Reform UK had clear objectives in the 2026 elections in England, Scotland and Wales. It wanted to show that its 15-month lead in the national opinion polls could be translated into actual votes, and it wanted to finally bury the Conservatives, its main competitor on the right. With only eight MPs in Parliament, compared to the Conservatives 116 MPs, Reform needed to build on its striking success in the local elections in 2025 to make good its claim that it is a national political force which can win a parliamentary majority on its own. The electoral struggle is not directly between Labour and Reform, because Reform wins most of its votes primarily from the Conservatives rather than from Labour. Reform takes seats away from Labour when it can push down the Conservative share of the vote and when other parties on the left, particularly now the Greens, push down the Labour share of the vote.
Leaders of Reform have made no secret of their desire to replace the Conservatives. They do not want an alliance; they want to absorb as many of the Tories’ members and their voters as they can, and reduce the party to a small rump on the fringes of British politics. But the Conservatives will remain the official Opposition until the next General Election, with all the privileges and profile which that provides. There is nothing that Reform can do about that. What they can do is demonstrate that the Conservative party is a Potemkin Village, by showing that it is Reform which now dominates so much of the heartlands of Tory England in council elections, and that it is Reform which has taken over the mantle of Unionism from the Conservatives in Wales and Scotland.
The 2026 elections are a crucial stage in the realisation of this strategy. As the Official Opposition the Conservatives would normally expect to be the prime beneficiary of the unpopularity of the Labour Government. The two main parties have very often in the last 60 years suffered major losses in local elections when they have been in Government. But in 2025 and now again in 2026, not only has the incumbent Government lost heavily in local elections, but the official party of Opposition has been unable to capitalise and has seen its position further erode with a loss of vote share and the loss of many hundreds of council seats. The Conservatives had a few successes, such as regaining Westminster and holding off Reform in Bexley. But they also suffered major and symbolic reverses, including losing control of the county councils like Essex to Reform. Prominent Conservatives, including Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Priti Patel all have seats in Essex. In Wales the Conservatives were reduced to 7 seats in the Senedd, and in Scotland they were pushed to the margins.
The problem for Reform is that although they have scored another major victory against the Conservatives they have not killed them off. In the Politico poll of polls before the election Reform was polling at 25 per cent, and the Conservatives at 18 per cent. These vote shares were broadly reflected in the actual votes cast on 7 May. In the last six months the Conservative vote share has stabilised, while the Reform vote share has come down slightly from its average of 30 per cent at the end of 2025. If Reform could capture a big chunk of the remaining Conservative vote then it would be polling above 40 per cent, the kind of support enjoyed by Margaret Thatcher in 1979, 1983 and 1987 and by Tony Blair in 1997 and 2001. But Reform remains a long way from that kind of electoral strength. The first past the post system now works in its favour because it is polling ahead of its main rivals, but its vote share is far from convincing. That need not stop it succeeding so long as there is a sufficient gap between it and its main challenger. Labour after all won a landslide in 2024 on 34 per cent of the vote. But it is unlikely to be a springboard to the kind of political hegemony which the Conservatives used to enjoy. Nigel Farage was quick to proclaim on 8 May that an historic shift was taking place, equivalent to the displacement of the Liberals by Labour after 1918. But at the moment Reform still appears as a symptom of the fragmentation of British politics rather than a solution to it. It is hard to see any party or movement providing the kind of lasting political hegemony which the Conservatives used to exercise.
One of the main causes of the fracturing of British politics is the long shadow cast by Brexit. It spurred a realignment which has shattered the electoral coalitions of both Labour and the Conservatives. The loss of trust in politicians of all parties because of their persistent failure to deliver the enticing promise of Brexit – taking back control – has made how people voted in the referendum the best indicator of how they have voted in subsequent elections. John Curtice has pointed out that in the 2026 elections those voters who voted Leave were four times as likely to vote Reform than those who voted Remain. The problem for the Conservative party is that they have steadily lost that part of their coalition which voted Remain in 2016 to other parties, most notably the Liberal Democrats. Under Kemi Badenoch the party’s strategy has been to ignore these voters, putting all its energies into presenting itself as a more responsible and trustworthy version of Reform. As these elections show this is at best a holding position. It does not offer any clear route by which the Conservatives can once again become the dominant electoral force in British politics.
But it might still be enough to prevent Reform uniting the Right on its own terms. Analysis by Michael Thrasher for Sky News shows that if the 2026 results were translated into a general election result, Reform would have 284 seats with 27 per cent of the vote while the Conservatives would win 96 seats on 20 per cent of the vote. Labour would have 110 seats and the Liberal Democrats 80. Reform would be well short of a majority and would either have to govern as a minority government or make an agreement with the Conservatives. If Reform cannot crush the Conservatives it may yet be forced to deal with them, and seven points in the opinion polls is not a very commanding lead. The general election is still three years away.
What Reform will be hoping is that its success in these elections and its ability to project itself as a national party in Scotland and Wales as well as in England will give it renewed momentum to push its poll rating to the high 30s or even the low 40s. The Conservative party will disappear as an effective force. For that to be realised Reform needs a lot of defections by sitting Conservative MPs, as well as by many more Conservative Members and councillors. It also needs more unequivocal support from the right-wing media. It already has this from GB News but support from the traditional Conservative papers – the Times, Telegraph, Mail and Express – remains ambiguous. They have become increasingly well-disposed towards Reform, but still have historic attachments to the Conservatives. Reform needs these papers and similarly aligned thinktanks to turn their back on the Conservatives and fully embrace Reform as the hegemonic party of the Right. But will they do this? Many doubts remain over Farage and the team around him among mainstream Conservatives, particularly over his stances on the economy and on defence and security.
Reform’s position would be a lot stronger if there was a move towards electoral reform. The adoption of proportional representation would force parties on the Right to deal with one another. Coalitions of the left bloc or the right bloc would become the norm, as they are in many other parts of Europe. Nigel Farage used to be strongly in favour of electoral reform although is now markedly less outspoken on the issue since he became such a strong beneficiary of the first past the post system. The Conservatives under Badenoch show no interest. But dreaming of the restoration of political hegemony through first past the post requires the obliteration of opponents on the right. The Conservatives used to be very efficient at doing this, never allowing a party to develop on their flank which could challenge them. The calamity of Brexit, the product of the long-running Conservative civil war over Europe, allowed the emergence of first Ukip, then Reform.
The Conservatives no long know how to put the Farage genie back in its bottle. Reform is still not sure it can deliver the final blow to the Conservatives. These elections have not quite achieved it. The battle for the right goes on.
[Further reading: Keir Starmer must go]
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