A long-cherished saying finally comes true. The populist leader Nigel Farage, head of Reform UK and one of the main forces behind the Brexit campaign, has won a seat in the British Parliament in the elections held this Thursday. The party has also secured three additional Westminster seats after a campaign that targeted the Conservative Party with sharp attacks and reaffirmed its pledge to end irregular immigration.
Farage announced his decision to run in the polls on June 3, triggering a broad stir within the Conservative Party due to the potential harm he could inflict, as has happened in practice, if he capitalizes the voters’ discontent with Conservative promises to curb Channel crossings and to tackle the rising cost of living.
In total, Reform UK garnered around four million votes, accounting for 14.3 percent of the total, trailing Labour with 9.6 million and the Conservatives with 6.7 million.
The controversial politician and former City of London broker has been elected in the Clacton-on-Sea constituency, a town in Essex County that voted overwhelmingly in favor of leaving the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum (more than 70 percent) and backed the Conservative Boris Johnson in 2019. “My plan is to build a national mass movement over the coming years and, hopefully, be large enough to challenge the general elections of 2029,” he stated after being declared the winner. “Believe me, friends, this is only the first step of something that will astonish the world,” Farage added, who describes himself as a friend of former US President Donald Trump.
Azote de Starmer
Reform UK, founded in 2018 under the name Brexit Party and renamed in 2022, had not previously entered Parliament. In the last elections, in 2019, it only collected 642,303 votes (2%).
Between 1999 and 2019, Farage served as a member of the European Parliament and was known for his jabs at Brussels officials. From that platform he urged British Conservatives to push for the Brexit referendum. Now in Westminster, he is determined to turn his party into the scourge of Labour Government under Keir Starmer. Immigration limits and tax reduction will be his core battles.
In 2016, he announced his departure from politics after resigning as UKIP leader, but the decision by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to advance the general elections pushed him to return, hoping to shake off the guilt many followers felt about disappointing them.