Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music With Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party suffering some teething problems, host Patrick Baker delves into the art of starting a new political outfit. Corbyn himself speaks to POLITICO’s Bethany Dawson at one of the many Your Party regional assemblies happening across the country. With tensions between Corbyn and co-leader Zarah Sultana simmering as the duo try to get their start up off the ground, Labour insider Sienna Rodgers of The House magazine explains the roots of the discord and how rival factions have been undermining the party’s progress at an early stage. Patrick sits down with former Change UK MP Gavin Shuker in Nando’s, site of one of the now-extinct party’s early summits, to discuss the pitfalls of starting a new venture in Westminster. Journalist Catherine Mayer, who co-founded the Women’s Equality Party alongside comedian Sandi Toksvig, lifts the lid on the curious underworld of smaller political parties and the outsized impact they can have on our politics. Professor Alan Sked, the founder of UKIP, tells the story of arguably the U.K.’s most consequential political newbie and describes how he slowly lost control of the party to Nigel Farage. And Reform UK board member and Farage’s former press secretary Gawain Towler sets out how he believes the U.K.’s current insurgent can complete its journey from newcomer to party of power.

LONDON — Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is being advised by a think tank which denies the science of climate change and claims the U.K. government wants to use electric vehicles to control its citizens. Lois Perry, U.K. and Europe director of the Heartland Institute think tank, told attendees at Reform’s annual conference last week that she was “very grateful to be able to consult and influence the Reform Party at the highest level.” The Heartland Institute confirmed to POLITICO this week that it has “held conversations with policymakers within Reform UK.”   The Institute — which is closely aligned with U.S. President Donald Trump’s anti-climate policies — has cast doubt on global warming and branded climate change policies a “hoax” and a “scam.”  Earlier this year it backed Trump’s decision to pull out of the U.N. Paris Climate Agreement and to roll back Joe Biden-era clean energy projects.  The organization was invited to an event in the White House Rose Garden when Trump announced plans to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement during his first term in office in 2017.  “The reality is this, we’re not facing a climate crisis,” the organization’s President James Taylor told a Heartland-sponsored fringe event at Reform’s party conference in Birmingham Saturday.  Lois Perry told Reform’s chairman Zia Yusuf on a Heartland online show that she had talked the party’s Deputy Leader Richard Tice into ditching net zero policies. | Carl Court/Getty Images He added: “We cannot have a climate crisis predicated on the notion of global warming when temperatures remain unusually cold.”  The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is unequivocal that human-induced climate change is “already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe.”  The organization launched its U.K. and EU arm in December, at a London event attended by Farage as well as former Prime Minister Liz Truss.  A spokesperson for Reform UK did not deny that the party had been in discussions with Heartland. “Reform UK meets with organisations from across the political spectrum with the view of developing a wide-ranging policy platform,” they said.  ‘HAVE A LOOK AROUND YOU’  Speaking at the same conference fringe event, Perry — a former leader of UKIP — said: “There’s nothing wrong with CO2. CO2 is not a pollutant.”   She said that government net zero policies are “bad for the environment” and had been introduced “to control us. It’s to tax us. It’s to take our money and it’s to take our liberty.”  Perry added: “They want us in electric cars. Electric cars can be remotely controlled. Again, not a conspiracy theory. These cars can be shut down.   “Imagine during Covid. Imagine your car is disabled remotely. You have no control over it, because it’s an electric car. And that’s if you can afford an electric car. There’s a reason why this neo-Marxist, communist, shambolic government wants us in electric cars. It is so that we have no freedom whatsoever.”  One person linked to the Reform-friendly Centre for a Better Britain think tank said it had not yet met Heartland but would be happy to do so.  Earlier this month, Perry told Reform’s chairman Zia Yusuf on a Heartland online show that she had talked the party’s Deputy Leader Richard Tice into ditching net zero policies. “In that case, hats off and credit to you too,” Yusuf replied.  Reform has pledged to scrap the U.K.’s net zero target, promising this will bring down sky-high household energy bills. Reform UK seeks to professionalize and present itself as a party ready for government. | Leon Neal/Getty Images This February, Farage also told an event it was “absolutely nuts” to claim CO2 was a pollutant. In 2024 he said he didn’t want to get into “any debate on the science.” Tice has expressed views at odds with climate science. He owns a Tesla electric car, which he describes as an “amazing piece of kit.”  It comes as Reform UK — consistently topping the national polls — seeks to professionalize and present itself as a party ready for government. “I promised you a year ago, I would professionalize the party. Have a look around you,” Farage told conference attendees in his speech Friday.   Pollsters warned there were electoral risks for Reform in engaging with climate denial groups, at a time when voters are wary of all politicians’ aims with regard to net zero. “The primary focus for all voters is energy costs,” said Julian Gallie, head of research at Merlin Strategy. “However, pursuing an anti net zero agenda motivated explicitly by climate skepticism can be as deep a turn off as those who are pursuing a net zero target regardless of price costs.” Additional reporting by Dan Bloom.

BIRMINGHAM — It had suits, wonks, outriders, sponsors, lobbyists, receptions, and a rapidly-growing party flock. But Reform UK’s conference remained in many ways the Nigel Farage show. From the scrum around the populist leader to the teal “No. 10” football shirts in his name, Farage — a 30-year veteran of right-wing insurgency — dominated. He filled most of the hall at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre for his Friday speech, despite a last-minute timing change. Much of Reform’s runaway lead in U.K. opinion polls is down to one man’s charisma. “It’s like going on tour with the Pope,” said one party figure, granted anonymity (like other officials and politicians quoted in this piece) to speak candidly. But to survive in government, Reform will need more. And Farage, who turns 65 in 2029, knows it. He and his allies are now conspicuously trying to emphasize that Reform is not just about him. Attendees could barely move for talk of new party structures and policy fringes. Farage tries to farm out media interviews and visits to his allies, particularly his deputy Richard Tice and new Head of Policy Zia Yusuf (neither of whom have ruled out eyeing the job of chancellor). Yet Farage’s word is still gospel. The leader personally pushed to have Aseem Malhotra, an adviser to Trump’s Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, on the conference’s main stage due to his links with the U.S. administration, one party figure said. Malhotra then used the platform to suggest Covid vaccinations may have caused King Charles’ cancer (Reform distanced itself from his comments). Like the MAGA movement — reflected in the conference’s “Make Britain Great Again” caps, stage pyrotechnics and talk of the death of the old right — Reform is still vested in an ultra-high-profile figurehead. But Britain does not have presidents, and Downing Street has far fewer political appointees than the White House. Reform must prepare for a system that is bigger than the principal. That begins, for now, with policy. THE SMALL TENT Reform now has three fully-fledged paid policy officials, said a party figure, including Simon Marcus, a former Tory councilor in London. This is a small number for a party hoping to reach government, though soon he will have more backup. Reform is recruiting at least four more paid policy officials, several officials told POLITICO, including two on central policy and one each for Scotland and Wales ahead of devolved elections in May 2026. There are unpaid officials too, such as Yusuf, and the party relies on enthusiastic volunteers. In Scotland, where the party does not yet have a paid policy official, party figures pointed to an unpaid activist as the main backroom thinker on policy (as part of a committee). Neil Hall/EPA Broadly speaking, though, the circle of people in the room for key decisions is small. As well as key elected representatives and Yusuf, Reform figures who were asked by POLITICO pointed to Farage’s Director of Communications and effectively his chief of staff Dan Jukes; long-time Farage ally and strategist Chris Bruni-Lowe; Director of Operations Aaron Lobo; and Reform Director of Communications Ed Sumner. A second Reform figure described Farage’s core team as “very tight.” A third Reform figure suggested four people plus Farage were in the room at key moments, adding: “Ultimately Nigel is the leader and he makes the decisions.” Yusuf told a conference event that Reform’s recent immigration policy — a sprawling pledge that would lead to around 600,000 deportations — was drawn up “entirely in-house.” On policy, though, Reform figures are keen to show that they know they’ll need a wider pool of thinkers. “Our biggest weakness is we have no experience in government,” said a fourth Reform figure. “We have no one that knows the ropes.” Sometimes it seems to show. Farage’s big announcement in his Friday speech, to stop migrant boat crossings in the English Channel “within two weeks of winning government,” became “within two weeks of legislation being passed” by the time he gave press interviews Saturday. Tory strategists are separately keen to pick at what they paint as fiscal incoherence in Farage’s call to ease a two-child limit on benefits — a pledge that emerged from his desire for more British babies — at the same time as “serious cuts” to the welfare budget. A fifth Reform figure argued the leader is a factor: “Nigel’s not a huge policy guy,” they said. “Nigel’s role is to drive the party forward, to inspire the ranks.” AND SO, ENTER THE WONKS Reform’s nine-member party board met for the first time last week. It consists of Farage, Yusuf, chairman David Bull, racehorse trainer Andrew Reid, the former leader of UKIP (Reform’s predecessor party) Paul Nuttall, ex-GB News presenter Darren Grimes, regional mayor Andrea Jenkyns, former Tory Greater Manchester mayoral candidate Dan Barker, and Farage’s former press chief Gawain Towler. Yusuf, who Farage named as head of policy on Friday, told a fringe event that board will have a “subordinate committee” that essentially “rubber-stamps” party policy. Then there is a nascent ecosystem of think tanks including the Reform-friendly Centre for a Better Britain (referred to verbally by supporters as CFABB). Its chief executive Jonathan Brown — Reform’s former chief operating officer — meets Tice roughly every couple of weeks, said a person with knowledge of the meetings. While the group declined to say who funds it, a document leaked to the Sunday Times suggested it wanted to raise more than £25 million by 2029 — much of it from the U.S. (A CFABB official insisted to POLITICO that all current donors are either British or reside in Britain.) The chair of its advisory board, James Orr, has been a friend of U.S. Vice President JD Vance since 2019. Neill Hall/EPA But CFABB also has a British flavor — as a home for Brexit warriors of old. Veteran Tory Euroskeptic John Redwood is helping with some of its work. Christopher Howarth, the former fixer for the Tory European Research Group, is one of its seven or so current staff. Brown is in a WhatsApp group with right-wing Conservative peers, including Boris Johnson’s former Brexit negotiator David Frost. And his fellow CBB director David Lilley — who has donated more than £250,000 to Reform — previously funded Johnson and the Vote Leave campaign. A CAST OF THOUSANDS Yusuf told members he will take the “best ideas” from right-wing think tanks — others include the Prosperity Institute (formerly known as Legatum) and the Taxpayers’ Alliance — at the same time as building out internal policy. But at other times they will disagree. Brown has also met Robert Jenrick, the ambitious Conservative shadow minister who is pushing on law and order. Reform is keen to stress that CFABB is independent of the party. Reform is involving its own MPs (Richard Tice, Lee Anderson and Sarah Pochin) in policy development, while Farage is