Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party could win the next UK general election if current trends continue. That would have radical consequences for the UK’s future as a political union – and for Ireland, North and South. These linked potential futures should be taken seriously by Irish political leaders and citizens.
A recent poll of polls puts Reform UK on 31 per cent, Labour 21 per cent, Conservatives 17 per cent, Liberal Democrats 14 per cent and Greens on 10 per cent.
A statistically sophisticated large poll gives Reform a landslide on the UK’s first-past-the-post system, with 444 seats compared to Labour’s 73 and the Conservatives’ seven. The dramatic surge in Reform support has happened this year. Reform voters say that cost-of-living issues are their top priority, followed by high immigration and the condition of the National Health Service.
Reform’s promises to deal with these issues put it in direct competition with the Conservatives for the support of pro-Brexit, socially conservative and climate-sceptic Britain, according to the polling expert John Curtice.
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He says the emerging fractured five-party system is the “biggest challenge our conventional party politics has ever faced”.
Major caveats face any projection of these trends on to the next general election, which must be held by 2029, but might happen sooner. Labour could recover with economic growth allowing better delivery of policy; so could the Conservatives with different leadership; and voting is volatile over events, including if Reform’s internal policy contradictions implode.
But Curtice warns that both major parties’ readiness to follow Farage’s agenda on immigration underwrites Reform’s growing strength.
The wider sociopolitical forces driving Reform’s breakthrough reinforce its potentially enduring success. These affect Scotland and Wales as well as Reform’s obvious English centre of gravity.
Centre stage is disillusionment with Labour’s collapse of support since its July 2024 election landslide because of its failure to deliver on promised improvements in everyday life and welfare.
Poor growth and low productivity dog the economy after Brexit. Deep social and regional inequalities affect England and the UK after deindustrialisation and the implementation of neoliberal policies under Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and David Cameron.
Blair’s adviser Jim Gallagher says Brexit blamed Brussels for such London failings – and now Farage blames them on immigration.
A deeper democratic disenchantment sees British voters’ trust falling in political representation and resenting its dysfunctional government. There is a widespread desire for electoral change and a greater political role for England.
It is accompanied by an equally prevalent complacency in the political and administrative elites about changing the existing Westminster model of government. Its power system remains highly centralised in London and the Treasury despite devolution to the UK’s national and territorial peripheries; yet it is ill-equipped to run a more fragmented departmental and outsourced state machinery.
A Reform government would dramatically reinforce Westminster model’s of absolute unitary sovereignty, reviving the Brexit “muscular unionism”. That contradicts the plurinational character of the UK’s currently devolved but uncodified constitution.
Reform’s other policies are being firmed up by advisers close to US vice-president JD Vance’s far right-wing Christian and similar networks.
A central demand is that the UK withdraws from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) agreed through the Council of Europe in 1950, because it inhibits expelling immigrants. Labour’s pragmatic reconvergence with the EU would be reversed. Reform’s commitment to a radically smaller state and spending cuts would reinforce existing inequalities.
The ECHR is written into Scottish devolution. That – combined with Scottish dislike of Reform’s values and muscular unionism – would help drive support for independence from its current 50 per cent level towards 60 per cent. Wales’s increasing interest in independence could increase from the current 30 per cent towards 50 per cent. English nationalism would be further fanned in response.
Such catalysts of constitutional change would profoundly affect Ireland.
Exiting ECHR means renegotiating the Belfast Agreement, putting the issue at the epicentre of Farage’s regime change approach. He says the North would not be top of his agenda and could wait; but delay would further reinforce regulatory separation from the UK and open an immigration backdoor.
Fresh opportunities thereby arise for those demanding unity referendums and huge dilemmas for unionists on which way to turn, as Dublin-London relations refreeze.
This Farage/Reform breakthrough, if sustained, reveals the UK’s constitutional future is deeply uncertain and troubled between plausible scenarios of break-up, renegotiation and unstable impasse.
It is therefore prudent for Irish political leaders and citizens to anticipate possible changes bypreparing for these responsibly. Such change can come suddenly, well before it is expected, history advises. The Irish and UK election timetables overlap in 2029, adding salience.
East-West political dynamics across the two islands drive change as much as North-South ones and that should figure more in Irish discussion. It could create common ground between nationalists, unionists and neithers as they debate Ireland’s futures.
