In less than two months, the United Kingdom could become the latest country to embrace the right-leaning trend spreading throughout Europe.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party, aiming to replace the Conservatives as the dominant right-wing force in Britain, is surging in polls ahead of the May 1 local elections, where voters will decide over 1,500 council seats, six mayoralties, and eight unitary authorities.
If all goes according to Farage’s plan, U.K. voters will follow in the footsteps of Germany and other European countries where the dominant parties are increasingly viewed with suspicion by voters embracing more populist or right-wing movements. Should Reform perform well in May, it will receive vital momentum Farage needs to prove it is a credible party with power to shape Britain’s future.
Dr. Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, told the Washington Examiner that “given the Conservatives did really well in those seats last time they were contested and given how unpopular they and the Labour government are right now, Reform should make some serious gains.”
Reform has historically positioned itself primarily as the right-leaning antidote to Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party. Conservatives were the ruling party in the UK for over a decade before losing power to Labor last year. Dissatisfaction with the state of the country led to Conservatives’ steep losses in the 2024 elections when Labor gained steam and Reform received a record amount of support.
One political expert on Britain interviewed by the Washington Examiner suggested that the political momentum boosting Reform could be reduced now that Keir Starmer’s Labor Party is in power.
Farage capitalized on a referendum for change aimed against Conservatives, also known as the Tories, Dr. Cherrie Short, a senior fellow of global and community strategies at New York University, suggested.
With Labor fresh at the reigns and promising voters change from fourteen years of Conservative rule, Reform’s rise is uncertain as its cries for political revival are taken over by the Labor, Short argued.
“We have seen a rise in Nigel Farage. I mean, there’s no doubt about that, and there is still a level of uncertainty about him, right, [about] how he’ll do in this election. But his previous successes being around harnessing the support of voters were disillusioning, and I suppose the thought is, are those voters beginning to feel stronger now that the Labor Party is actually in government?” she questioned.
Still, a string of recent polls indicates enthusiasm for Reform outweighs support for Labour.
Farage’s party topped both the Labor and Conservative parties in polls for the first time ever in February. Another Spectator survey again confirmed Reform is Britain’s most popular party while an additional poll conducted in late February similarly had Reform leading at 27% ahead of Labour’s 26% and Conservative’s 22%.
In May, Reform “should do well if they are to maintain the sense of momentum that their poll rise has given them in recent weeks,” Bale said, noting that the local election primarily represents a “barometer of public opinion.”
Short is less confident Reform will deal Labour a blow now that the Tories, or Conservatives, are out of power.
“My view is that Nigel Farage will struggle, but he will gain, he’ll gain some, you know, he’ll pick up because, you know, the Tory party is weak now, so he will, I think he’ll pick up some of the seeds, perhaps. But at the same time, I think that the Labor Party is quite strong this particular time,” she said.
Yet, another recent poll gave Farage the highest net favorability rating of any major political leader while Labour leader Keir Starmer came in last.
BMG pollster Oliver White told I-Paper, which conducted the poll, that concerns over immigration, crime, and the cost of living are fueling Reform’s rise — issues that similarly boosted the right-leaning Alternative for Germany in recent elections, challenging the country’s leading parties, the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party.
“Inasmuch as people are preoccupied with migration and the failure of the mainstream, more centrist, technocratic parties to deliver economic prosperity, there are clear similarities,” Bale said of comparisons between rising support for Reform and Germany’s AfD.
On Friday, Reform sought to capitalize on data released by the British government showing the economy had unexpectedly contracted in January, marking the latest downturn in the country’s struggle to avoid another recession.
“Labour are making us poorer. Britain’s economy needs Reform,” the X account for Farage’s party posted in response to the news.
Like Germany’s AfD, Farage has denounced record levels of “uncontrolled” immigration, arguing that it has overwhelmed the country’s infrastructure, including housing and the National Health Service.
In 2023, more than a quarter, or over $4.6 billion of all UK overseas aid was spent on asylum costs — a 16% increase from the previous year. The country diverted over $1 billion from its foreign aid budget to pay for asylum seekers last October. Reform has also criticized the cost of the asylum system, which includes items such as housing migrants in hotels. Those costs rose under Labour’s leadership to over $5.8 billion in 2024, marking an increase of 36% over the previous year.
Similar anti-mass migration rhetoric proved popular with German voters in February, and Bale believes the same could prove true for Britain in May.
“Voters are frustrated with the two main parties and are looking to give both of them a good kicking,” he said. “Reform currently seems like the best way of doing that — plus it sends a signal that they want an even harder line taken on immigration.”
The flurry of polls favoring Farage’s party at the start of the year came after Reform secured historic levels of support during the UK’s 2024 general election, winning five seats and securing more than four million votes, or 14.3% of the popular vote, up from 5.1% in 2019.
The election showcased tanking levels of support for enthusiasm for the Conservatives, a discontent that is mirrored in Andrea Jenkyns’s bid in the inaugural Greater Lincolnshire mayoral race in May. Jenkyns was a conservative MP before leaving the party in November 2024 to join Reform, a party she hoped could bring “could bring a “fresh start.”
“I was elected as a Conservative, and I got knocked out as a Conservative, but I feel, unfortunately, the party has become tired,” she said, adding that Conservatives were “beyond salvage.”
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Whether or not Reform wins at the ballot box in May, the local elections are important because they “demonstrate how people are actually thinking in their community,” Short said.
The May elections mimic the United States’s midterm elections, the professor said. Short added that although they’re not parliamentary elections where people vote for the prime minister and other high-level leaders, they are just as crucial because “they are demonstrating how your party is actually working in communities, and that’s very important, because the community has a voice, and they’ll voice that in those elections.”