also leaning on outsiders with real-world experience such as detective Colin Sutton and prison governor Vanessa Frake. Yusuf told a fringe event: “We have draughtsmen working on legislation. We will have thousands of pages of legislation ready to go.” Reform can rely too on its growing pool of elected officials in councils and mayoralties across England — expected to increase dramatically after May 2026 elections in Scotland and Wales. Yet this growing cast leaves some of Reform’s own foot soldiers in the dark. Helen Manson, interim chair of the South Cambridgeshire branch, told Yusuf — who focuses both on red meat policies such as migration and his personal interests like cryptocurrency — that she receives many questions on the doorstep about whether the party is ready for government. “We don’t know what Reform is doing. We can’t respond to that,” she said. Lobbyists at the conference for the first time felt similarly. One industry figure complained that Tice, when holding private business round tables, tends to lay out his “talking points” but does not respond well to challenge. A second said: “It was obvious that a small group of think tanks are currently the only engine room for ideas beyond Reform’s pet interests.” Speaking to POLITICO, Brown said: “You can’t really judge them on the policy for the next election because it’s early days. I think the idea is to build out a full and integrated policy platform and an implementation strategy before the next election.” But some senior Reform-linked figures resist opening the conversation too widely — as the center would lose control. Orr told a fringe event: “Don’t underestimate how much effect a small band of dedicated people in the cockpit of the nation can do.” Orr looked to an unlikely comparison — what he called Tony Blair’s “catastrophic and extremely consequential” Labour government in 1997. That, argued Orr, was run by “a gang of six … [and] they completely overturned the constitutional, legal, political and cultural landscape of the U.K. for 25 years. In fact, we’re going to spend the best part of the next 15 years trying to unravel it.” NO SUCCESSION PLAN? Small team or not, the importance of elevating the background players out of Farage’s shadow isn’t just desirable for Reform — it’s existential. When Farage denied on stage that his party is a “one-man band,” he used the example of the branded football shirts in the conference shop — pointing out that several other party figures had their names on shirts as well. Tellingly, when POLITICO visited the shop, only the “Farage” shirts were filling the shelves. An announcement that Farage was to sign shirts for 45 minutes (price for a signed shirt: £100) caused a jolt of excitement in the venue. More importantly, it was Farage’s return to the party last year that turbocharged its (already healthy) poll rating, and has senior Reform figures beginning to eye up which Whitehall department they would like to lead. Contrary to protestations by Farage’s allies, aides and the man himself, the party is still tied closely to him — to the point where some in Reform darkly wonder how the party would survive if he suddenly wasn’t on the scene. “If something happens [to Nigel] now, we’re fucked,” a Reform candidate in the last election said. In four years “maybe we’d be fine,” they said, but right now “there’s no one else with the charisma or the ability to pull people together.” Towler, his longtime former aide, has a more nuanced view. “There is nobody else in Britain who can do what he does,” he said, but “there is a bunch of driven people who want to change the country and I think they would still do it without him. It would be awful and it would be harder, but I really think the mood of the country is so febrile and so anti-the last two, that we need change. Nigel is a vector for that change — he’s not the only vector.” Farage is keen for the public to agree. He closed the conference by inviting all the main speakers for an on-stage singalong of the U.K’s national anthem led by the Greater Lincolnshire Mayor Andrea Jenkyns — who had earlier surprised attendees with a solo musical performance of her own-self written song Insomniac. The hope in Reform circles is that by boosting those around him, Farage will create figures substantial enough to be major players in a future government, while also reducing the party’s reliance on his oratory and leadership skills. “I think Reform is coming out of Nigel’s shadow to some extent,” said Brown. “All of a sudden there’s a raft of elected officials who are there. Are any of them Nigel yet? No, of course not. But Nigel has had 30 years so it’s very unfair to pick the consummate performer of his generation and say ‘why aren’t you like him?’ Nigel wasn’t like that in 2005.” Others point out that Farage, despite being electoral dynamite, remains a Marmite figure with harder-to-reach sections of the electorate. “Yes he’s a brilliant communicator and no one’s doubting that, but he’s a known quantity and a lot of voters don’t like him,” said one Labour Party official. Then there is the question of whether Farage — who spent years in lucrative TV work — really wants the grim responsibilities of being prime minister at all. His allies insist he does. Towler said: “He made a decision last year to get back involved. Is it his want, is it his ambition? Really, I don’t think it is. But does he think he’s the only person to break the duopoly of failure in this country? Yes. And he takes that responsibility deeply seriously.” Wherever things go from here, though, Farage remains a godhead for now — sometimes quite literally. “His body is stronger than anybody else’s,” said a sixth Reform figure, when asked about what the party would be without him. “He’s survived a plane crash and everything.” Some Reform figures are daring to dream of the party’s fortunes as similarly immortal. But things don’t always work out that way. John Johnston and Abby Wallace contributed reporting.

LONDON — Nigel Farage is gambling that a hardline stance on migration is a surefire vote-winner. But it’s a risky bet. Amid a spate of protests outside hotels housing some of Britain’s asylum seekers, Farage’s insurgent Reform UK party faces a dilemma. Should it condemn the demos and disappoint voters on the right? Or lean in — and risk alienating the more moderate voters who are now powering its rise? Reform UK’s base is increasingly mirroring the average Briton, according to fresh polling from the think tank More in Common. Just 40 percent of its current supporters backed the party in 2024, and just 16 percent of its current backers once voted for Farage’s old outfit, UKIP. Its gender gap has narrowed, its age profile has evened out, and many of its newest recruits are less glued to online culture wars. That makes Reform’s growth, in the pollsters’ words, both “a blessing and a curse.” The broader the party gets, the greater the risk of being defined by its more radical supporters — and losing the very voters Farage has worked to bring in. Members of the far-right have egged on protests outside the Bell Hotel in Epping. What began as a local protest quickly drew in the Homeland party — a breakaway from Britain’s biggest far-right group, Patriotic Alternative — alongside Britain First, and hard-right agitator Tommy Robinson. So far, Reform has backed the right to protest — Farage described people protesting as “genuinely concerned families,” and insisted that violence was caused by “some bad eggs.” “We don’t pick and choose the protest,” his Deputy Leader Richard Tice told POLITICO in an interview. “We don’t choose to support some and not others. We just say lawful, peaceful protest is an important part of a functioning democracy.”  DISTANCE But it’s a careful line for a party that has spent the past year trying to sharpen its operation — tightening vetting rules for candidates and putting distance between itself and overt racism. “They’ve drawn a clear line when it comes to distancing themselves from Tommy Robinson,” said Marley Morris, associate director for migration, trade and communities at the Institute for Public Policy Research. So far, Reform has backed the right to protest — Nigel Farage described people protesting as “genuinely concerned families,” and insisted that violence was caused by “some bad eggs.” | Neil Hall/EPA “That’s actually come at quite significant costs for Nigel Farage, because of its consequences for his relationship with Elon Musk.” The Tesla owner has been a staunch online backer of Robinson, who was jailed in the UK for contempt of court after he repeated false claims about a Syrian schoolboy. Farage — whose party descends on Birmingham for its annual conference this weekend in a jubilant mood — is riding high in the polls, and will be buoyed by polling that consistently puts migration at or near the top of Brits’ list of concerns. But the summer of tense protests risks complicating matters, according to some British commentators. Farage “feels under pressure from the online right,” argued Sunder Katwala, director of the British Future think tank. Over the past month, Reform has doubled down on its anti-immigration pitch — in language critics say edges closer to the far-right. In August, Tice told Times Radio that there should be more groups of men on a “neighborhood watch-style basis within the bounds of the law” to protect women from the “sneering, jeering, and sexual assaults and rapes that are taking place, coincidentally, near a number of these asylum-seeker hotels.”  Pressed by POLITICO, Tice doubled down on this position. “There is already vigilantism going on. No one wants to report it, but that’s the reality of life … It is much better to shine the spotlight on an issue, talk about it … and then government can make better policy.”  Tice likens asylum arrivals in the UK to “an invasion double the size of the British Army.” But the summer of tense protests risks complicating matters, according to some British commentators. | Tolga Aken/EPA “That’s how people talk about it in the pubs and clubs and bus stops and sports fields up and down the country. I know that makes people in Westminster uncomfortable — tough,” Tice told POLITICO. THE CONNOLLY FACTOR The party has also wrapped its arms around Lucy Connolly, a 42-year-old woman who was jailed after pleading guilty to stirring up racial hatred against asylum seekers with a post calling for migrant hotels to be set on fire. Reform has painted Connolly as a political prisoner of Keir Starmer’s government, with Farage even flying to Washington this week to slam Britain’s online safety rules and likening the UK to North Korea on free speech.  Cabinet ministers blasted Farage’s U.S. trip as a “Talk Britain Down” tour. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds called it “as anti-British as you can get. More in Common polling shows that while voters are split on whether Connolly’s sentence was too harsh or too lenient, 51 percent want politicians to distance themselves from her, including more than a quarter of Reform voters. “The transnational neoconservative right is a massive danger to the British right, not an opportunity,” argued IPPR’s Morris. More in Common polling shows that many of Reform’s newer supporters view U.S.-style populist figures, such as Donald Trump, negatively. Social attitudes are also shifting, with six in ten voters supporting same-sex marriages, and 46 percent thinking the legal abortion limit should stay at 24 weeks. POLICY PITFALLS While Reform is confidently ahead in national voting intention polls, there is evidence of some unease about its specific policy pledges. A proposal to work with the Taliban to return Afghan asylum seekers got a mixed reception. Some 45 percent of Britons said that giving money to the regime to take returns would be “completely unacceptable,” according to a YouGov poll. The party has also struggled to clarify its stance on deporting children. Chairman Zia Yusuf suggested unaccompanied minors could eventually be removed under the party’s mass deportation plans — only for Farage to row back, insisting it wouldn’t happen in Reform’s first term. “When it came to deporting children, they realized that what they proposed isn’t really sustainable — it seems, frankly, inhumane,” said Morris. “If [Reform] wants to appeal to the wider public, and not just to its base, it can’t just appeal to this kind of narrow group of people.” Tice has since sought to narrow the focus. “We’ve said that we will start focusing on detaining and deporting males first,” he said. “If a husband is detained and deported, if he’s got a wife and children, they’ve got a choice to make. “The children of parents who are here illegally, those children are not British citizens by law,” he continued. “There are bound to be specific cases and things, but as a principle, we’re not going to go through a whole long list of exemptions. If you do that, you actually create a criminal gang focus on the exemptions, and then people try to game that system. So we’re not playing that game.”

