At the height of Reform UK’s insurgency in 2025, Nigel Farage seemed to sweep all before him. Every minor development in British politics justified a further press conference fronted by the Reform leader. Electoral milestones were seized upon as opportunities to demonstrate Reform’s advance in constituencies across the country. The established mould of British politics was putty in the hands of the populist party.
By the end of 2025, Farage had already succeeded in taking Reform further than any of his previous projects, the UK Independence Party (Ukip) and the Brexit Party. Reform UK enjoyed an uninterrupted lead in national opinion polls from May 2025 to July 2026. As a consequence, and for the first time, Farage’s pronouncements were treated as those of a future prime minister.
Yet the source of Farage’s success was fundamentally familiar. Refined over years of campaigning, his instinctive opportunism, sense of timing and flair for political theatre rendered Reform a far more visible – and effective – critic of the Labour government than the Conservative Party. Farage was utterly relentless.
But the strategy was also unsustainable. The rapid growth, loose organisation and high degree of centralisation could carry Farage to the top of the news agenda – but not into government.
Reform’s lofty ambitions required a new political model. Farage soon recognised that his ultimate challenge would be one of professionalisation.
This transition – from protest vehicle to prospective party of government – would come with unavoidable risks. The personal dominance that sustained Ukip and the Brexit Party would have to give way, in favour of an organisation with a broader base and more clearly defined internal machinery.
Reform’s problems today, reflected in its diminished polling, stem in large part from the difficulties and limits of professionalisation. The attempt to derive discipline from insurgency has exposed, rather than resolved, the tensions at the heart of the Reform project. And the fallout risks turning latent vulnerabilities into permanent liabilities for the party’s brand.
Candidate challenge
At the centre of Reform’s professionalisation drive was the creation of a rigorous vetting process.
The need for hundreds of individuals capable of standing for parliament meant sorting through the disparate mix of activists, local politicians and defectors that had fuelled Reform’s rapid expansion. Farage, who spent much of his time as Ukip leader managing candidate controversies, would now have to pick a prospective government from a pool of highly motivated political outsiders. The potential political difficulties were all too apparent.
So Farage repeatedly promised to exclude extremists through improved candidate selection. Reports in late 2025 even pointed to the introduction of psychiatric and psychometric testing for Reform candidates.
But controversies continue to expose serious gaps in the party’s screening procedures. Earlier this year, Reform guidance was revealed instructing its own activists to “avoid drinking and tweeting” – suggesting the party was acutely aware of the potential for damaging material to emerge from within its ranks.
ITV Exposure’s investigation this week, which caught multiple elected councillors and candidates expressing extreme, explicit racist, Islamophobic and misogynistic language, now raises questions about how deep the problem runs within Reform. At the very least, the investigation suggests the May 2025 elections – which placed Reform activists in councils across the country – came far too soon for the party. The findings will be seized on by opponents as evidence of an unpleasant, and in parts extreme, Reform underbelly.
The cost of Conservative defections
For Farage, professionalisation meant coming to terms with Reform’s limitations – including when it came to experience of government.
In late 2025 and early 2026, the party opened its doors to Conservative MPs Danny Kruger, Robert Jenrick, Andrew Rosindell and Suella Braverman – presenting their experience as evidence of its readiness for government. Kruger, the first Conservative MP to defect after the 2024 election, was tasked with leading Reform’s preparations for government.
It is easy to understand why Farage chose this course of action. The defections offered a potential solution to the expertise gap that had accompanied his electoral advance, while easing the pressure on the Reform leader as the party’s sole spokesperson. But the tactic has also created significant personal and political tensions.
Zia Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesperson, has become the most prominent internal opponent of its Tory recruitment drive. He secured a symbolic victory shortly before the May 2026 elections, when Farage promised a “deadline” after which defectors would no longer be drafted. But the evidence of recent months suggests Yusuf has grown more forthright in making his case, both privately and publicly, and this week, he implied that former Home Office ministers Braverman and Jenrick should “take responsibility” for the Conservative Party’s record on immigration.
This points to a further problem with accepting Tory defectors. Reform sought to build credibility by importing politicians with experience of government. But the party’s essential appeal rests on opposition to the political establishment from which they came, particularly the Conservatives – and especially the party’s record on immigration.
Opponents have been quick to seize on this obvious dissonance. In her conference speech, Kemi Badenoch cannily presented the Conservative “export boom of drama queens” to Reform as evidence the party had changed. “This party is now the no drama party. We are the no-nonsense party”, she declared.
