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The internal tensions facing Reform before the next election

I don’t think Reform will collapse before the next election but I’m increasingly confident they have peaked. If Labour can’t get rid of Starmer, there are now two mainstream parties competing for the centre-right while Reform are being outflanked on the right by fringe parties:

  1. Trying to win over centre-right Tory voters (particularly as Badenoch becomes more proactive) versus keeping the far-right on side. The splinter parties could plausibly tip the vote against Reform in certain target seats, even if they just get a few hundred votes.
  2. Trying to demonstrate credentials for government vs positioning themselves as the insurgent party. I see why they’re welcoming ex-Tory ministers to their ‘shadow cabinet’ because they need to demonstrate government experience but it’s also directly undermining their whole brand image.
  3. Expanding their leadership cadre vs emphasising Farage as their vote-winner. At the moment they’re utterly dependent on Farage but expanding the ranks of their leaderships opens up the possibility for internal tensions.
  4. Developing a policy agenda in a party split between nationalists & post liberals on the one hand and Thatcherites and classical liberals on the other. This is not an ideologically coherent coalition. The nearer they get to government, the more these fault lines will be exposed as they try to develop a policy agenda.

It’s a fools game to offer political predictions. But I’m a fool and I’m also emboldened by how right I was in my post-election prediction of Labour’s trajectory. My suggestion therefore is that we’re likely to see 5 parties with 10%-20% of the vote in the next election, probably in this order of vote share: Reform, Greens, Tories, Labour, Lib Dems.

Hello coalition politics in a political system completely ill-suited to it 👋