The liberal press acts bewildered. Why are voters in Runcorn, in Lincolnshire, in swathes of post-industrial England turning to Reform UK? Why, after all the racism, MPs falling out, the clownish candidates, the gaffes, the Farage factor, are people still putting their cross in the Reform box?
The answer is simple and brutal: because no one else speaks to them. Not really. Not anymore.
The Labour Party under Starmer has spent the past four years jettisoning every scrap of class politics. It has sold its soul, and not even dearly. What’s left is a party, now in government, so terrified of offending the Mail that it has become indistinguishable from it, except with worse slogans. Reform, meanwhile, is offering something. Not something coherent, or progressive, or even workable. But something that sounds like a fight. Against migrants, against elites, against decline. Farage has moved his party into position not only to become the receptacle of Tory collapse, but to scoop up those who once gave Labour their votes. And that’s exactly what’s happening.
In Runcorn, it’s not just the Tories people are sick of. Labour’s finished for a lot of them too. Reform goes on about the by-election like it’s still Brexit all over again, but that’s not really the point. What cuts through is the feeling that they’re finally telling Westminster to shove it. When Farage and the like say they don’t want to be part of “their world,” people get it. Their world is graphs and spreadsheets, debates about growth trajectories, the chancellor talking about fiscal headroom while your nan’s putting a coat on indoors because the winter fuel payment doesn’t stretch. But the joke is, Farage is more a part of their world than he is of any council estate in Stoke. He’s a millionaire broadcaster, with multiple jobs and now a part time MP, who’s been dining out on reaction for decades. Still, Reform’s politics is crude, reactionary, often vile. But it is visceral. Starmer offers tidy charts and cautious promises; Reform offers a boot through the door.
That rage may be ill-directed, even theatrical, but it is powerfully felt. In places like Runcorn, the high street is empty, the jobs gone, and all the promises of levelling-up have vanished into the ether. So when Farage turns up promising to “rid the party of amateurism,” as The Guardian puts it, people don’t scoff, they cheer. Because amateurism at least feels authentic compared to the cold, corporate triangulation of Labour strategists.
Even Reform’s worst moments no longer dent its appeal. When Dame Andrea Jenkyns, the lady of the middle finger, won in Lincolnshire, it was despite, or perhaps because of, her crassness. Her victory was celebrated by the Daily Mail, who noted she ran “a bold campaign focusing on common sense policies,” which is dog-whistle for all the usual culture war rot. She then turned up on Good Morning Britain, where Narinder Kaur branded her voters as “racist” (Express, 2 May 2025). But the more the liberal media sneer, the more invincible Reform becomes to its base. Even as the result was being declared, Dame Andrea mocked a rival’s South African accent, sneering at the ‘irony’ of being accused of being parachuted in. This followed her earlier demand that Channel migrants be housed in tents. If it’s good enough for France, she said, it’s good enough for us. None of it will dent her momentum. Reform voters will roar their approval; the press will barely blink.
Because here’s the thing: no one likes to be called stupid. No one likes to be called racist, either. But they especially hate being told, by the media or, perish the thought, the Prime Minister, that their community’s collapse is their own fault for voting the wrong way.
Reform UK is not rising because it has better answers. It’s rising because Labour stopped asking the questions. There is no working-class politics left in mainstream British debate. There is only austerity in a kinder voice, border cruelty with better grammar. The electorate smells it. And so they vote Reform. Not because they’re stupid or bigoted or duped, but because they are furious.
The centre hasn’t been pushed off the stage; it wandered off muttering about fiscal discipline. Starmer’s Labour has offered nothing but vague competence. But people don’t vote to be managed. They vote to be represented.
So the only real question is: when will the left stop wringing its hands about Reform UK and start offering a politics that makes people feel heard again?
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