LONDON — The Green Party has never been so successful. So, naturally, they are having a big internal fight. Fresh from winning a record four members of parliament at last year’s general election, members want the green shoots to keep growing — but can’t agree how. A leadership election happens for the Greens every two years, and sometimes sees the incumbent re-elected unopposed. This time, though, there’s a challenger, set on sparking a proper battle of ideas from the left. Adrian Ramsay has co-led the Greens since 2021 and is running again on a joint ticket with Ellie Chowns, who replaces outgoing Co-Leader Carla Denyer. All three were elected to the House of Commons in the 2024 general election, alongside former Co-Leader Siân Berry, marking the best parliamentary night for the Green Party in its history. Left-wing insurgent Zack Polanski is the challenger, standing against the pair from outside parliament. The party’s current deputy leader, Polanski has served in the London Assembly since 2021 — and thinks a more radical message will strengthen the Greens’ appeal. As Britain gets used to five-party politics, the Greens consistently poll around 10 percent. This could provide crucial leverage after the next election and give Labour, elected on a landslide last year but struggling in the polls, a bloody nose. WESTMINSTER: EMBRACE OR SHUN?   Whoever wins, party members want to maximize their influence if voters deliver an uncertain verdict.  Since its founding as the PEOPLE Party in 1972, the Greens have rejected the traditional political mold. They only created a leader position in 2007, don’t have a whipping system, and had no MPs in Westminster until 2010. Yet after quadrupling their number of Commons seats, Ramsay believes utilizing the center of power might not be so bad after all — and makes a case for playing the Westminster game. “If you’re not there in the heart of British political debate, you’re not able to hold the prime minister to account [and] challenge the government,” Ramsay told POLITICO. “We are the ones that are in practise … representing the party’s positions.”  Ramsay argued that keeping two MPs in charge of the party — visible in parliament, invited on to the airwaves — means it can influence politics “from a position of strength.”  Left-wing insurgent Zack Polanski is the challenger, standing against the pair from outside parliament. | Lucy North/PA Images via Getty Images Polanski, by contrast, is trading on his outsider status. While he promises to work closely with the four MPs, he sees the party’s future beyond Westminster. “Parliament is the means to get to the end, which is to transform society,” he told POLITICO. “But you don’t just transform society in parliament.” He wants to prioritize community organizing to win over people “who aren’t even in the party yet, because they don’t think politics is really going to change anything.” Polanski said that if he wins the leadership election — which wraps up September 2 — then MPs would still elect a parliamentary leader, allowing a balance of Westminster representation and a leader able to travel around the country and tap into that grassroots energy. For Ramsay, that idea is simply impractical, and risks mixed messages. The incumbent co-leader highlights Polanski’s support for Britain leaving NATO — which is not Green Party policy. “There’s a reason why mature, impactful, successful parties at the heart of British political debate have their leaders in parliament,” Ramsay said. “We need to be part of the center of British politics, not fighting on the sidelines.” POWERS OF PERSUASION Ramsay and Chowns won their rural seats from the Conservatives last July. They are pushing for the party to continue a strategy which they argue is paying dividends. “Carla and I came in with a very clear strategic focus, and we made sure all of the party’s efforts and strategy was aligned behind that,” Ramsay argues. “It would be crazy to throw that out.” But another core Green demographic is in urban areas. Denyer, the outgoing co-leader, bagged her Bristol Central seat in 2024 by defeating Labour frontbencher Thangam Debbonaire in the traditionally progressive city, sprinkling some rare rain on Labour’s election parade. The Greens came second to Labour in 39 constituencies, including 18 London seats. “That’s obviously the first place to start” when targeting more seats, Polanski argued. He said building a coalition of former Labour and Tory voters alongside previous non-voters could only happen “by being deeply embedded in communities” — and suggested the current leadership was not rising to the challenge posed by populist parties on the right like Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.   “We need to take action quickly,” he said. “Incremental change is just not going to cut it. We need to move much faster.”  “Anyone who feels that you can appeal in an urban area just by focusing your effort on a narrow demographic is not realistic,” Ramsay retorts. FOLLOWING FARAGE The Greens agree with Farage on very little (maybe apart from electoral reform.) But they might mimic Reform UK’s model for growth. Pollster Scarlett Maguire, director of Merlin Strategy, said the party’s steady uptick in the polls mirrors Reform’s gradual rise under its last leader Richard Tice, which demonstrated the “organic desire” for a populist party in the U.K. Maguire believes there is “huge potential in the country for a more Momentum-[Jeremy]-Corbyn-like Green Party” which targeted an urban, younger left-wing base. Momentum is the left-wing campaign group who helped propel Corbyn to the top of the Labour Party — although the party sank to an historic low under his leadership in the 2019 election. The Greens could also expand by embracing Labour exiles and outsider MPs. Independent MPs, including Corbyn himself and suspended Labour left-winger Zarah Sultana, might be sympathetic to a Green message under Polanski’s leadership. Polanski has been wooing Sultana for a potential defection since as long ago as last September, when he said he would “love to see her join the Green Party.” Sultana did not respond to a request for comment. Anyone who backs Green values, including in parliament, should join the party, Polanski said: “I don’t think it helps anyone for the left to be further fractured or to be creating further silos.” Yet the strategy runs exactly that risk: the Greens could split the center-left vote, just as Reform did against the Tories last year, and make a progressive government harder. “The Greens have the potential to be a really big spoiler for Labour,” Maguire said. “If you think about how … [Farage’s old outfit] UKIP worked as a pressure party on the Conservatives, it wasn’t about the MPs returned. It was about the pressure they could place on them from splitting their votes.” Party figures insist that if they vote Green, they’ll get Green.  “Greens have been elected basically all around the country under all kinds of different conditions, all kinds of different seats,” said peer and former Leader Natalie Bennett, who isn’t endorsing a candidate in this race. That message matches the one coming from fellow insurgent Farage, who held a press conference last month pushing the slogan “Vote Reform, get Reform.” “At a time when people are turning away from the political establishment like never before … Greens are there to be the ones offering a real alternative to Reform,” said Ramsay. “The voters are really, really hungry for something different,” said Bennett. “We’ve got to make sure that we give them great stories, great narratives, and a great overall picture.” Additional reporting by Abby Wallace.

LONDON — Reform UK is winning over Gen Z women, a demographic that the right-wing populist party has struggled to attract in the past.  The party’s vote share among women aged 18 to 26 shot up in May — jumping from 12 percent to 21 percent after nationwide local elections, according to polling for the More in Common think tank shared with POLITICO. Most of the new recruits seem to have defected from the Conservative Party, according to the data. “In the general election, you could confidently say the median Reform voter is a middle-aged man who voted for Brexit,” said Louis O’Geran, research assistant at More in Common. “The gender gap is narrowing, but also that age distribution is spreading out.”  It’s a striking shift for a party long dogged by accusations it has a problem with women. Leader Nigel Farage has previously dismissed gender disparities in business as a result of men being more willing to “sacrifice family lives” — and once praised controversial far-right influencer Andrew Tate, who was later charged with rape by British prosecutors, as an “important voice” for “emasculated” men. The party’s manifesto includes a pledge to scrap the U.K.’s Equality Act, legislation meant to prohibit discrimination based on gender, disability, race, and more.  Reform is, however, finding clear traction with younger women, some of whom see the party as clearer on its policy aims than the alternatives. Young women point to a dissatisfaction with the opposition Conservatives and the governing Labour party — and “the sense that the two main parties just aren’t working,” O’Geran said. The poll, which is based on an average of four surveys conducted in May of roughly 9,000 adults in Great Britain, reflects a broader increase in Reform’s overall vote share, which moved from 24 percent of the national vote to 29 percent during the same period. “While the increase in support among Gen Z women is really significant, they started on a far lower base than any other age group … the increase is probably part of a wider expansion of Reform’s support following the election,” said O’Geran. JOINING UKIP AT AGE 14 Charlotte Hill, a 25-year-old Reform UK councillor in Derbyshire, joined Farage’s old party UKIP at the age of 14, around the time of the Brexit campaign. In doing so, she took after her father, who was a staunch Leave voter and “played a big part in [her] life lessons,” she told POLITICO. Hill followed Farage’s political journey — and eventually became a Reform UK supporter.  While she studied English literature at university with hopes of becoming a teacher, she felt alienated by the course’s “very Jeremy Corbyn positive and Nigel Farage negative” tone, a reference to the hard-left Labour leader who quit in 2019. Hill said she had grown disenchanted with being “the odd one out” amongst her peers, and changed her course into construction management — a “male-dominated space” where she has “fortunately never had a problem” with discrimination.  What attracts her to Reform is the party’s prowess in communicating its message, and its ability to start “tapping into the younger generation quickly” on social media platforms like TikTok. Farage has 1.2 million followers on TikTok. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch aren’t even on it.  “We look at Labour and Conservatives, and in my opinion, their values are quite similar now,” argued Hill. “You can’t ring fence either party’s values, whereas with Reform, I think you can.” Hill also believes Reform is offering direct policy support for young women. Pointing to Farage’s recent announcement that he wants to scrap a two-child cap on social security benefits, and bring in tax breaks for married people, Hill said Reform would enable women “to stay at home for longer or to go part-time.” SAFETY — AND SCRAPPING DEI  O’Geran notes that Gen Z women diverge from the rest of the population on key issues. Only five percent of those polled named immigration as a top concern — compared to 22 percent among the wider public. Instead, the issues that matter the most to this cohort are the cost of living, jobs, mental health and affordable housing. Still, some of Reform’s female politicians want to link immigration to women’s safety. “Once those illegal immigrants are in the community, that’s when women’s safety becomes a real issue,” Sarah Pochin, a new Reform MP for Runcorn and Helsby, said. “That’s when women feel that they can’t let their children play out on the streets.”  Sarah Pochin (L), Andrea Jenkyns (Centre), Charlotte Hill (R) | Photo-illustration by Aimee Rogers/POLITICO (Source Images from WikiCommons and Reform UK) Andrea Jenkyns, newly elected Lincolnshire mayor, similarly told POLITICO that “especially in coastal areas, young women were saying … that they feared for their safety, because especially on the coast there’s migrant hotels. I think if we’ve got this strong policy on illegal migration and safety, I think that would appeal to people.” Both Reform reps share the idea of people being promoted in the workplace based on ability, and reject diversity initiatives.  “I’m not a feminist, I’m a meritocrat,” said Jenkyns, a former Conservative MP. Although she is neurodiverse and has a son with autism, Jenkyns doesn’t believe laws like the Equality Act are necessary, saying support is “just showing kindness in society.”  “You don’t need policies for that,” she said. “It’s about creating the environment so everyone can thrive,” adding that she would like to see a “more blended learning environment” for neurodiverse people to thrive.  Section 20 of the Equality Act legally requires employers and public bodies to “make reasonable adjustments” for disabled people, including those who are neurodiverse.  POUR MY WINE, PLEASE  Even if it’s making inroads with women, representation remains a sore spot for Farage’s party. Fewer than a quarter of its local election candidates were women, according to data from the University of Exeter’s Election Center. That lags behind the Tories on 30 percent and the Green and Labour parties, both on roughly 40 percent.  But Pochin hopes her win last month, making her Reform’s first female MP, will make women “more interested in Reform.” Just don’t expect her to champion gender quotas anytime soon.  “Women only want meritocracy,” she told POLITICO. “That’s all I ever wanted. I’ve worked in a male-dominated world all my life, and I have never felt at a disadvantage once.”  “I still want a man to pour my glass of wine or whatever it is at night,” she added. “I still want a man to hold a door open for me. I still want a man to say, ‘oh, you look nice,’ when you come down to go out for the evening.” Society, she laments, has lost “the fun and banter” of the workplace. “Of course, we need to protect women. There’s times when it goes wrong or people overstep the mark, but generally speaking, I think we’ve become utterly paranoid.” 

