Is it going wrong for Reform?

Has Reform peaked too soon? In the wake of Rishi Sunak’s D-Day debacle, the party was riding high in the polls. Successive surveys suggested that they were neck-and-neck with the Tories. After one poll even showed Reform ahead, Nigel Farage hailed it as a ‘crossover moment’. He jokingly referred to himself as the ‘Leader of the Opposition’, declaring he ‘absolutely’ believed Reform would win more votes than the Conservatives.

A fortnight on, things now look a little less rosy for Reform. Following Farage’s interview with Nick Robinson – in which he suggested the West helped provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – the party faced an onslaught of cross-party criticism. Reform’s response was to go on the attack. Farage criticised Boris Johnson and the Mail newspapers and tried to frame the row as an indictment of the establishment’s foreign policy failings.

It wasn’t long before Reform was embroiled in a fresh scandal: Channel 4 broadcast secret recordings last Thursday which showed supporters making a series of offensive comments.