Nigel Farage, has begun to steal away massive numbers of voters.
And the next general election must be called by Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this year. They could be a disaster for the Conservative Party, which has always seen itself as Britain’s “natural governing party”.
Because of the peculiar majority voting system in the British Isles, it would be possible for Labor to get a two-thirds majority of the seats in the House of Commons. But the Tories’ real nightmare is that for the first time a party from the right is threatening them and undermining their base.
The new third force alongside Tory and Labor
In fact, the Conservatives have already slipped to below 24 percent in the polls, while the Reform Party is given 12 percent or more. This means that Reform UK has become the third largest party in the United Kingdom, ahead of the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.
And the trend continues. The party knows that because of the electoral rights it could attract millions of votes and still emerge from the election without a single representative. But the more the mood swings in their favor, the more dangerous the situation becomes for Sunak’s party.
For many observers, the whole thing has an almost curious side. Ultimately, the Reform Party is just a relatively inexperienced club with minimal resources that looks as if it is “run by half-amateurs from a pub,” scoffers have explained.
A prominent defector
But that does not affect the right-wing populists’ confidence that, as an anti-establishment force, they will find an ever stronger response in the electorate – and among the Tories themselves. Just this week, the Reform UK people found their optimism confirmed more than ever Tory MP Lee Anderson defected to them. After all, Anderson had recently been deputy general secretary of the Conservative Party. Sunak himself appointed him to this office.
The Prime Minister had hoped to use the gruff advocate of the death penalty, despiser of welfare recipients, refugee hater and staunch anti-European to involve corresponding constituencies in central and northern England. Only when Anderson announced that Sadiq Khan, the Muslim Labor mayor of London, was “controlled by Islamists” did Sunak go a bit too far.
That Monday, Anderson showed up at the Reform Party, where he was enthusiastically greeted by its chairman Richard Tice. With Anderson, Reform UK now has its first MP in the House of Commons – a speaker feared by his opponents and whose name everyone knows. With his criticism of migration, Anderson fits in perfectly with the right-wing populist party.
Migration is the top priority in the Reform Party’s program. Reform UK wants to stop all “non-essential” immigration to England and set up a special immigration department for this purpose.
“Nonsense” fight against climate change
The party also calls for Great Britain to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and for further radical implementation of Brexit. She believes the fight against climate change is senseless and calls for all relevant targets to be abandoned because they represent “an unfair burden” for taxpayers and consumers.
In general, the Reform Party stands for rapid tax reductions – especially when it comes to taxes that have to be paid by companies. This has already paid off on the donations front. The party received £200,000 last year from the benefices of climate change denier Terence Mordaunt, who previously supported the Conservatives. Another businessman, Jeremy Hosking, is also giving money to the Reform Party today instead of the Tories.
Well-heeled, as a real estate millionaire, Reform UK boss Richard Tice himself is of course well-heeled and is trusted by the British because of his prominent role in the Brexit campaign. Tice took over the leadership of the party in March 2021 from Nigel Farage, who had previously led the Independence Party (Ukip) and the Brexit Party and renamed the latter the Reform Party at the end of 2020 after Brexit. Its official name is now “Reform UK: The Brexit Party”.
Farage, who also works for the broadcaster GB News, is still the party’s honorary chairman – and Tice has left no doubt that he would give up his seat for Farage if he wanted to take over the party leadership again. No other politician on the British right has a profile like England’s top populist (read about Farage’s adventures in the jungle camp here).
So far, Farage is still hesitant. He is currently spending a lot of time in the USA again. This year he wants to help his “friend” Donald Trump win again. After all, he helped the Reform Party come up with a British version of the most successful of all Trump sayings. Namely the slogan “Make Britain Great”.
This article is originally published on msn.com