DONCASTER, England — Reform UK topped opinion polls as a protest movement. Now it might actually get to run something. Nigel Farage’s right-wing party is set to grip its first (small) levers of power after this Thursday’s local elections in England. A recent poll gave the upstart outfit a clear lead in two mayoral contests — Greater Lincolnshire, and Hull and East Yorkshire — while party chiefs believe they will gain hundreds of councillors, potentially even taking charge of some town or county halls. This will make tangible the disillusionment that has put populists in power across Europe, and could in time threaten the U.K.’s century-long run of prime ministers from two parties: Labour and the Conservatives. Labour’s poll rating has tanked 10 months after its landslide; trade unions are watching reps join Reform; Farage has the slogan: “Britain is broken.” Reform chairman Zia Yusuf told POLITICO it is part of “a journey, we believe, to winning a majority in the House of Commons with Nigel as our prime minister.” Yet victory this week will put Reform in charge of multi-million pound budgets — and MPs and strategists from both main parties believe this will show governing isn’t so easy. They believe — or secretly hope — that Farage’s outfit will, in the words of one Labour MP, “fuck up.” Take Brighton, where the Green Party brokered a £36 million loan for a 162-meter observation tower that later went bust; or Thanet, Kent, where UKIP (Farage’s previous party) lost control after half its councillors quit in a row over the local airport. Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor who faced his own political firestorm over plans to regenerate a former steelworks, argued there is a “significant chance” Reform may end up a “basket case.” The Conservative politician told POLITICO: “They’re going to have two or three years to either do something which proves to people that actually they’re a genuine alternative … or they’re going to fall flat on their face.  “It’s going to be a real test.” MEET BRITAIN’S MINI ELON MUSK As Thursday’s vote looms, the spirit of Elon Musk has come to Greater Lincolnshire. Andrea Jenkyns is the overwhelming favorite to become the first mayor for this Brexit-supporting sprawl of rural eastern England. The Tory-to-Reform defector campaigned on a ticket of “DOGE Lincolnshire” — modelled on Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — promising to cut “waste” and “bloated bureaucracy” in exchange for “lower taxes.” Luke Campbell, the former Olympic gold medallist boxer who is the favorite to win Hull and East Yorkshire for Reform, has pledged a similar war on waste. Yet neither of them are like Musk, who can scythe through spending backed by executive power. Combined authority mayors cannot directly cut council tax — they can choose not to raise it, by adding a “precept” to the bills charged by member councils. Andrea Jenkyns is the overwhelming favorite to become the first mayor for this Brexit-supporting sprawl of rural eastern England. | Adam Vaughan/EFE via EPA Most local spending is also channeled through individual councils, although the new mayors will each hold the strings on a long-term investment fund. In Greater Lincolnshire it will be worth £24 million a year. Jenkyns has pledged “proper flooding defences” and “better transport, roads and connectivity,” but Houchen argued: “She’s not going to be able to do all of those things and go in there and cut waste. What is she going to cut? She’s either going to cut specific types of projects or departments that are set up, or she’s going to cut staff.” Reform declined requests for an interview with Jenkyns about how she would govern, citing her busy schedule. However, Yusuf said it would be “irresponsible and overly cavalier to make commitments on precisely what’s going to get cut when we don’t have full information as to where the money is going.”  Reform is campaigning hard on the issue. Yusuf said the party would start with “woke projects” like launching TV stations and needless flights. The party has submitted 3,000 freedom of information requests to councils, and an official pointed to Farage’s pledge in last year’s general election to save “£5 in every £100″ spent in Whitehall. They added: “It was said we were absolutely crazy … Now Labour are trying to do exactly that.”  There is an irony to this: the mayoral authority itself is a brand new arm of governance with its own running costs. Robert Hayward, an election expert and Conservative peer, said: “You can’t say ‘I’m going to cut these things,’ because you’re actually setting up the authority and therefore spending money.” There is an echo here in Farage himself, who was a member of the European Parliament for 21 years while he called for Britain to leave the EU. Yusuf insisted: “We’ve got to play the game as it currently is.” A DEAL WITH THE ENEMY Jenkyns’ biggest hurdle may be the way mayoral authorities — “combined authorities” in local government speak — are actually run. If she wins, Jenkyns will have power over transport, infrastructure, employment support, housing, regeneration, the environment and health and public safety.  Yet decisions are made collectively by a “board” of politicians from the individual councils; all in Greater Lincolnshire are currently Reform’s rivals. Decisions must be approved by a majority that includes the mayor — which means that, if more than half of councils object to Jenkyns’ plans, they could vote them down. “You don’t have any real unilateral power,” said one combined authority mayor, who was granted for anonymity like others in this article to speak frankly. “You are one of a number of people on a board and you can be outvoted at any moment.”  They added: “They can tie her up in governance for months and months and months. They can say if it’s anything over £50,000 or £100,000, they want to be able to call it in and take that decision as a group … It’s just nonsense to think that as a mayor you have some kind of monarchical control over the organization in your name. It’s a partnership.” Zia Yusuf insisted reports that the party’s council group leaders will be chosen or directed centrally are “total nonsense.” | Adam Vaughan/EFE via EPA Houchen — whose 2017 victory was a surprise deep in Labour territory — said it took him a “couple of years” to get the Tees Valley authority into the shape he wanted. He said: “I kind of walked into an office with a computer and a chair and nothing else, because my opponent, who was a leader of the council, had in effect been part of setting up the combined authority.” BECOMING VISIBLE There will be one big advantage, though — a direct line into Downing Street.  New mayors will sit on the Council of Nations and Regions, a No. 10-convened forum of devolved leaders which is due to hold its next meeting in May, and the separate Mayoral Council convened by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner. This will hand any Reform mayors a platform to make political points in earshot of the very Labour strategists jittery about Farage’s rise. A wave of new councillors will also hand the party an organizing base from which to mount its general election campaign in 2029. Yusuf said he and colleagues are setting up a “new wing” of Reform’s “Center of Excellence,” a training facility for candidates established in November. He said it “will be there to offer support, resources [and] training to new Reform councilors, many of whom will be elected officials for the first time. We will also be leveraging some people who do have experience in elected office.” It has been worked on for about a month and will “go live in the coming days,” Yusuf added. How much Reform HQ uses its “leverage” on council groups will come under heavy scrutiny, given it — and Yusuf personally — has been accused of a controlling approach. Maria Botwell, one of a number of councillors who Reform asked to help draw up rules for council groups, quit the party last month. She said: “I can understand why, in the party’s infancy, it would choose not to make this a completely democratic process. But it also disappoints me that the chairman continues to have such a large amount of control, even at the lower levels.” Then there’s the question of policy. Rupert Lowe, who lost the Reform whip as an MP after falling out with Farage, posted on X Monday: “For months, I pushed Reform to propose radical, but credible policies. To detail it, with substance and costings … None came. Nothing. All we get, day after day after day, is glossy pictures of Nigel Farage. No manifesto, just an empty promise that ‘Reform will fix it’. HOW?” Yusuf insisted reports that the party’s council group leaders will be chosen or directed centrally are “total nonsense.” He blamed “deliberate disinformation from CCHQ [Conservative HQ] operatives,” said “Reform councillors will choose their own leaders” and insisted “it’ll be down to them to work together to formulate policy.”  But he added “we want to support them as much as we can,” and said Reform will have a “team” to go through council spending and waste on any authorities where the party takes overall control, including to “assist with expertise around forensic accounting.” WELCOME TO LABOUR’S OUTPOST All this might get tested just up the road in Doncaster — the only Labour-controlled council up for election this Thursday. The working-class railway city will also renew its directly-elected mayor, a different model to the regional mayors. Labour has been the largest party on Doncaster Council for 51 years, yet it’s obvious there is little love for the party when you talk to traders selling meat and pies in the city center market. Stallholders bemoan the beggars, litter, empty shops, expensive parking, the center being quieter than it once was. By no means are they all voting for Reform — Tory mayoral candidate Nick Fletcher has many traders on his side — but the common theme is obvious. Turnout for the mayoral election was 28 percent in 2021. Deli worker Linda Smith, 60, will vote Green: “I think somebody else needs to have a go. A bit of new blood.” All this might get tested just up the road in Doncaster — the only Labour-controlled council up for election this Thursday. | Adam Vaughan/EFE via EPA Keir Starmer’s party won 41 of the 55 seats on Doncaster Council even in 2021, the party’s low ebb. While Labour’s Ros Jones — seeking re-election after 12 years in power — has some name recognition and it would take a sensational night for Reform to seize the reins, Labour activists believe there is a high chance they will lose overall control of the council. The hardest outcome would be a mayor of one party and a council run by another — and Doncaster has been there before.  Until 2013, the council was Labour-led, yet presided over by a mayor from the fringe English Democrats party: Peter Davies. Ministers swept in to oversee Doncaster in 2010 after a damning Audit Commission report said it was plagued by “dysfunctional politics” and failures to keep children safe. Davies’ reign created a “drawbridge mentality” where work between both sides broke down, Jones told me.  