It is Friday 19 June and Nigel Farage is in Lancashire, standing in front of a camera, the rolling countryside behind him. He is rehearsing a message to go out on social media. It is his post-election analysis. Some of it is scripted, some of it is ad-libbed. One thing is clear: Farage is seething.
The Makerfield by-election result had been declared in the small hours. Andy Burnham had won above and beyond what the polls had foretold. Reform, having privately conceded more than a month ago that it was going to lose, ended up 9,000 votes behind on an increased turnout. But Farage wasn’t raging about Burnham – “a popular, local mayor”, he conceded. He was angry about Restore.
In words addressed to the 3,000 people that voted for Rupert Lowe’s party, he was blunt, and even a little harsh: “What do you want? We are the challenger party to the left. I would urge you to think again.”
His address spoke to the real problem for the radical right in Britain today. It’s split, and quite badly. According to YouGov, one of the few pollsters to look at Restore, more than one in ten of the 2024 Reform vote would now vote for the new right-wing party. In the Greater Manchester mayoral election, Reform came a distant second. Suffering from the Burnham Bounce, their vote was not enough to score a win in any of the boroughs they topped in the May local contests, a high point for the party’s electoral success.
Compared to May, it’s clear as day. In Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Bolton, Restore took Reform votes, and the corresponding fall in Reform all but matched the rise in Restore.
This is the background to Lowe’s recent offer of an electoral pact to Farage. Restore, he said, would be more than willing to stand down in Reform’s favour, as long as it met a few conditions: bringing back the death penalty, banning halal and kosher meat, and taking a more ethno-centric view of British identity. The offer is predicated on the assumption that Restore voters will simply return to the fold on demand. Unfortunately for Reform, it’s wrong.
In that Greater Manchester by-election, we saw two important things. The first is the greater willingness of progressive voters to give their second preferences to other progressive candidates. Bev Craig’s second preferences amount to 73 per cent of the total number of Green and Lib Dem votes cast. Reform’s Sian Astley, on the other hand, struggled to make equivalent gains, with her second preferences adding up to just 52 per cent of the Tory and Restore vote. And while plenty of Conservatives won’t stomach Reform, the national data implies as many as half in fact would.
And according to YouGov polling, more Restore voters dislike rather than like Farage, all the while having a cult-like enthusiasm for Rupert Lowe. And just 36 per cent of Restore voters say they are open to voting Reform.
The implication here, given 50 per cent of today’s Restore vote has come from Reform, is that people are moving Lowe’s way and are not looking back. It’s a radicalisation of the radicals, that they wouldn’t even back their nearest bedfellows in a tight contest. Why? Because the points of distinction are too important for them. Farage has virulent opponents on the British right. (Some 10 to 15 per cent of 2024 Reform voters, depending on the pollster, now say they have a negative view of Farage.) A Reform-Restore alliance might work in the air, but on the ground, his voters are likely to see things differently.
[Further reading: Are we living under “woke Blue Labour”?]
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