What is Reform UK? Reform secures first elected MPs including party leader Nigel Farage

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has won a parliamentary seat in the general election on his eighth attempt.

Farage was declared MP for Clacton shortly after Lee Anderson became Reform’s first MP of the night.

He said in a speech at the election count: “It’s not just disappointment with the Conservative party, there is a massive gap on the centre-right of British politics and my job is to fill it.”

Meanwhile, Richard Tice won Boston and Skegness, businessman and former Southampton FC chairman Rupert Lowe, won Great Yarmouth, and Lee Anderson won his seat in Ashfield.

Reform UK was previously known as the Brexit Party. This was a one-issue party that advocated for the UK to exit the European Union without an agreement when it was founded at the beginning of 2019.

What is the Reform UK political party?

Reform UK is a British right-wing political party founded by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage as the Brexit party in 2018.

Their party slogan “Let’s Make Britain Great” harks back to the slogan of Republican president Donald Trump: “Make America Great Again”.

Mr Farage is currently the party’s leader, while its chairman is the former Conservative party member Richard Tice.

Only a year after its creation, in 2019, the party hit its first major scandal as party leader and co-founder Catherine Blaiklock was forced to resign for anti-Islam tweets posted from her account.

But in the same year, during the 2019 general election, they took two per cent of votes after contesting 275 seats, and did not succeed in electing an MP.

However, they followed with their largest electoral success, a win of 29 seats in the European Parliament national elections in 2019.

This was among growing national concern around border policies and immigrants crossing the English Channel in boats.

In January 2020, the month Brexit came into effect, the party was renamed and became known largely for its anti-lockdown policies.

The party also prided itself on advocating for free speech, rigid immigration policies, reforming the House of Lords, the BBC, and changing the UK’s current voting system.

Recently, with the surge of Tory party leavers and MPs announcing they will stand down at the next election, Reform UK has seen a rise in joiners.

Other policies possibly enticing ex-Conservative party members are Reform UK’s call for lower taxes and the need to nationalise utilities and British energy.

What are the Reform party’s policies?

In June, Reform released its manifesto.

The party has made it very clear where it stands on various issues. It wants to focus on zero NHS waiting lists, cheaper energy, net zero immigration, and lower taxation.

Regarding energy, the party is in favour of increasing oil and gas extraction rather than abandoning net zero ambitions.

In addition, Reform UK pledges to give people vouchers to go private if they can't see a doctor in three days, interest-free student loans, more police, no "woke ideologies in the classroom", no TV licence charge, the Lords being reformed, and less "wasteful spending”.

It further demands that the UK employ offshore-processing centres for illegal immigrants, withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, and stop migrants entering illegally from requesting asylum.

Are ex-Conservative MPs crossing over to Reform UK?

In March 2024, Lee Anderson joined Reform UK after being suspended from the Conservative party, after refusing to apologise for claims Islamists had "control" of London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

He has now been officially endorsed as the MP for Ashfield in the general election.While some Tory politicians have been disillusioned with politics, instead choosing retirement, others have chosen to defect.

Michelle Ballantyne, a Conservative MSP, joined Reform in January 2021 but lost her seat in the Scottish election in that same year.Speaking to inews, Tice previously said: “I think it’s fair to say, without saying too much, that there’s some very disaffected ‘Red Wall’, industrial-heartland Tory MPs who thought they were joining a Conservative party and have found themselves in a socialist party. They’re very, very unhappy.

“So, you’re seeing some of them basically saying, ‘I’m abandoning politics altogether’, and some are having other considerable thoughts. That’s all I say.”

However, two Reform candidates defected to the Conservatives prior to the election. Liam Booth-Isherwood, Reform’s candidate in Erewash, and Georgie David, the Reform candidate for West Ham and Beckton, now support the Tories. However, it was too late to remove their names from the ballot papers in time for the election.

Have voters chosen Reform above the Tories in the general election?

The Conservative share of the vote has gone down 19.9 per cent compared to the 2019 election.

Reform contested 630 seats across England, Scotland and Wales. However, they disowned six candidates over offensive comments since nominations closed.In this year’s general election, the first two results, in north-east England – in Blyth and Ashington and in Houghton and Sunderland South – saw the party beat the Conservatives by more than 4,000 votes.

This trend was repeated in other seats, as the Tory vote share plummeted.

In the election, Farage overturned a Conservative majority to take Clacton – a race which marked his eighth attempt to enter the Commons.

Reform UK chairman Tice has overturned a 27,402 Tory majority to win Boston and Skegness.

Meanwhile, in Great Yarmouth, Lowe beat the Labour candidate by 1,426, with the Tories dropping to third place.

The party is on course to be the third largest party in the UK, after the Conservatives, by vote share.