He may not be unique. ‘HE DOESN’T UNDERSTAND FINANCE’ Chatting over a cash-only cup of tea from the market in the newly-refurbished Corn Exchange, loomed over by its iron pillars, Jones was scathing about her Reform rival. Alexander Jones (no relation), a 30-year-old foreign exchange trader and male model, has promised to make Doncaster Council “faster, smarter and leaner” at the same time as investing in infrastructure, and accused the city hall of being “terribly mismanaged.” Doncaster Council had £425 million of debt on its books in September 2024, though council officials say nearly 70 percent of that is attributable to nearly 20,000 council-owned homes. “I’m an accountant by profession,” said Jones senior, at 75 playing the elder stateswoman. “He doesn’t understand finance, I think is the kindest way to put it … Unfortunately when the young man quoted things, I had to advise him — you may have debt on one side of a balance sheet, but you’ve got the assets on the other. He doesn’t fully understand all the intricacies that go into running an authority.” I had barely squished into the middle seat of Nick Fletcher’s electrical contractor’s van when the Tory candidate, too, gave both barrels to his “young lad” Reform rival. He claimed Farage “bullied” the candidate into standing because others decided not to, and he now “could quite easily end up winning.” Circling the quaint English Heritage ruin of Conisbrough Castle in his van, signwritten with the hashtag #makedoncastergreatagain, Fletcher said: “Labour are literally going to eat him alive.” Fletcher, who publicly invited Farage to stand for the Tories in Doncaster in 2023, added: “Nigel Farage has not only thrown this young man under a bus, he’s thrown Doncaster under the bus … and Nigel Farage won’t care. Nigel Farage will be down in Westminster doing his GB News show.” POLITICO was unable to reach Alexander Jones for an interview. He and Jenkyns each skipped a hustings event last week. In fairness to Jones junior, frustration at individual mayoral candidates is nothing new. A second Labour MP, who asked for anonymity to speak frankly, said: “I think all political parties need to stop viewing mayors as just getting a figurehead or a backbench MP in place, because they’re people that hold massive budgets. They need to be of the caliber of a minister of state. We’ve all been guilty.” BLUE SKY … AND ON THE GROUND The first big decision for whoever holds the council’s reins will be Sheffield Doncaster Airport. Jones senior says reopening the former military base — which took passengers for 11 years before closing in 2022 — would support 5,000 jobs and pour £5 billion into the local economy by 2050. Councils in the region are due to meet this summer to agree funding arrangements between them and the South Yorkshire mayoral authority. Yet there are already tensions. Labour’s Ros Jones is hoping the funding meeting will come in July, but a local official told POLITICO there were still disagreements over what to do and when. South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard has only promised it at some point in the summer. The Tories and Labour have traded barbs over who is to blame. Reform’s candidate has not made firm promises either way.  Arguably the bigger test in Doncaster — or indeed in any council where Reform has a chance of taking control — will be the overall finances. | Adam Vaughan/EFE via EPA But arguably the bigger test in Doncaster — or indeed in any council where Reform has a chance of taking control — will be the overall finances.  Labour says Doncaster’s core government funding was cut by a fifth since 2010, with 70 percent (up from 56) now spent on children’s and adult services including care and health. Jones senior said: “The fear is if they took the mayoralty, what people fail to realise is the cuts promised would mean we hit our most vulnerable.” So how will Reform distinguish efficiency savings from cuts? Yusuf picks his words carefully. As well as “woke projects,” said the party chairman, “we also have to look at, how do we ensure that the areas where we know spending is going to have to be significant — you know, for example, in social care. We have to get our arms around where that money is going, is it being spent as effectively as it should be … We won’t have the answer to those questions until we have done the work.” So would he contemplate cutting social care spending in the name of tackling waste? “That’s not the place we’re going to start. Where we’re going to start is the low-hanging fruit … it’s less about cutting it. It’s more about — are the recipients of that care happy with it?” IT’S ALL VIBES Over an oat milk coffee at Conisbrough Castle — gesturing at the fields he says will be turned into solar farms — Nick Fletcher says Doncaster has a long history of voting against “elites” who thought they knew better. “I was elected on getting Brexit done; it wasn’t Nick Fletcher,” says the short-lived Tory former MP. “Farage is doing a wonderful job at making this election about national issues. [Promising a] minister for immigration … he’s hoodwinking these people into voting for him thinking that the mayor of Doncaster can do something about illegal immigrants.” In Doncaster’s Harewood bar, a sort of unofficial HQ for Reform, owner Rod Bloor (“call me the proprietor”) is unafraid to give Fletcher a piece of his mind. His regulars do not hold back about Labour either. “Both my sons are running as councillors” for Reform, says Bloor. This disillusionment will be repeated far and wide. One Conservative strategist said they had been told of voters undecided between Reform and the Lib Dems — despite vast differences between the two parties. “They are basically saying Labour and the Conservatives are shite and we’re going to vote for an anti-establishment party,” the strategist said. Labour is painfully aware of this. One minister said: “The steer from No. 10 is they don’t want strategies and reviews, they just want delivery.” Should it win on Thursday, the task for Reform will then be to show it can deliver instead. But sometimes in politics, the vibes win the day anyway.

LONDON — Beefing with one colleague looks like an accident. Feuding with a stack of them looks like a habit. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has been engaged in a bitter war of words with fellow MP Rupert Lowe in recent days — marking open warfare in an insurgent party that has been threatening Britain’s Labour government in the polls. Lowe lost the party whip and was referred to the police in early March after he was accused of “threats of physical violence” and “inappropriate behavior.” He has strongly denied the allegations — threatening to sue the party — and is standing by strident criticism of the way Farage is running Reform, which he has aired publicly in recent days. For longtime followers of Farage — a veteran of UKIP and the Brexit Paty — it’s Groundhog Day all over again. POLITICO runs through 11 times Farage feuded with colleagues who were all (supposedly) on his side. FARAGE V BLOOM Here’s a blast from the past. In a 2013 meltdown for the UKIP party he then led, Farage had to suspend controversial MEP Godfrey Bloom for describing a room of women as “sl*ts” — and then hitting a journalist over the head with a brochure. Farage called the comments “ridiculous” and accused Bloom of overshadowing UKIP’s fall conference. Bloom didn’t stand again for the European Parliament. FARAGE V RECKLESS Before you jump ship to another party, it’s a good idea to know what their policies are. Mark Reckless ignored this rule in switching from the Tories to UKIP in 2014. While standing for his Kent seat again, Reckless claimed EU migrants might have to leave the U.K. after a “transitional period” if the U.K. voted for Brexit. Farage swiftly said that wasn’t party policy and that anyone who came to Britain legally was entitled to stay — leaving the then-UKIP leader’s new recruit feeling “a bit sore” about the perceived U-turn. Still, despite losing his seat in 2015, Reckless later led the Brexit Party in Wales and is now part of Reform. All’s well that ends well. FARAGE V CARSWELL Farage’s encounter with fellow Tory defector Douglas Carswell didn’t end quite so well. Douglas Carswell with Nigel Farage in 2014. | Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images Despite Carswell’s winning his Clacton seat twice for UKIP, there was no love lost between the pair. Farage accused Carswell of trying to block efforts to put him in the House of Lords (which Carswell denied) — and called Carswell a “Tory party posh boy” who should be expelled from Ukip. Carswell “has tried to undermine everything we’ve stood for for a very long time,” the Brexiteer-in-chief added. What a relief it will have been for both of them that Carswell soon left UKIP — and the U.K. altogether. FARAGE V … THE ENTIRE OFFICIAL BREXIT CAMPAIGN Brexiteers … bickering? Color us shocked. After Farage backed Leave.EU as the official pro-Brexit campaign, the Electoral Commission designated Vote Leave as lead campaign for the Brexit side, leaving Farage smarting. Never a fan of losing, he accused the outfit of being “too defensive” on immigration — and branded its leaders “cretins” just a month before referendum day. “They brief every day that I’m toxic, [that] I put voters off, and there is absolutely no statistical evidence to back that up at all,” he said. Tell us what you really think, Nige! FARAGE V EVANS It wasn’t just Tory rivals feuding with Farage in the run-up to Brexit. In 2015, UKIP’s most senior woman, its Deputy Chairman Suzanne Evans, said Farage was seen as “very divisive” and argued that “somebody else” should front the Brexit campaign. Ouch. Nigel Farage and Suzanne Evans in 2015. | Carl Court/Getty Images Evans was subsequently dropped as a party spokesperson and officials were told to have no contact with her. Small wonder Farage refused to back her UKIP leadership bid the following year. FARAGE V O’FLYNN Patrick O’Flynn made the leap from journalism to politics by becoming a UKIP MEP in 2014. Soon after the 2015 election, however, O’Flynn labeled Farage “snarling, thin-skinned and aggressive” and then stood down as its economics spokesperson. O’Flynn did later apologize to Farage, which the then-UKIP leader called ”big-hearted and honest.” So that’s nice. FARAGE V SKED Alan Sked, the founder of UKIP, had some choice words for Farage in 2015. He lamented what the party had become under Farage, branding him a “silly bugger” for focusing on immigration and praying he wasn’t elected to Westminster. Farage got his revenge last year — storming into the British parliament as MP for Clacton after plenty of tries. FARAGE V … UKIP ITSELF For years, Farage was synonymous UKIP. Its leader over three separate periods — and the man at the helm when it really started to terrify Britain’s Conservative Party — his exit from UKIP would be like ravens leaving the Tower of London. Yet Farage did exactly that, quitting in December 2018 and accusing then-leader Gerard Batten of turning it into an outfit for “street activism,” and of having an “obsession” with far-right agitator Tommy Robinson and Islam. UKIP these days is a shadow of its former self. FARAGE V HIS OWN BREXIT PARTY MEPS Just a week before the 2019 general election, four MEPs resigned from Farage’s next outfit, the Brexit Party, and urged voters to back the Tories. They condemned Farage’s election strategy, and said the Brexit Party should stand down in Tory target seats to ensure Britain’s departure from the bloc was not thwarted. “We believe the Brexit Party has taken a wrong turn and is itself putting Brexit in jeopardy,” they wrote. FARAGE V HABIB Farage made a shock comeback as Reform UK leader during last year’s election campaign — and that soon meant putting his own people in charge. Ben Habib was duly sacked as Reform’s co-deputy leader soon after the general election and … did not bow out gracefully. Farage needed to learn that the party “should not be controlled by one man,” Habib said, as he warned about a lack of democratization for the insurgent right-wingers. Habib later quit Reform. Asked what impact his departure would have, Farage responded: “None whatsoever.” Touché. FARAGE V LOWE The latest fight on Farage’s hands is with Rupert Lowe, the newly-elected Reform MP for Great Yarmouth (and a man who’s been earning praise from X boss and Donald Trump appointee Elon Musk). Lowe tore into Farage last week, using an interview with the Daily Mail to question Farage’s leadership and accuse him of acting like a “messiah.” Just days later, Lowe lost the Reform whip — and was reported to police over allegations he had physically threatened the party’s chairperson, Zia Yusuf. Reform top brass argued that those allegations were separate from his criticism of Farage. Lowe branded them a witch-hunt, and hit back at what he called “untrue and false” claims against him. The sparring continued over the weekend in op-eds and on social media — and shows no signs of dying down. “This is what happens when you mess with Nigel,” the Telegraph quoted a party source as saying.