Investigations and Reform identity
The drive for professionalism has also run into questions about standards and probity. Farage has faced persistent scrutiny over large political donations, including his £5 million gift from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.
These stories have brought additional scrutiny of the people and structures at Reform’s centre. In September, an undercover investigation by Channel 4 News and the investigative group Verbatim made allegations that Reform figures had discussed ways of facilitating impermissible foreign donations.
In the space of two months, therefore, Reform has been on the receiving end of two damaging investigations. Politically, the problem for the party is that these stories paint a uniform picture of a party struggling to maintain standards across its expanding organisation. Channel 4 and Verbatim trained their attention on Reform UK’s central party apparatus; ITV’s Exposure turned the spotlight on its wider network of activists and councillors.
Reform’s professionalisation initiative was intended to provide substance to its political project, by setting out a wider team, clearer policies and a more coherent account of what the party would look like in office. But the continual drip-feed of controversies risks defining Reform’s brand on entirely damaging territory, hampering Farage’s attempts to address the ambiguity around the party’s platform.
These pressures have left Reform looking increasingly defensive.
In August, after the Sunday Times report that he had not properly declared support from long-time ally George Cottrell, Farage resigned his Clacton seat. Pointing to parliament’s standards investigation, Farage blamed a stitch-up by the establishment. Politically, he reasoned that a limited contest in Clacton – characterised by populist appeals to “the people” and scathing castigations of a parliamentary conspiracy – would sideline reports of Reform sleaze.
The decision was a symptom of Reform’s troubles, but also a signal of its political and strategic direction.
The campaign may well have reinforced the loyalty of Reform’s core supporters. But the wheeze sat uneasily with Reform’s nominal commitment to professionalisation. Farage’s brush with Count Binface will have done little to reassure voters who want to know that the party can be trusted with government; rather, his populist posturing probably steered Reform further from the median voter.
In the long run, the stunt – a performative act of protest – will only reinforce the charge that Reform remains a performative protest movement.
Farage beats Count Binface in self-imposed Clacton by-election
The pull of the fringe
The Clacton by-election suggested Farage had lost sight of his ambition, set shortly after the 2024 general election, to build a professional, mainstream party with broad appeal.
A further case in point is the ongoing debate over “Englishness” inflamed by Suella Braverman. On BBC Newsnight earlier this month, Reform’s education and equality spokesperson doubled down on previous remarks regarding national identity, declaring: “Of course I’m not English. I’m not an English person – I am of Asian origin.”
The debate represents a political dead end for Reform. Polling indicates that Braverman’s position is significantly out of step with public opinion, and the major parties are planning to capitalise. In her conference speech, Badenoch accused Reform and Braverman of “openly questioning people’s identity”, invoking her own mixed-race children. “They are not like us. We are not like them. We are different. We are the Conservative Party”, she declared. At prime minister’s questions this week, Andy Burnham commended Badenoch for “drawing a line on a decade of division when she drew a line.”
Reform’s opponents plan to raise the salience of national identity as a dividing line in British politics, with stirring speeches casting Reform as out of step with mainstream Britain. The danger for Farage is that such strident interventions will drive a wedge between Reform and those voters who likely share its frustrations, but do not subscribe to its views on national identity. According to More in Common research, only 25% of Reform supporters believe skin colour and ethnic background are important to whether someone is English. The proportion is lower still among the wider electorate – that is, the voters Reform needs to attract to win even a plurality of seats at the next election.
Significantly, this debate could now become entangled with the revelations from ITV Exposure’s investigation. Responding to ITV’s findings this week, cabinet minister Kanishka Narayan described the question of identity as “the central question in British politics”.
He stated: “I came to this country when I was 12. We moved to Wales, searching for dignity, and we found not just that, and not just opportunity, but a sense of national identity…
“To me, it’s really the central question in British politics, which is: are people like me able to be part of a collective national identity.”
Reform’s espousal of hardline positions on national identity risks adding to its reputational baggage and reinforcing the impression that it remains a fringe force.
Professionalisation and its limits
Professionalisation was meant to broaden Reform’s appeal, establishing it as a mainstream party in its own right. That was what distinguished Farage’s current project from its Ukip and Brexit Party predecessors.
Reform’s recent controversies are not merely incidental problems of rapid expansion, therefore. They expose difficulties in turning a protest movement into a disciplined force that voters perceive as capable of governing.
These controversies have, in the words of Reform commentator and former candidate Matt Goodwin, meant the party’s “advance has stalled”. But Farage’s perennial struggle with professionalism points to more fundamental tensions. The future of his Reform project may well depend on their resolution.
UK Independence Party founded by anti-Maastricht campaigners
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