You or Reform

by Richard Pooley

Whenever I knock on doors in the UK constituency of Frome and East Somerset (FES) to find out how the occupants are likely to vote in an upcoming election, I have my phone in my hand, ready to check that I am indeed listening to the views of, say, Linda Crabtree of 56 Tyning Road, Radstock and not those of her neighbours.* The phone app is called MiniVan. On it are the names and addresses of those on the electoral register, plus questions which aim to find out the person’s political opinions and voting intentions. Since the 2024 General Election a new question has been added:

“If you had to choose between the Liberal Democrats or Reform UK, which party would you rather support? Liberal Democrats? Reform? Neither?”

When canvassing for the Liberal Democrats in the early months of 2024 I occasionally met someone in the old Somerset Coalfield area of FES who said they had not decided between us, a centre-left party, and Reform, a hard-right party. At first, I was shocked. Many of the people who gave me this answer were once Labour voters, fed up with the corrupt and incompetent Conservative Government but feeling Labour, led by Sir Kier Starmer, was little better. But why even consider Reform UK, a party whose leader, ex-City trader Nigel Farage, held opinions totally at odds with the traditional socialist views of the Labour Party? I soon heard the reason. He had persuaded many British people that voting for Brexit in 2016 would stop immigration, long a concern of Labour voters.  It hadn’t. Instead we had had the “Boris Wave” of immigrants during Johnson’s time as Conservative prime minister. Only Farage could deal with the problem, they told me. But why then consider the Liberal Democrats, the most pro-European party and with a positive attitude towards legal immigration? Because they didn’t trust Farage to not privatise the National Health Service, that great sacred cow of British public life.

 As the election approached, our canvassing returns showed that this response was ever more common. Only Green Party supporters would not consider Reform. We won with a majority of 5,400 over the Conservatives, an 18.7% swing from the last election. Reform just beat Labour into fourth place.

Since the election this “Reform or You” response has become still more common. Hence the extra question in my MiniVan app.. And the latest poll in FES predicts that at the next election Reform will become a close second to us, and the Greens will overtake the Conservatives. Labour? Nowhere.

In some forty-five years of canvassing in elections and by-elections in the UK I have never seen such fluidity in party support. The political tribes have dwindled. Yes, the Reform and Green parties have seen a surge in membership recently. But then so did we in the 2000s and so did Labour in the late 2010s when hard-left Jeremy Corbyn inspired the young to sign up. Meanwhile the largest 'party' – those who don’t vote – grows ever larger.

Enter Prosper UK. Not a new party, but a new “movement” inside the Conservative Party, led by two of the party’s most successful people: Ruth Davidson, ex-leader of the Scottish Conservatives, and Andy Street, once CEO of John Lewis and former Conservative mayor of the West Midlands. The other founders are also senior Tories from the left of the party – David Gauke and Amber Rudd. There has been much sneering about the name. “Sounds like an insurance company” said Alastair Campbell on The Rest is Politics. But polling commissioned by Davidson and Street apparently shows that seven million voters in Britain are “politically homeless”. These are the people in the centre ground who believe that the country can be prosperous again (hence the name) but feel no political party has a credible economic strategy to achieve this and instead bangs on about reducing immigration or saving the NHS. The Prosperites, nearly all existing Tory MPs or members of the House of Lords, believe the Conservative Party will become the next Government and see off Reform only if it appeals to these homeless voters. Unfortunately for them, their leader, Kemi Badenoch has already rejected such a strategy: “Anybody who is trying to push an agenda that is not…the platform I stood on, is not being helpful.”

Badenoch has been performing much better in the House of Commons recently and did herself some good by appearing on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs, sounding less menacingly robotic than usual. However, as a committed Brexiteer and Net Zero sceptic, she is not likely to soften her position to accommodate the Prosperites. Above all, she has said little about the UK Economy other than she wishes it to be “stronger”. Don’t we all?

So, if the Conservatives are to carry on trying to stop their traditional supporters voting for Reform UK by espousing similar policies on immigration, climate change and “wokery”, who is going to appeal to the homeless seven million?

The obvious answer should be us Liberal Democrats. But we are led by a man whose name most people on the doorstep cannot recall. Ed Davey is a decent man in the wrong job (a bit like our current prime minister). What we stand for and our policies are unknown to those same people. We have seventy-two MPs but have a far tinier share of publicity in the media than Mr Farage and his seven fellow MPs get. Why? Because Farage is a great communicator, spouting simple solutions to complex problems. Likewise his political opposite, Zack Polanski, new leader of the Green Party, whose charisma and equally ill-thought out policies are drawing voters away from Labour and, to a lesser extent, the Liberal Democrats.

The seven million do exist. I have met many of them in the towns and villages of FES and the nearby city of Bath They want to vote but none of the parties motivate them to do so. If Badenoch sees the sense of what Prosper UK are saying, the Conservatives will be the largest party at the next election. If Starmer can get a grip of his rebellious MPs and use the huge majority he has to push through policies which will help the UK economy grow and its people prosper, Labour could be the largest. If the Liberal Democrats could find a new, half-way charismatic leader and shout much louder about the need to rejoin the EU Customs Union, stop throttling businesses with yet more taxes, transfer power and resources from central to local government, and reform the benefits system so that hundreds of thousands get what they need and a million rejoin the workforce, they won’t be the largest party but they will wield far more influence than they do now.

But I see no sign of any of this happening. I won’t hear “Reform or You” for much longer. It’ll be “Sorry, mate. Reform” or the ever more common refrain: “Why bother? You are all useless. I’m not voting.”

*There is no Tyning Road in Radstock, though there are numerous roads, ways and closes bearing the name Tyning in Somerset. The verb tyne means to "enclose with a hedge or fence". Tynings pre-date the 18^th Century Enclosure Acts and were places where villagers could keep their sheep and cattle safe.