PORT TALBOT, WALES — Julian Thomas has lost his job in the steel industry twice now. The first time, he moved home to south Wales. He lasted 22 more years, driving trains loaded with freshly-coiled metal at the Port Talbot steelworks. But in November, he was made redundant again. Thomas, 56, is a grandad. He thought he would work in Port Talbot until he retired; now he is seeking retraining. In his view, he was let down by decades of Britain outsourcing its dirty industries to the east — and by a Labour government that broke its word. “I genuinely believed they would help to keep this works open,” he told POLITICO, browsing a jobs fair on the mezzanine level of Port Talbot’s 1970s shopping mall. Thomas voted Labour in the 2024 general election on its vow to secure the industry’s future. Three months later, the blast furnaces shut down. He will not vote Labour next year. “I can’t vote for people I think are doing nothing for you,” he said. He is considering backing either an independent or Reform UK, the upstart party led by veteran right-winger Nigel Farage. Never mind that Port Talbot plans a greener furnace to melt scrap metal from 2028; that an £80 million government support fund is helping staff and businesses; that a £2.5 billion “plan for steel” is in the works; or that Labour insists its deal was better than one it inherited, late in the day, from its Tory predecessors. For many workers, these points are less salient than the 2,500 jobs lost in the short term — never mind the contractors, shops and cafes that depend on them across town. Labour has held this seat for 103 years, as long as it has been Wales’ largest party. But polls predict a seismic upset in next year’s elections to the Welsh parliament, the Senedd — a test bed for the U.K.’s next general election in 2029. Some of those caught in deindustrialization are eyeing Reform, with its anti-net zero and anti-immigration credentials — even if, like Thomas, they aren’t yet convinced Farage is the answer. POLITICO spoke to around two dozen Labour and Reform officials and politicians across Welsh politics, in both Westminster and the Senedd. Such is the anxiety that many asked for anonymity to discuss party matters. But the overall impression was clear: a right-wing party in breezy ascendancy — and a center-left ruling party riven over what to do about it.  WELCOME TO STEEL TOWN Two blast furnaces still dominate the coastal skyline of Port Talbot. You see them from Station Road; from Cafe Remo’s on the beach; from the M4 motorway; and over rooftops from the hills that rise steeply above town. The white plumes and occasional smell of rotten eggs are gone, but they remain as symbols of a Britain slipping away. The plant is run by Indian firm Tata, while British Steel is Chinese-owned. Labour insists it is helping an industry that is already changing to move with the times. As the U.K.’s single-biggest carbon dioxide emitter, Port Talbot, without change, was a hurdle in reaching net zero emissions by 2050. Thomas is more skeptical. He points to U.S. President Donald Trump, who boasts of putting America first and threatens tariffs on steel imports. “He’s looking after his own interests. China are. We were just piggy in the middle,” he said. Two blast furnaces still dominate the coastal skyline of Port Talbot. | Justin Tallis/Getty Images Jordan Griffiths put it more simply: “If we went to war, we couldn’t produce our own steel.” Griffiths, 24, was a welder fabricator contractor in Port Talbot for four years. His dad, brother and cousins all worked there too. He now hopes to find work at the Hinkley Point nuclear power station — but it’s a 100-mile drive away on a speed-restricted motorway (Wales’ Labour government scrapped a planned relief road due to environmental concerns). It would mean leaving his two young children behind for half the week.  “I would have to make that sacrifice to make sure me and my family are financially steady,” Griffiths said. Last year was his first general election; he voted Reform. He has friends who are on the housing waiting list, while “people coming over get accommodated in five-star hotels.” He has half a mind to leave the country. Some younger workers are heading to Australia; others have less choice. Many will end up in “lower-paid, less secure, less dignified” work, said one Welsh Labour strategist. “It’s professional men in their 20s and 30s who feel like they’re having their dignity stripped away.” A vast Amazon “fulfilment center” is a 20-minute drive away. Almost 2,000 people have visited a bright, cheerful drop-in careers shop run by the Community union. In one period of less than two weeks, it received 24 calls about suicide. THATCHER WITHOUT THE THATCHER South Wales has been here before, when coal mines shut under 1980s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Her legacy ensured generations here would never vote Conservative. Reform UK is different. Of the dozen current or departed workers in Port Talbot who spoke to POLITICO, only three said they were likely to vote Labour next time. Five said they would either vote Reform or were considering it. Two were considering Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru — who challenge Labour from the left — and two said they might not vote at all. “There is an anti-Tory sentiment in these seats, which protects Labour from the Tories,” said one Labour figure in Westminster. “Reform is a different package altogether — it’s something new, it’s not tainted by Thatcherism.” Farage is a lover of Thatcher who backed a statue of her in London’s Trafalgar Square, “but for whatever reason, people choose not to see that.” Mark Turner, 60, was in the steel industry for 30 years. The Unite union official, a self-described “Corbynite” left-winger who will back Labour, says his old colleagues are “definitely turning to Reform because Reform is basically saying what they think.” He added: “Labour gained power, and literally within days their stance [on Port Talbot] completely changed.” Nigel Parsons, 51, was made redundant Dec. 30. He’s lucky — his mortgage is paid off — but his next job will pay less. He believes a £500 million government deal for Port Talbot’s future should have had more strings attached. “I always used to vote Labour,” he said. “My mother and father voted Labour, and I did. But I’ll tell you honestly, I voted Reform last time and I will continue to vote Reform until he [Farage] comes in.” Alan Walters, 58, who moved to the steelworks from digging up roads on night shifts, will stick with Labour. His last day is March 31, but he hopes to return when the new electric arc furnace is built. Other workers don’t trust that it will arrive. As the U.K.’s single biggest carbon dioxide emitter, Port Talbot, without change, was a hurdle in reaching net zero emissions by 2050. | Justin Tallis/Getty Images One outgoing steelworker, 29, said “you can’t fault the government” for global factors. Others say the same. Yet he is currently backing Reform: “It’s to give [Labour] something to think about.” ‘ALL THEY’VE DONE IS SHAFT US’ Port Talbot is not unlike the American “rust belt” towns that embraced Farage’s ally, Donald Trump. “They like heavy industry, and they like big plates of food,” as one Welsh union official put it. There is no railway line or electrical grid link between north and south Wales. Skepticism of the establishment runs hot: The county of Neath Port Talbot voted 57 percent for Brexit in 2016. One steelworker said of politicians: “All they have done is shaft us.” Turner said: “Reform is a bit like Brexit — a case of ‘I don’t like what’s going on, it’s not working for me … so I may as well vote for something different.’” On a sunny Tuesday, Port Talbot doesn’t yet look like a left-behind town. The shopping center has a decent footfall and there are fewer shuttered shops than in Llanelli, a 40-minute drive away. But residents fear far worse if the transition stutters. Muhammad Usama, 25, tending a mobile phone stall, says it’s already quieter than a year ago. A tire shop down the road has had to lay off five workers because of the drop in trade. Leanne Kehoe, 43, is at the jobs fair after her weekly hours at a hotel were cut from 30 to 12.  Local Labour MP Stephen Kinnock won a thumping 10,354-vote majority last July but on a turnout of less than 50 percent; Reform came second. Not for nothing did Farage say last week he wanted to “reindustrialize Britain.” LABOUR ‘VOTING ITSELF OUT OF POWER’ Whatever the cause, few doubt Reform is surging in Wales — and not just in the old southern coalfield, which is only one part of the national fabric. Farage’s party came second in 13 of Wales’ 32 seats in 2024, and will be boosted by a more proportional voting system for the Senedd elections in May 2026. Sixteen mega-seats will have six members each, elected on party lists via the proportional D’Hondt method. This will hand an advantage to Reform, whose support is spread more evenly than that of rival parties. Polls predict a three-way fight among Labour, Reform and Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru to be the largest party in the Senedd, with the Conservatives in fourth. Defenders of Wales’ former First Minister Mark Drakeford, who brought the system in, note that Reform would have done well anyway because the old system was semi-proportional. But Labour officials at the highest levels in London have been raising their eyebrows. “It’s a chaotic system, absolutely mad,” added the Welsh Labour strategist quoted above. Labour politicians expect Reform to win at least one Senedd member (MS), if not two, in almost all of the 16 seats. A second Labour figure in Westminster predicted Labour could end up with fewer seats than its 30 now — even though the total up for grabs is rising from 60 to 96. Defenders of Wales’ former First Minister Mark Drakeford, who brought the system in, note that Reform would have done well anyway because the old system was semi-proportional. | Leon Neal/Getty Images A third Labour figure in Westminster said: “The whole system is nonsense. We’ve got to be the only party ever who has created a system that could vote itself out of power.”  FARAGE’S UPSTARTS HAVE JUST TWO STAFF Reform is not ready — yet. It has no Welsh HQ, and only two permanent staff in Wales (increasing to three shortly). For now it is relying on the U.K. party’s heavy online presence, influx of wealthy donors and its charismatic leader. Party officials expect Farage to be front and center of the Welsh campaign, and are mulling whether he should apply to front any head-to-head TV election debate, despite not being a Senedd candidate. One Reform strategist said: “He’s definitely going to lead our campaign — he’s the most popular politician in Wales.” Reform is recruiting more staff, discussing plans for an office in the Welsh capital Cardiff, and sent out application forms for Senedd candidates on Feb. 17. The party plans a conference at a convention center in Newport, south Wales, on May 11. It will be a chance for Labour to try out its tactics — a “laboratory for how to fight Reform at the general election,” as a fourth Labour figure in Westminster put it. But Farage will get to test his message too. The Reform strategist quoted above said: “If you want change, there’s only one party that can beat Labour at this election.” Reform won a by-election for a council seat in Torfaen, a south Wales Labour heartland, earlier this month. The numbers were tiny — Reform had 457 votes to Labour’s 259 — but the result set off alarm bells within Labour. “We probably knew we had this in the bag within the first week of knocking doors,” said Torfaen councillor Dave Thomas, 47, an independent who defected to Reform last year after Farage’s return. (“I kind of felt a little bit lost without him.”) Thomas predicts an “onslaught” that could see Reform lead the Welsh government — despite the numbers indicating a Labour-Plaid coalition. “I would pretty much bet my life savings that we will probably be the biggest party,” he added. Labour’s question is what to do about it. ‘FUCKED’ “Fucked,” “screwed,” “idiots,” “complacent,” “mollycoddled,” “nutty,” “naive,” “smug,” “heads in the sand,” “intent on their own destruction” — all words that Labour figures in Westminster have privately used toward the Welsh operation or the people in it.  The tension is partly because MPs and MSs face different electorates. Senedd elections breed low Tory turnout and nationalist sentiment, allowing Labour to make a more center-left pitch to voters. Nigel Farage will get to test his message too. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Lee Waters, a Labour MS who is standing down next year, said: “There’s just a different set of values, a different political mandate, cycle.” Waters argued this is “the whole point of devolution — we’re not here to simply be a mini-Westminster.”  