The rise of Nigel Farage in the UK

The rise of Nigel Farage in the UK

Despite winning a landslide victory just over a year ago, the Labour government in the UK is already in deep polling trouble, with plenty of speculation over the leadership of PM Keir Starmer. At the same time, polling for far-right party Reform UK and leader Nigel Farage has rocketed up. So in this Squiz Shortcut, we’ll take a look at:

• what’s behind Starmer’s fall in support and Farage’s rise

• and what might happen next

Prefer to listen or watch?

Listen to Andrew Williams and Claire Kimball cover this topic in this Squiz Shortcut podcast episode, or check it out on YouTube - and hit subscribe while you’re at it.

Listen time: 12 minutes

Squiz the Shortcut

The electoral victory of Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour Party last year was big news last year…
It sure was… After 14 years of Conservative Prime Ministers, Labour - which is on the centre-left side of politics - had its first UK Prime Minister since Gordon Brown in 2010. And it was the scale of the victory that made it extra significant.

Why was that?
There are 650 seats in the UK’s lower house, and Labour won 411 of them. With a victory like that, you might expect Labour would be set up for a long time in power. But there are a few things worth noting about the victory. 

What should I know about it?
First of all, the UK has a different political system from Australia. It uses first-past-the-post voting instead of preferential voting. Voters only select one candidate, and whoever gets the most votes wins. 

What impact does that have?
It makes it tough for third parties to play a role in government because they need to win a high percentage of the vote in a lot of seats. For an established party like Labour, though, it can win a lot of seats in the House of Commons (where the government is decided) without winning a huge amount of the vote - it just has to get more than anyone else. 

Is that what happened last year?
Yep… In fact, they won 33.7% of the vote - the lowest amount of the electoral vote won by any government since 1830, back when records started. So the amount of seats was huge, but not the amount of votes, meaning that while Starmer and Labour’s victory was very broad, it was also shallow.

Just explain that a bit more…
Well, it means they don’t have the depth of support there. So, if their first year went badly, it could spell trouble for Starmer’s leadership and the party’s chances at the next election. And that’s what we’re seeing play out…

What’s been happening in the UK?
Recent polling shows Starmer is one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers on record. Depending on the poll, the amount of British people who disapprove of his performance is in the high 60s or low 70s. That makes him not only unpopular on a record scale in the UK, but also one of the most unpopular leaders in the Western world, second only to French President Emmanuel Macron. 

Why have things gone pear-shaped?
It’s in part because they’ve faced problems on both their left and right. A recent promise to increase defence spending at around the same time as cutting welfare payments didn’t go down well, and neither did a decision to axe winter fuel payments for pensioners - something they’ve been forced to back down on.

What else?
The party might also need to renege on a 2024 election promise that they wouldn’t increase taxes. They’ve also had to deal with the resignations of key members of the party - 7 Labour MPs have left since the party came to government. That’s all created a general sense of chaos and loss of confidence in the government and Starmer specifically.  

Why does this spell trouble for Starmer’s leadership?
Because all of the MPs that were elected last year - remember most had small shares of the vote and very thin majorities - are staring down the barrel of losing their seats if the government’s performance and polling don’t improve. And as a result, Labour MPs are getting very restless, very quickly. 

How many MPs are needed to force a leadership spill?
In UK Labour, only 20% - so that’s about 80-odd MPs. In comparison, Australian Labor now requires 60% (former PM Kevin Rudd changed the rules to avoid a repeat of the tumultuous Rudd/Gillard/Rudd years we experienced between 2007 and 2013). 

So where has Labour’s support gone?
The Green Party has been a recipient of some of those votes, but this is where a man called Nigel Farage - and a party called Reform UK - comes into the picture. 

Tell me about Nigel Farage…
If you’ve heard of him before, it’s most likely because he was one of the key voices behind the Brexit referendum in 2016, where there was an upset victory for the campaign he supported for the UK to leave the European Union. That’s a whole rabbit hole we could go down, but instead, let’s have a look at his background…

OK… Where is he from?
He was born in 1964 and raised in a village in Kent. His father was a stockbroker, and he originally went into trading as his career too. As far as his political career goes, he was a member of the Conservative Party initially, but switched to Ukip -  the UK Independence Party on the right of the Conservatives on the political spectrum in 1993, and was elected to the European Parliament in 1999.

Wasn’t he against the UK’s involvement in the European Union?
Yep, and this all came to a head in 2016, the year of the Brexit referendum. The leave vote - Farage’s side - won that referendum, leading to the UK starting a process of exiting the EU that lasted around 4 years. 

Was that a big win for him?
It was a huge political victory, and it essentially cost then-PM, David Cameron, his job. A few years after that, Farage formed the Brexit Party to try to capitalise on the success of the Brexit vote. The party was influential in terms of Brexit, but because of that electoral problem we mentioned earlier, it seemed unlikely to win seats in parliament. Then he left politics for a while.

What did he do?
He stayed on in an honorary role as head of the Reform UK party (formerly the Brexit Party), but he believed he could influence policy through media roles. He became a talk show host on the conservative news network GBNews, and he also competed in a season of the reality TV show I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here (in the Oz bush, no less), where he finished third. Soon after that, he came back as the leader of Reform. 

What is Reform’s platform?
It still has reducing immigration - one of the key issues that led to the Brexit vote - as a priority, but it’s also firmly against a net zero emissions target, and it wants to reduce government spending. 

Is it winning voters over?
Yep… Farage says he’s speaking to voters in a way that the political establishment can’t - that’s something analysts say is a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook, and it appears to be working… 

How is it performing in the polls?
In a recent Ipsos poll, Reform won 33% of the vote, which is well above Labour’s 18% and the Conservative Party’s 16%. The problem that a third party has traditionally faced - not having a chance to win enough seats in government due to falling short of the main parties - is, at the moment at least, not such a hurdle. 

What have the conservative party (or the Tories) been doing?
That party was in government for 14 years, but after a couple of disastrous final years with short-lived PMs including Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, they’re now led by Kemi Badenoch. She hasn’t had much of an impact so far and has struggled to lift her party’s vote. 

So, what’s next?
Well, the deadline for the next election is August 2029 - that’s a long time for Reform to keep up its momentum. The UK has 5-year term limits, but the PM can choose to call an election much earlier than that, similar to how it works here in Australia. Then there’s the question of whether Reform will lift its polling numbers even higher. But the most pressing question is whether Starmer will hold on to his leadership. 

Who is in the wings to challenge him?
A bunch of potential challengers have been discussed - everyone from more conservative/centrist Health Minister Wes Streeting to the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham (who doesn’t even have a seat in the parliament as it stands). But all of those challengers may well face the same problems as Starmer - and with such a long deadline until the next election, now might not be the best time to strike. 

What are some key dates to keep in mind?
There’s a series of local government elections in the UK next May that might give some clues as to how the government could fare in a national vote. If the results are poor and polling results haven’t improved, that’s when the pressure might be even more intense on Starmer - if he’s still PM, which is far from a given.

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Onto our Recommendations

Watching: This video from TLDR News - a video news channel in the UK - which explains why young people in particular have left the Labour party and are increasingly turning their support towards both Reform and the Green Party in the UK.

Reading: This piece from The Conversation that explains why Starmer’s government has hit such turbulence, and what might happen next. 

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