Nigel Farage: I suspect Keir Starmer has upset large factions of his party
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GB News met up with the big beasts from Reform UK to discuss Nigel Farage’s plan to win the next General Election
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Nigel Farage is setting his sights on power just one year after being elected as an MP after witnessing an unprecedented surge in support following the 2024 General Election, allies of the Reform UK leader have told GB News.
Reform’s support, which is sparking alarm bells inside both Labour’s recently retrieved Red Wall and true blue Tory heartlands, has jumped from 14 per cent in the 2024 General Election to around 30 per cent in the opinion polls today.
YouGov’s MRP latest poll suggested that Reform UK would likely leap from just five MPs to 271 if a General Election was held now, with Labour haemorrhaging support in the North and Midlands to collapse to just 178 seats.
The Tory Party, which finds itself dipping below 20 per cent in some polls, could be reduced to a rump of just 46 - putting Sir Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats in third place on 81.
Looking back on their 2024 breakthrough, senior Reform UK figures admitted there is a key reason behind the surge.
Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice told GB News: “We’ve just talked about the big issues that everyone wants to talk about and we’ve worked harder than anyone else.
“We’ve used social media to push this. We’ve talked a lot about immigration - both legal and illegal. We’ve talked about it in a way that makes common sense, that people understand, and they know what’s right.”
Taking aim at Reform’s rivals, the Boston & Skegness MP slammed Kemi Badenoch as “utterly incompetent” and blasted Sir Keir Starmer over his ever-increasing U-turns.
He claimed: “Labour has been truly dreadful. They’ve lied and lied, U-turned and U-turned. And Kemi has been a catastrophe.
“A combination of those things has meant that even people a year ago who didn’t vote for us now think the country is in such a state that they’ll give us a go.”
READ GB NEWS'S LATEST 2024 GENERAL ELECTION ANNIVERSARY COVERAGE:
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage
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Tice even admitted that Reform’s rise had "surprised" those close to Farage.
“It’s a very nice anniversary present to see this rise," Tice explained. "Did we think we would get more popular? Yes.
“Did we think it would be this quick? It is probably right at the upper end of our expectations.”
In a warning to both Labour and the Tories, a Reform source added: “We have only just got going, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
Reform focused its initial cut-through campaign on bolstering its grassroots base of members, provoking fury from Badenoch on Boxing Day when the Tories fell behind Farage’s outfit in paid-up supporters.
However, the 2025 Local Elections sent shockwaves through CCHQ, cementing concerns about Reform’s rise inflicting untold damage on the most successful centre-right party in British political history.
LATEST ON REFORM UK'S RISE:Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch
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Badenoch, who is safe from facing a Tory-toppling challenge until November, is being accused of failing to dent Farage’s soaring support.
“If there is a strategy to take on Reform, nobody knows it,” a senior Tory admitted.
Another Conservative veteran told the People’s Channel: “They just don’t know what they’re doing.”
However, it is not just about the threat from Reform that is sending shudders through CCHQ.
Looking at the two-pronged attack from the Liberal Democrats in the Blue Wall and Reform in the Tories’ Brexit-backing heartlands, a top Tory told GB News: “Our current polling makes Theresa May look like a Carlsberg politician.
“This is dire. MPs are starting to panic and ex-MPs are furious that their political comebacks are off.”
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Reform UK snatched 677 council wards in the 2025 Local Elections, adding a number of by-elections to its overall haul in the weeks that have followed.
Farage has also welcomed a number of grassroots and national defectors from the Tories, with ex-Education Minister Dame Andrea Jenkyns later becoming Greater Lincolnshire Mayor.
Meanwhile, the Tories went into the 2025 Local Elections defending 18 councils.
Badenoch, who warned the Conservatives could lose all of the local authorities outright, saw Reform flip 10 and a further three fall into Liberal Democrat hands.
However, Conservative bigwigs continue to put pressure on Farage to put forward strong policies ahead of the 2029 General Election, accusing the Clacton MP of “fantasy economics” and failing to set out his deportation strategy.
Dismissing Tory concerns, a Reform source said: “We will be ramping up policy, campaigns and our election machine over the coming year.”
And while Starmer’s main challenge will come up next May when Wales, Scotland and a large set of Labour-held local authorities go up for grabs, the Prime Minister was dealt a bloody nose when Reform pulled off the narrowest by-election victory since World War Two.
LATEST FOR GBN MEMBERS:Staffordshire was an example of a true-blue county going Reform
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Just six votes separated Reform’s Sarah Pochin and Labour’s Karen Shore in the Cheshire constituency on May 1.
The by-election, which was called after disgraced ex-MP Mike Amesbury resigned from the House of Commons over his sucker-punch conviction following a boozy bust-up with a constituent, was hailed as a seismic moment in British politics.
Reflecting on the result just a few months on, Pochin told GB News that Reform attracted a large chunk of Labour’s core support.
Explaining how Reform overturned Labour’s 14,696-vote majority with a 17.4 per cent swing, Pochin said: “Ex-Labour voters felt absolutely betrayed by the Winter Fuel Allowance being taken away and by plans to introduce disability benefit reform.
“But another massive issue was the fact that illegal migrants have been housed in the constituency.”
She added: “We’re not going away. This is massive and all we need to do now is grow quickly, but competently and effectively, because I honestly believe that we will win the next election if we get ourselves ready.”
