Nigel Farage stated that his Reform UK party is preparing to form a government as an election could occur “sooner than expected” due to the disastrous performance of the left-wing Labour Party since it came to power last year.
Over the past two weeks, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been forced to deny that there will be an early election and shut down suggestions that he would have to resign from his post, as his government has been beset by scandals and major resignations.
This included his socialist Deputy PM and Housing Minister, Angela Rayner, over unpaid property taxes and his ambassador to Washington, Lord Peter Mandelson, over emails detailing his close relationship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The scandals came in addition to the government already struggling to connect with voters, with issues such as mass migration, the “predominantly Pakistani” Muslim child rape grooming gang scandal, and the faltering economy, resulting in plummeting levels of public support for Labour and bolstering the support of the poll-leading Reform UK of Brexit boss Nigel Farage.
In a column for the Daily Mail, Mr Farage said that “change cannot come soon enough” while predicting that “a general election could happen sooner than expected – and certainly before 2029.”
The Reform leader said that the “Labour Government is in meltdown,” writing that with “all the political and economic problems plaguing the country, the big question now is not whether the Government can survive another four years. It is whether Britain can survive four more years of this Labour Government.”
Meanwhile, Mr Farage noted that the “crumbling Conservative Party is no longer a credible alternative” and said that after next May’s local elections, the once dominant party may not even “exist as a national political party.”
“That would leave Reform UK as the only true opposition to Labour – and the only realistic alternative government,” he wrote.
The Reform leader said that his party recognises the importance of being able to hit the ground running should they be called on to lead the country, and therefore has tasked former party chairman Zia Yusuf and MP Danny Kruger, who became the first sitting member of parliament to defect from the Conservatives to Reform on Monday.
Kruger, a staunch Brexiteer and purported policy heavyweight who previously held top “strategic” positions in Downing Street, said that Britain is in need of “radical restoration” and that it will be incumbent upon Reform to deliver “limited government, accountable power, a strong society, a state that works in the interest of the people.”
Both Kruger and Mr Farage have acknowledged that they are likely to face institutional pushback from the permanent deep state bureaucracy in the civil service and elsewhere. However, they have both also actively called upon the “quiet” Reform supporters within their ranks to come forward and advise the party on the institutional issues and how to overcome them.
“The public have sussed out that this Government and Parliament are not on the side of ordinary, hardworking, patriotic Brits. The wave of national flags sweeping Britain is a sign they want a country they can be proud of again,” Farage wrote.
“Now it is our job to show them that Reform UK is the only party that be trusted to make that happen.”
Under the British system, the fall of a Prime Minister does not automatically trigger an election. Instead, a new leader from the party with the largest number of Members of Parliament is chosen, and they become Prime Minister in their stead.
Because the ruling Labour Party — thanks to a quirk in the British electoral system that handed them a massive victory on a comparatively very small number of votes last year — has so many Members of Parliament, it would be able to pick the next Prime Minister should Starmer fall. So how could an early election, as Farage envisions, happen? Only by the number of MPs Labour commands in Parliament falling, and the most likely route to that is splitting the left into two parties.
It’s never happened before, but it could. A new party to the left of Labour has already emerged, led by his long-time rival Jeremy Corbyn. It is early days for this new Corbynite faction, and it has struggled to attract converts, but theoretically if it could recruit 75 or 100 of Labour’s most left-wing Parliamentarians to defect, fresh elections before 2029 could then be on the cards.
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