But the fourth Labour figure quoted above said: “It’s toxic … there is a dysfunctional relationship. The fact the Welsh PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party] hate the Senedd group is a significant problem for the party.” There are concerns too among Labour-affiliated trade unions, who are watching members turn to Reform. Labour in Wales has in the past focused on more left-wing policies, while Labour in Westminster faces right. Many regret Wales’ rollout of default 20 miles per hour road-speed limits, down from 30mph. Waters, who as transport minister oversaw the rollout, defended the policy despite admitting it was “toxic with some people,” saying casualties are down by a quarter. Welsh Labour MPs are also pushing for a tougher line on immigration to focus on blue-collar voters (a similar push is happening among MPs in England). Some Labour figures in the Senedd argue immigration should not be a hard focus in the 2026 election campaign at all — because policy is not devolved to Cardiff. That enrages some Labour figures in Westminster, who hear no distinction on the doorstep. ‘HELP’ FROM LONDON It’s perhaps little surprise that Labour officials in London are involved. Having benefited from Reform’s splitting the right-wing vote last year, Labour is aware of the threat to its own position across England and Wales. No. 10 strategists now speak of making Labour the “disruptor” to avoid being disrupted. Prime Minister Keir Starmer urged Cabinet ministers last week not to “look down at people” concerned by immigration. Labour’s General Secretary Hollie Ridley and other senior officials speak regularly to their colleagues in the Welsh party, said a person with knowledge of the conversations. Labour MS Alun Davies has a leading role on writing the 2026 manifesto, but Torsten Bell, a rising-star MP and former think-tank boss who is favored by No. 10, was asked to feed into the process, three people told POLITICO. The same people cautioned that his involvement would be limited now that he’s a minister; one said a different Welsh MP will be chosen to pitch in. Matt Faulding, an official who was in charge of finding dependable (and Starmer-friendly) Labour candidates across the U.K. for the 2024 general election, is feeding into the work of finding new candidates for the Senedd, three people with knowledge of the process said. Selections will kick into gear in the coming weeks. The cooperation goes both ways — Eluned Morgan, Wales’ Labour first minister, has encouraged MPs to come up with names. | Pool Photo by Andy Buchanan via Getty Images The cooperation goes both ways — Eluned Morgan, Wales’ Labour first minister, has encouraged MPs to come up with names. But the Welsh union official quoted above said the U.K. party wants to “retain the same level of ruthlessness” with which Starmer’s Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney, and allies such as Faulding, steered selections in the lead-up to 2024. “They see [Wales] as a staging post between now and 2029.” There are plenty of vacancies. Drakeford promised incumbents they would top the party’s list in each constituency — a promise two people said has been kept, despite some Labour MPs hoping otherwise. But a dozen of the 30 Labour MSs have announced they are standing down, and colleagues believe more than half could go. Drama still awaits. The Senedd super-seat for Port Talbot looks likely to have three Labour incumbents standing, including Deputy First Minister Huw Irranca-Davies. They will have to fight for first place in a ballot of local members. DELIVERY FROM CARDIFF The unenviable job of getting it right falls to Eluned Morgan. The first minister took the job last August after her short-lived predecessor, Vaughan Gething, resigned amid a donations scandal. She embarked on a “listening exercise” that produced four priorities — health, transport, green jobs, and “opportunities” in schools and social housing. To her supporters, this was the reset Labour needed. A fifth Labour figure in Westminster described Morgan as a “good communicator” and “refreshing,” adding, in reference to a legendary if controversial Labour communicator: “She’s straight-up and honest about stuff. I don’t think she would be described as a sort of … Peter Mandelson art of spin.” But they added: “There’s a period between now and the start of the campaign for the Senedd where delivery on objectives and priorities by the first minister is really key … She’s going to need to show people changes they can see and feel.” This mirrors Labour’s focus on “delivery” in England. Welsh councillors have been offered training on making the positive sell on the doorstep, two people said, and Labour’s manifesto is expected to focus heavily on funding for the NHS.  Yet in Wales, Labour has been in power for 26 years, and can no longer blame its ills on poor funding from the central government. And Starmer and McSweeney are working to five- and 10-year timelines. The Welsh Labour strategist quoted above said: “The question is whether it will be enough by 2026. I don’t know how we deal with the fact that the NHS has become terrible on our watch.” YOUR LOCAL REFORM CANDIDATE Reform knows this. In Torfaen the upstart party campaigned on “local issues — council tax, local crime, potholes, refuse collections, street lighting, community facilities,” said Thomas. One party official said the plan for 2026 is to focus on bread-and-butter areas like health, education and the economy, more than on immigration. Labour’s response is to point out that Reform is new; untested; not to be trusted. | Oli Scarff/Getty Images POLITICO has barely sat down at Caroline Jones’ kitchen table when she brings up child poverty. The former MS for UKIP, Farage’s old party, talks about visiting an armed forces veteran who was living rough. Her home in the woods overlooks the Port Talbot blast furnaces. “When you look at people, they seem dragged down,” she told me. “They want some inspiration and some hope for the future.”  Jones held a Reform branch meeting on a recent rainy Wednesday night; 72 people turned up. Labour’s response is to point out that Reform is new; untested; not to be trusted. Former Port Talbot worker Alun Davies, 55, who works for the Community union, said the Labour government showed far more commitment to the steelworks — and got a better deal — than the Tories ever did. “People are just despondent because they’ve lost their jobs and the first people they’re going to lash out at are the government,” he said. “Farage has got no answers. It’s all pie in the sky rubbish … I think he’s full of piss and wind.” A sixth Labour figure in Westminster said: “I think [Reform] will fuck up. My worry is … will they fuck up enough before the general election?” So how to convince voters? One Welsh government figure insisted Labour is in “full combat mode” against Reform already, and “gloves will come off” as the party’s candidates and policies — and their flaws — become better known. They said the plan is also to challenge Reform on its “values and principles,” including Farage’s history of comments on whether to bring in an insurance-based model for the NHS, and to press the point that “Reform are the Tories Mark 2.” But the second Labour figure in Westminster quoted above lamented: “Painting Nigel Farage as more Tory than the Tories just isn’t going to work. We tried it in 2015, we tried it in 2017.” THE ASYLUM HOTEL Then there’s the trickier divide — immigration. Soothing pop music plays on the stereo at the Stradey Park hotel. Flowers garnish the tables; the windows look out on the hills around Llanelli. Martyn Palfreman had his wedding there. But Palfreman, a Labour county councillor whose ward covers the hotel, knows it for another reason. In 2023 the Home Office (then run by the Conservatives) announced plans to temporarily house up to 241 asylum seekers in the 76-bedroom venue. The plans were withdrawn but left their mark. Over a coffee at the hotel, Palfreman says he and local Labour MP Nia Griffith opposed the scheme from the start — but their narrative “just didn’t stick,” with voters skeptical of his party. Griffith’s majority was cut to just 1,504 in last year’s election, while the Tories were knocked into fourth place. Reform came second. Palfreman said the hotel row had been a “massive catalyst” for the result, aided in part by “infiltration by the far right” of some protests. Lee Waters, whose Llanelli seat covers the hotel, agreed: “A large number of people in Llanelli feel that we let them down.” Chancellor Rachel Reeves has her eye trained on the City of London. | Pool Photo by Jordan Pettitt via Getty Images But both men think the answer is not to adopt harder rhetoric on immigration more generally, as many others in Labour believe. Waters said the “posturing and rhetoric about immigration is fundamentally missing the point,” given that Labour’s problem in south Wales is “generations of economic abandonment.” Tony Blair focused on a services economy; Chancellor Rachel Reeves has her eye trained on the City of London. “We don’t really have a lot to say economically to a community like ours, I’m afraid,” Waters added. “That’s the brutal reality.” Palfreman added: “I think we should be sowing a bit of unity. It [also] alienates some of our more liberal, left-leaning core support, because they’ll say, well, Labour’s just the same as the others.” A THIRD WAY That left-leaning vote is looking at Plaid Cymru — particularly in seats like Llanelli’s, which also includes Plaid-friendly Carmarthen. For some politicians in Cardiff, the nationalist party — which could keep Labour in power in 2026 via a coalition — should be the focus. A second Welsh government figure said: “It depends on whether you think those people voting Reform can be won back to Labour … We can’t out-Reform Reform.” One private session at the party’s Welsh conference in November focused more on beating Plaid than Reform, a seventh Labour figure in Westminster said. “The MPs in the room were like — ‘this is insane,’” they said.  The union official quoted above added: “They’re living in cloud cuckoo land.” In many ways, the Reform threat has crept up fast. Not even Labour’s U.K. HQ marked Llanelli as a battleground seat in 2024. Griffith was advised to campaign in Carmarthen. But it may become too late to win back Reform voters. Working-class former industrial areas have been “moving away from the party for a long time,” Waters said. “The majorities that we were getting in 1987, 1992 were enormous. They’ve gone down as turnout has gone down.” Richard Wyn Jones, who leads the Welsh Election Study, said evidence from the general election was that “almost nobody who voted Labour in 2019 voted for Reform in 2024.”  Wyn Jones agreed Labour is “in panic mode” but added: “These voters haven’t voted Labour for at least two or three general elections … [and] if Labour now decide they need to chase the Reform votes, there’s a huge danger that they leave their Plaid flank wide open.” NHS AND NET ZERO Wales’ devolved NHS will be a big target of attack for all parties. Liz Saville Roberts, Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader, said: “They’ve been running the NHS for 25 years. So while Labour can say Farage would wreck the NHS, we can say Labour have wrecked the NHS and Farage would make it worse.” She plans to focus on other devolved issues too, including ownership of the sea bed where offshore wind farms will be built. Reform will go hard on Britain’s net zero goals in the other direction. Over a pint in Llanelli’s Wetherspoons, Gareth Beer — a Reform candidate who nearly won last year — tells me net zero rules and the apparent blight of solar farms are coming up on the doorstep. Wales’ devolved NHS will be a big target of attack for all parties. | Adrian Dennis/Getty Images Beer, 49, who runs a building maintenance firm and lives in the coastal castle town of Kidwelly, said: “It’s about a political class that are in London, in their little community, bouncing off each other, and everything’s fine. But when you get out into the Rust Belt, it’s not fine.” Beer is skeptical about man-made climate change: “On a macro level, we can’t affect the sun, and it’s mainly driven in my mind, in my research, by the sun. That’s the end of it. Not a trace gas that’s 400 parts in every million parts of the atmosphere … I’m not a solar expert, but there’s solar winds and all sorts of things, it’s a big red ball in the sky, isn’t it, and the output of that varies over the centuries, over the years. That’s why we had ice ages.” CHANGE? In the end the problem may be simpler: disillusionment. Behind the counter of her burger van in Port Talbot, Mandie Pugh, 59, has a roll call of complaints that you would hear in any left-behind town. Lying politicians; a country “over-run” by immigration; broken social care; an NHS that can’t see her for an ear infection; families living on benefits; Downing Street parties during the Covid pandemic. Her husband works in the steelworks, and she’s now “ashamed” to have voted Labour. Though “I wouldn’t vote in the Welsh elections,” she adds. “It’s a load of shit.” This could yet be Labour’s silver lining. The same disengagement that affects the ruling party will mean many are yet to be convinced about Farage. Yet “change” was enough to sweep out 14 years of Tory rule in Westminster last July. In a world of anti-incumbency, Labour politicians in Wales will now hope they avoid the same fate.