Labour MPs now fear that Reform could pull off a Boris Johnson-esque ransacking of the Red Wall.
YouGov’s MRP poll found that once-staunch Labour seats - stretching from Aberavon to Ashton-under-Lyne and South Shields to Southport - now look poised to return Reform MPs.
In a stark assessment, a Red Wall MP told the People’s Channel: “We are sleepwalking into a defeat bigger than 2019, with Labour non-existent outside the big cities.
“We could beat Reform by actually delivering on our tough talk on immigration. But we won’t, so we won’t.”
A veteran campaigner from Labour’s Brexit-backing heartlands added: “Things feel like they’re still getting worse.
“It feels like a carry on from Sunak. Plenty of U-turns, an unhappy parliamentary party, and a leader who, even now, seems like he’s on the way out.
Seats changed based on current polling
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“He hasn’t got it in him. The best thing he can do is just go and hand the reins over to someone who can do better.”
Despite initially facing a revolt of 170 Labour MPs over plans to slash Britain’s ballooning benefits bill and bracing for a challenge from a gaggle of pro-Gaza MPs, the Prime Minister can still call on some support from his backbenches.
In a swipe at Reform, Chipping Barnet MP Dan Tomlinson said: "Reform's plans include tax cuts for foreign billionaires living in the UK, huge cuts to public services and a risk to the NHS as we know it.
“Nigel Farage would re-run the Liz Truss experiment that crashed the economy and once again leave working people to pick up the tab."
He added: “This Labour Government is getting on with the job of delivering security and renewal through our Plan for Change.
“NHS waiting lists are falling, the economy is growing, wages are rising faster than prices and we've had four interest rate cuts, along with three major trade deals that will put more money in working people’s pockets.”
Richard Tice MP speaking in the House of Commons, London, as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting announces his 10 year health plan
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Tomlinson’s attack is consistent with GB News’ previous coverage about Starmer’s strategy to stifle Reform.
The Prime Minister is looking to deploy a three-pronged attack on Farage’s record on the NHS, Ukraine and workers’ rights.
The People’s Channel also revealed that Starmer is looking to claw back wavering 2024 voters - who may now be considering supporting either the Liberal Democrats or the Greens - by pitting himself against Farage as the days draw closer to the next General Election.
However, a friend of Farage believes that the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition provide even more ammunition to Reform.
“We offer an opportunity and alternative - everybody else is s**t,” he claimed. “Labour didn't win because they're only good. They won because the Tories were rubbish.”
Despite going into the next stage of Reform’s plan to take power, Farage has faced and continues to face challenges on the road ahead.
Ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe and former deputy leader Ben Habib have both launched off-shoot groups to take the fight to Reform on the right.
Zia Yusuf, who last month quit as Reform UK chairman before returning to Farage's fold just 48 hours later, also handed the populist party an awkward moment while they were otherwise riding high in the polls.
While Reform UK chairman David Bull expressed his sadness about the fallout with Lowe and Habib, the TV-presenter-turned-political-operator insisted that the party now needs “team players” and labelled the debacle a "Westminster bubble story".
He also hailed Yusuf's work establishing 400 grassroots branches, admitting the donor-turned-insider was "tired" after undertaking non-stop work for the best part of 10 months.
Polling guru Scarlett Maguire also said Reform appeared almost entirely unscathed from the personality clashes.
“Recognition across the board is really low, and that's actually especially the case of people like Rupert Lowe and Zia Yusuf," Merlin Strategies' director told GB News. "Most things don’t cut through to most people, including those in Government and what the Government is going to do on most things.”
However, Maguire stressed that the foundations of Reform's recent surge were all-but set in stone at the 2024 General Election.
She explained: “While people wouldn’t necessarily have predicted quite the extent to which Reform has surged and the time span, the signs for the potential for this to happen were all there in the 2024 General Election.
“I've found it surprising that people in the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, and indeed, you know, people in the media, didn't cotton on to that possibility sooner.”
Assessing the performances of both Labour and the Tories, Maguire added: “The reason why Labour were elected was because everyone was very disaffected and wanted change, and the change the electorate wanted, even though Labour got off to a slow start, was probably always going to be quite difficult for the Labour Party to deliver.
“I think the writing was on the wall for the Conservatives, especially given that they haven't done anything to turn things around, they look and sound the same, they’ve not come out with any massive policy announcements and they’ve not really been part of the conversation.
“Part of the reason why the Conservatives have gone backwards was there was some complacency after that result.
"That result in the summer made it clear to me that they are in a fight to the death with Reform and that the question of Reform and a resurgent Nigel Farage is actually existential to them. But they haven’t seemed to grapple with that. Even after Kemi came in, there has been no urgency.”
Maguire also warned Starmer and Badenoch that Reform has not reached its ceiling quite yet.
"Reform has got room to go further," the Merlin Strategies director explained. "The country is feeling so disaffected and Farage has detoxified himself compared to a few years ago. That journey started with going on I'm A Celeb.
"But as much as if he left the party it would struggle, it is also now bigger than Farage. In focus groups there’s many voters desperate for change but not necessarily sold on him, they just hate everyone else more.
“But Reform has gone beyond its natural base, and they’re now picking up more generally disaffected voters, who can look pretty different from their natural base, who can be more socially liberal, much more concerned about climate change or other issues. There is room to expand because people are so upset with where the country is going.”