Reform cannot win a general election – and Makerfield has shown us why

TThe reform bubble burst spectacularly at Makerfield with the party’s crushing defeat to Andy Burnham, showing exactly why Nigel Farage will never be prime minister.

While the by-election itself was not the reason why Reform’s hopes were dashed, it did shed light on the idea that the party might somehow inevitably march to Downing Street.

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What we see unfolding is very similar to what happened in 1983, when the insurgent Social Democratic Party (SDP) garnered more than 25 percent of the vote but won only 23 seats.

Makerfield was not even a close victory for Mr Burnham as he now looked ahead to his own inevitable march towards No.10.

Reform lost to Labor by 20 percentage points and 10,000 votes; This showed that good political skills and communication ability were all it took to stop them in their tracks.

But in reality other, much more serious structural problems within Reformation made last night’s outcome inevitable.

cryptocurrency party

Reformation’s big problem is that it has always relied on the personality and political skills of its leader, Mr Farage, and offers next to nothing in the way of content, policy or political philosophy.

It’s probably not a complete coincidence that for much of the past year their only serious economic policy has been to liberalize cryptocurrency.

Clearly this has been spurred by the fact that crypto billionaires such as Thailand-based Christopher Harborne have been pumping money into the Reform operation and handing over millions more to Mr Farage himself. But there is also a symbolic side to this.

Like Reformation itself, crypto is based more on vibrations with no obvious significant value. It has an empty quality to it, waiting to emerge when the bottom of the market falls.

The excitement of the polls that took the party over 30 percent has long since passed and it has begun to decline. The reality, which Professor Sir John Curtice and others have been tracking for some time, is that Reformation is drifting towards the mid-20s (similar to the SDP in 1983).

This makes them particularly vulnerable to an underpriced aspect of British politics – tactical voting on first pass through the postal system.

tactical voting

We first saw this at the Welsh Senedd by-election in Caerphilly last year; Labor voters backed Plaid Cymru to stop the success of Reform. We saw this again in Gorton and Denton, where the Greens benefited. Now Mr Burnham has mobilized this on behalf of Labor by getting the Greens, Liberal Democrats and even the Conservatives to vote to stop Reform.

There are already websites such as tacticalvote.co.uk, tactical.vote and even stopreformuk.vote that have well-funded campaigns and are ready to help voters.

Pollster YouGov also offered insightful analysis on how big this could be. It found that 58 per cent of Liberal Democrat and Green voters would vote Labor tactically to stop Reform UK winning.

Around 77 per cent of Labor voters will tactically vote Liberal Democrats or Greens to prevent Reform UK from winning. And if the Conservatives or Reform UK had a chance of winning in their respective seats, voters would choose the Conservative Party by 31 per cent to 24 per cent.

This means Reform could still be the largest party in terms of votes, but only win a handful of seats.

Tactical voting was further spurred by Reform’s disastrous selection of candidates, including Robert Kenyon at Makerfield and his checkered social media history.

But this wasn’t a one-off. Matthew Goodwin’s extreme rhetoric in Gorton and Denton brought his downfall, while a number of candidates with extreme views on race, women, Islam and homosexuality cost them hundreds of seats in local elections.

It turns out that the presence of neo-Nazi sympathizers on the ballot can focus people’s minds on voting tactically.

Meanwhile, Reformation is clearly intimidated by Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain on the right.

Although Restore did not receive enough votes to make a difference in Makerfield, its presence pushed Reform away from being more at the center and into a core vote strategy based on extreme rhetoric against immigrants.

Reform’s London mayoral candidate, Laila Cunningham, said they were unable to make the gains they needed to make in the capital because home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf was talking about “mass deportation”.

Another ally of Mr Farage said: Independent It was stated that the language of mass deportations cost the party “at least 500 council seats”. As one long-term ally of Farage put it: “Restructuring now means Reform what Ukip meant to the Tories. It forces them straight and gets their votes.”

Farage’s women problem

It is also clear that the party is a major deterrent for women. Choosing a man like Kenyon who proudly says, “I’m sexist, I’m sorry, but I am,” sums it up.

Mr Farage said: “So what?” Kenyon’s disregard for her comments about abortion and objectification of women as “bar talk” made the situation worse. If your appeal starts with only 50 percent of the population, then you have a problem.

Reform female MPs Suella Braverman and Sarah Pochin are rarely seen compared to the laddish gang at the heart of the party. The party’s “motherhood” policies have also been branded “The Handmaid’s Tale” by a TUC source.

But there is an even broader problem, and that is the question of what the Reformation was other than a tool for foolish personalities.

It is already clear that Mr Farage looks tired and bored. There are now many people who could replace him; These could be Mr Yusuf, the Conservative defector Robert Jenrick or deputy leader Richard Tice. This is a civil war waiting to happen in a dysfunctional party.

In addition, Mr Farage’s long-term allies think he is damaging the brand and diluting his party’s message by bringing in so many Tory defectors, while others want him to be “more Conservative”.

All of this paints a picture of a party that has little to offer beyond questionable personalities.

After a night in which Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party won its own shock victory in Aberdeen South (the Tories’ first Scottish Westminster victory since 1967), former Tories like Jenrick and Braverman who jumped on Reform thinking they were the future may have made a fatally bad calculation.