LEICESTER, England — Nigel Farage and Elon Musk are having a lovers’ tiff. But don’t expect it to derail the Brexiteer’s meticulous plan to take over the United Kingdom. The Reform UK leader this weekend strongly distanced himself from jailed far-right agitator Tommy Robinson, despite Musk — whose cash and backing he’s been openly courting — loudly demanding Robinson’s release from prison. It’s caused the first major rift between the two close allies of Donald Trump, and comes just after Farage made a big play for Musk’s help with a smile-for-the-cameras trip to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The X-owner and tech billionaire thundered this weekend that Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” and should be replaced. It’s undoubtedly offered up a major distraction from Farage’s latest moment in the spotlight — but few observers of his steady rise think it’ll be fatal. “Nigel Farage knows the U.K. a lot better than Elon, and has been active in politics for 25 years,” said Benjamin Harnwell, a critic of Musk who has been overseeing Trump ally Steve Bannon’s proposed right-wing academy to train Europe’s populists. “Elon has been part of this movement for five minutes.” Reform’s increasing swagger was on show in the English town of Leicester this weekend, as a regional conference showed it continuing to bag defectors from Britain’s main opposition Conservative Party and sounding bullish about hurting Britain’s struggling Labour government. At the gathering Friday, the mood was largely celebratory as over a thousand members saluted the party’s progress in last year’s general election. But the Robinson row wasn’t far from members’ minds. “Listen to Tommy Robinson,” came a heckle from one member of the crowd during MP Lee Anderson’s speech. After a second pro-Robinson heckle, a visibly angry Anderson told the man to “shut up or get out.” “I like Tommy and think he’s been treated awfully,” a long-time Reform UK activist and organizer said in Leicester. “But he and Reform are separate and it should stay that way.” The same person argued that any allying with Robinson — who co-founded the race-baiting English Defense League and was jailed for breaching a court order put in place because of his repeated libeling of a Syrian schoolboy — would serve only as a distraction from Farage’s wider goal of upending British politics.  “Personally, I very strongly think Tommy Robinson is part of the solution rather than the problem,” said Harnwell. “But the fact is, the U.K. isn’t there yet, and is a very long way from being so.” Tommy Robinson co-founded the race-baiting English Defense League and was jailed for breaching a court order put in place because of his repeated libeling of a Syrian schoolboy. | Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images As for Farage himself, his allies argue that despite Musk’s proximity to Trump, the Reform leader’s longstanding relationship with the incoming president is strong enough to survive any spat. In his speech to the faithful in Leicester on Friday, Farage aped Trump by saying he plans to “make Britain great again.”  And it’s that plan — a step-by-step capturing of key parts of the U.K. — and not the noise from Musk that’s likely to keep incumbent Prime Minister Keir Starmer up at night. SHARPENING UP The Brexiteer-in-chief, who stunned Westminster in last year’s election by returning to the helm of Reform and winning a long-coveted seat in Parliament — has spent much of this year trying to professionalize his Reform UK party, shaking up its comms operation, bagging Tory defectors, and getting serious about taking the fight to Labour. Farage and four other candidates made it into the House of Commons in July’s election — winning more than four million votes for his anti-immigration, populist outfit and putting the Conservatives on the backfoot. They came second in 98 seats, 89 of which were behind Labour. Now, he wants to use a series of local and regional elections to show Reform can replace the Conservatives, booted out of office in July, as the natural party of the right. “What we need to do as a party is demonstrate that we can win at the ballot box, that we can be a formidable electoral force,” Reform UK Chair Zia Yusuf said in an interview with POLITICO. The aim is to bring it more into line with other successful national outfits — and avoid the kind of controversies over openly racist candidates that flared up during the summer campaign. That may in part explain Farage’s desire to swiftly distance himself from Robinson, despite Musk’s vociferous backing for the jailed activist. Reform is already eyeing elections next May as a milestone on its path to power. Seats on 21 county councils and 10 unitary authorities in England are up for grabs, and, with Labour facing a bumpy first five months in office, Farage fancies his chances.  POLITICO’s poll of polls shows Labour — who won a thumping House of Commons majority last summer — just five points clear of Reform. Ahead of May’s votes, Reform has set up hundreds of branches across the country, with the aim of allowing local members to target areas they know best. Reform claimed 100,000 members in November, and has been busy urging Tory councillors to defect. The local build-up has already allowed Reform to stand in numerous council by-elections, where it has won seats from Labour and the Tories. “We’re very excited by the progress, but we’re not complacent by any means,” Yusuf said. Reform claimed 100,000 members in November, and has been busy urging Tory councillors to defect. | Leon Neal/Getty Images Still, it’s an uphill climb for a party that is building its infrastructure as it goes. Even with burgeoning branches and a growing membership Farage likes to crow about, Reform cannot count on the kind of deep institutional experience Labour and the Tories possess when it comes to local fights — not to mention the kind of data on household voting which allows for precise targeting in a tight race.  “We are working very much from a start-up perspective … and it’s going to be damn hard,” acknowledged Reform’s former Director of Communications Gawain Towler. “It’s like you’ve got a great mass of organic material and we are having to push through it and put the nerve system into that organic material piecemeal.” FIRST, WE TAKE SCOTLAND If he does deal Labour and the Tories a bloody nose in May, expect Farage’s attention to then turn swiftly to the next big test — elections for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd in 2026. Political scientist John Curtice wrote late last year that, were elections to the Scottish Parliament held now, Farage “could win as many as a dozen seats” — a big leap for a party that currently has no representation there. Scotland’s semi-proportional voting system offers a way in for Reform, even if it continues to poll at just over 10 percent in the country. Farage has a checkered history in Scotland — and was famously being greeted by angry Scots on one visit in 2013, where he was locked in a pub for his own protection. He didn’t visit Scotland at all in the lead up to this year’s general election — with his party describing it as too “dangerous.” The ruling Scottish National Party has long pointed to the non-breakthrough of parties led by Farage — and the relative unpopularity of Brexit in Scotland — as examples of how Scotland’s values and politics differ from England. Yet others doubt Scotland is quite so immune to the Farage charm. “The SNP are desperate to say Scotland is different and there’s no market for this politics here,” a senior elected Scottish Labour figure, granted anonymity to speak frankly, like others in this story, said. “It’s dangerously complacent and doesn’t square with the evidence.” Farage’s deputy, Richard Tice, has even argued his party could be the “kingmakers” in Scotland after the election, which is set to be tightly fought between the long-reigning SNP and a Scottish Labour Party which has been bruised by Starmer’s tricky start to life in Downing Street.  Reform’s catch-all populist approach poses a challenge to both parties — as well as to the center-right Scottish Conservatives — and those who met Reform voters on the doorsteps in last year’s general election campaign say Farage peeled votes from all corners. “[Reform voters] came from everywhere, there were SNP voters, and former Tories and Labour, who said they were considering Reform,” a former SNP MP who lost their seat in July said. “What they had in common was they felt scunnered with everyone,” they added, using a Scottish slang term for deep annoyance. WELSH WOES An even more winnable prize in 2026 looks like Wales, where Reform is looking to leap over the Conservatives and become the official opposition to Labour.  In a statement of intent, Reform launched its general election manifesto in Merthyr Tydfil, a former Welsh mining town struggling with deindustrialization. It came second at July’s general election in 13 Welsh constituencies. And the party held a conference in Newport — once a steel powerhouse — just last month. In a statement of intent, Reform launched its general election manifesto in Merthyr Tydfil, a former Welsh mining town struggling with deindustrialization. | Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images “They’re areas which have perfectly legitimate reasons to not be happy with the status quo in Wales at the moment,” noted Will Hayward, a freelance investigative journalist who specializes in Welsh politics.  Indeed, the state of its main opponents means the ground looks fertile for a Reform revolt in Wales. “To a certain extent, you make your own luck, but you ride other people’s misfortune,” said Towler. Welsh Labour has led its devolved government for 25 years. It’s faced internal turmoil recently, cycling through two first ministers in quick succession. Meanwhile the Conservatives, Labour’s main challengers in Wales, are facing their own deep disarray. The Welsh Tories are, said Hayward, a “bit of a busted flush” — and they’ve so far struggled to see off the Reform threat, despite doing their best to ape Farage. “They’re essentially a Reform light,” said Hayward. But he added: “ I just don’t think you can run an anti-establishment style party when you’re the Conservative Party.” “Reform’s best prospects will come if they’re seen as an acceptable alternative to Tories in places where Tories can’t win,” said Robert Ford, a University of Manchester academic who co-wrote “Revolt on the Right” about the rise of Farage’s former outfit, UKIP. POWER TO THE PEOPLE  Farage, meanwhile, has been quietly trying to reshape Reform behind the scenes. While the party was originally set up as Farage’s personal vehicle, he last year handed more control of the outfit to its members. They can now adapt the party structure, and are able to remove the leader if at least 50 percent of the membership write to the chair requesting a vote of no confidence. It’s not a selfless move: The hope is that expanded powers will make members more willing to get out in the rain and campaign. But it’s not without risk for Farage. “Farage’s perennial complaint about UKIP was its membership was a mess and its internal democratic structures were a source of no end of trouble and frustration,” said Ford. Reform is optimistic that an in-house vetting team sifting through prospective candidates will clean up its act. Towler said internal vetters were the first people employed after the election, with scrutiny of prospective candidates going down to a parish council level. “We are learning to walk before we try and run,” said Towler. The party, he said, rejects a third of prospective candidates hoping to run for local government. He conceded, however: “Some bad apples will slip through. That’s the nature of the world. But nothing is perfect in this naughty world.” While a chunk of cash from the billionaire Musk would boost Reform significantly — worried Conservatives feared up to $100 million from the X owner — Farage hardly seems to be hard-up without him. Billionaire property developer Nick Candy’s defection from the Tories to Reform this month and promise of a seven-figure donation as the incoming party treasurer will go down a treat. The party only has 16 full time members of staff, so there’s plenty of room to grow.  And despite Musk’s headline-grabbing call for a major shake-up at the top of Reform, the party remains very much the Farage show.  “It is a party with one giant and a bunch of invisible dwarves,” argued Ford. The leader remains “head and shoulders and belt and braces and knees above everyone else,” he said. So long as he keeps winning, that seems to suit his key lieutenants just fine. “Nigel has universal support amongst our members,” said Yusuf. “He’s going to be the next prime minister of this country and hopefully serve multiple terms.” Jamie Dettmer contributed to this report.