- Monday, July 08, 2024
The Reform did well in areas where the Tories won in 2019 under former prime minister Boris Johnson, and finished second in many constituencies.
By: Shubham Ghosh
REFORM UK saw a significant outcome in the just concluded UK general election with its leader Nigel Farage getting elected as an MP for the first time. The right-wing populist party got more than four million votes in the election and was on track to become the third largest party in the country in terms of vote share. It won four seats at the time of writing the report and Farage even went on to comment that it was the beginning of the end of the Conservatives.
The 60-year-old, who comfortably won from Clacton in Essex, overturned a Tory majority of more than 25,000, and succeeded in his eighth attempt to enter the House of Commons. He beat incumbent member Giles Watling from the Conservative Party.
An elated Farage later said the result was “the first step of something that is going to stun all of you,” BBC reported.
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His party also won Great Yarmouth and Boston and Skegness from the Tories, while former Conservative parliamentarian Lee Anderson, who shifted base to Reform in March, retained Ashfield in Nottinghamshire.
The Reform did well in areas where the Tories won in 2019 under former prime minister Boris Johnson, and finished second in many constituencies.
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Farage told reporters that it was “the beginning of the end of the Conservative Party”, the BBC report added. In his victory speech, Farage also said, “There is a massive gap on the centre-right of British politics and my job is to fill it.”
He then added that his party would “now be targeting Labour votes”. He said about half of the vote that the Labour got was simply an anti-Conservative one and there was no enthusiasm for either the Labour or its leader Keir Starmer who is now set to become the new prime minister.
“We’re coming for Labour, be in no doubt about that,” Farage said.
The Reform UK leader said he is aiming to make the party the main opposition to Labour by the time Britain goes to the next election.
In the 2019 general election, the Reform UK party, which was then known as the Brexit Party, failed to win any seat but Farage remarked that it had killed the Liberal Democrats and hurt the Labour Party. He had also said that the party took thousands of votes from the opponents of the Conservative Party that won the election that year and was happy with its “influence”.
An exit poll for broadcasters had predicted the party winning 13 MPs, more than many polls during the campaign had made a forecast about.
Polling expert Sir John Curtice told the BBC that the Reform had benefited after the Conservative vote plummeted in seats it had held previously, as well as advancing most in places where people voted Leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
In all four constituencies where Reform emerged victorious, more than 70 per cent of people voted for Brexit.
Reform UK chairman Richard Tice won from Boston and Skegness.
The party, however, had less success in winning seats off the Labour Party.
In Barnsley North, for example, where the exit poll had predicted a 99 per cent likelihood of Reform winning, Labour held the seat.
