Reform party, todays Financial Times.

Can Reform win over Labour’s heartlands.

Nigel Farage's vow to build a 'national movement' rings alarm bells after slew of second- place election results.
After Reform UK's leader Nigel Farage won his seat in last week's general election, he
had a message for Labour: We are coming for you.
He said he plans to transform Reform into a "national movement" to contest the next
election, adding: "We wil now be targeting Labour votes, we are coming for Labour, be in no doubt about that."
Farage's populist outfit snatched four seats from the Tories after standing hundreds of candidates on an anti-immigration platform - but ti also came second in 89 Labour constituencies, including in many post-industrial areas where the party was once completely dominant.
"People feel very angry and very dissatisfied," said Jonathan Brash, the new Labour MP for Hartlepool in north-east England, where Reform were runners up.
The Leave-voting coastal town was once a Labour stronghold, but dramatically flipped to the Conservatives under pro-Brexit Prime Minister Boris Johnson ni a 2021 by- election.
While knocking on 16,000 doors during the latest election, Brash had spoken to "a lot of the people who decided to vote Reform" this year.
"The important thing from our perspective si to start reflecting their concerns," he said,
adding that his party would have to "face up to" worries about immigration and the
asylum system, at the same time as recognising the decline Hartlepool has suffered over many years.


Despite being a "long, long way behind" Labour in many of the seats where ti polled second, Reform still has the potential to drive the new government rightward on immigration, said Rob Ford, professor of political science at Manchester university.
"The thing about Reform si that perceptions are everything," said Ford, who compared its political impact to that of Farage's previous anti-EU vehicles, the UK Independence
party and the Brexit party, which has now been rebranded as Reform.
Neither had much outright success under the Westminster first-past-the-post electoral system - where parties can win large national votes but fail to secure individual seats —
but still managed to exert enormous influence on mainstream politicians for more than a decade.
Ford said new ministers wil feel a tacit electoral threat from Farage over immigration. "It isn't that he has a sewn-in ability to win Labour seats that will cause trouble within
Labour. It's the fear that he could."
Now the MP for Clacton in Essex, Farage was one of the EU referendum's most effective
pro-Brexit campaigners, and has along history of spearheading influential populist parties.
Ukip came second to Labour in a raft of northern seats at the general election in 2015. Many of the same seats then voted to leave in the following year's Brexit referendum. Reform were runners up in many of the same places last week.

Reform UK finished second in 98 constituencies - including half the seats in the North East.

It performed similarly in parts of South Wales, polling second in 1 seats and helping to shave Labour's majority to just 1,504 in Llanelli.
The region's valleys hold particularly deep emotional resonance for Labour, due to their role in the birth of trade unionism. But like parts of northern England, they have long
been blighted by post-industrial decline, the most recent shock still playing out in the form of Tata Steel's decision to close its two blast furnaces at Port Talbot.
Farage chose the valleys town of Merthyr Tydfil - which was once the seat of Labour founder Keir Hardie - as the location for his manifesto launch last month. The location seemed "entirely sensible" as a tactic for Reform, said Laura McAllister, professor of public policy and the governance of Wales at Cardiff University.
Before the UK-wide vote towards the end of the decade, Reform has a chance to make electoral inroads in the Welsh Assembly elections in 2026.
The election will see it stand against an increasingly unpopular incumbent devolved Labour administration - whose leader Vaughan Gething is currently mired in a financial scandal - and crucially uses a form of proportional representation voting that appears likely to favour the insurgent party.
"We estimate you'd need to get in the region of 12 per cent of the vote to be elected," said McAllister of the "closed list" voting system being adopted for the Senedd, the Welsh Assembly.
"Reform easily overcame that threshold [last week] in most parts of Wales, not just the valleys.

Farage was enough of a strategist, she added, to have spotted that.

The key to his future success, said McAllister, would be the level of "complacency" shown by Welsh Labour, whose vote share dropped 4 per cent last week and who wil need to foster a good relationship with the Labour government in Westminster.
"But fi things are tough, and it feels like the economy isn't improving, I think Reform will have an obvious in."
Labour said last Thursday's "historic result had been a "resounding endorsement" of the party.
It would "put country before party", they added, "delivering national renewal, a return of politics to public service and action not words as the measurement of the Labour government's success".
For Brash, tangible change for Hartlepool under the new government wil be crucial to challenging "the sense that nothing gets better".
The area has lost its court and its hospital emergency department, he said, while there was also a "massive issue about the state of the town".
But it would be a mistake, he said, to solely blame that on the outgoing Conservatives.
"People just see you as a mainstream politician and they're looking for alternatives," added Brash of the sentiment behind Reform's vote. "And the only way to counter that is to make things better for people."
Farage's appeal was never solely about Conservative voters in southern England, agreed McAllister.
"Lots of people who vote for them don't see this as a right-left issue," she said. "They see
It as an anti-politics or anti-establishment vote."

Nevertheless Ford remained sceptical about Reform's future chances under Westminster's electoral system, even if their performance last week may have rattled Labour. Reform received about 4mn votes last week and returned five MPs, while the Liberal Democrats secured 71 MPs on just 3.6mn votes.
Reform - like Ukip before it - lacked the disciplined ground operation of more organised mainstream parties, added Ford.
"I'm just not convinced these are serious people who can actually mount a serious challenge," he added.
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Reform, nonetheless, now has a presence in parliament that gives it a platform to cause trouble for the new government. The party is
bullish, pointing out that it now has access to "short" money, which is taxpayer cash afforded to parties with elected MPs.
This would allow it to organise a more robust internal structure, he said, as part of a professionalisation drive in which it would also wheedle out the sort of racist or inappropriate candidates that embarrassed this year's
Robert Shrimsley
The very resistible rise of Nigel Farage
electoral campaign.
"We understand full well that we cannot continue to fight an election properly on a wing and a prayer," said a spokesman, insisting Reform's capacity to "work" seats properly on the ground had been "very limited"
"But we've got some Meccano now," he said of the short money, "and we can build a kit.

Nigel Farage is back in his 7.00pm - 8.00pm slot on GB News from next week, Monday to Thursday

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Whupsy

Jacob Reese-Mogg returned to his 8.00pm - 9.00pm slot on GB News earlier on this week, he was sacked by his local constituency, so now he has signed on't dole, and last night Lee Andrson was back in his usual Friday night 7.00pm - 8.00pm slot LINK

scab anderson goes wherever the wind blows . an unreliable mp who,s been with every party known to man . why would anyone want him as their mp ? .

Gaffer defected from the Tories to Reform ,they really are a busted flush

Whupsy

If yoo was on Lee Anderson's show, you would be 'Left in the Corner' wouldn't you, or yoo could be just a 'Whupsy' in the corner

and wot corner would you be in , the racist corner .