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Farage’s Reform UK party celebrated after gains during England’s local elections. But the electoral system could stifle a national victory, says Northeastern experts.
LONDON — It was a picture that seemed to reflect a changing world order. The two men seen in it were beaming from ear to ear inside a glittering gold elevator in Trump Tower.
They had both achieved their ultimate goal — Donald Trump, pictured with his thumb held up, had been elected to the White House for the first time, and the other suited individual, Nigel Farage, had successfully campaigned for the U.K. to leave the European Union.
That picture was from 2016. Nine years later those two figures are once again making headlines. Trump is serving his second term, and Farage, a staunch ally of the U.S. president, currently leads the most popular political party in the U.K.
So could Farage be the next British prime minister?
Josephine Harmon, an assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University in London, says reaching 10 Downing St. would be a tall order for Farage — even after recent electoral gains by his anti-migrant party, Reform UK.
After May 1 elections, Farage’s outfit is in power across England, having taken control of seven councils, two regional mayoral positions and beaten Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party in a parliamentary by-election by six votes.
But Harmon says the U.K.’s first-past-the-post voting system will make it difficult to translate this regional support into the national victory needed for Farage to be installed as prime minister. The system has traditionally led to the House of Commons, Britain’s legislature, being dominated by two main parties, Labour and the Conservative Party.
U.K. general elections are made up of 650 smaller constituency contests in which the candidate with the most votes in each is declared the winner. The party that produces the most lawmakers from these contests is given the opportunity to form a government, led by the party leader. After the recent by-election in Runcorn, north-west England, Reform now has five seats in Parliament, including one held by Farage.
“It will be very hard for Reform to be a serious contender to form a government,” states Harmon, “as they have to gain a plurality of votes in constituencies. They have struggled to do this and are likely to continue to.”
According to poll results produced by Politico on April 25, Reform was the U.K.’s most popular party, polling at 26%. It placed the upstarts ahead of the two traditionally largest parties, Labour and the Conservatives, which polled at 24% and 21%, respectively.
Reform’s current polling numbers would be enough to be a “player in the political arena,” says Harmon, by possibly pushing Starmer’s government to the right on immigration and silencing any talk of rejoining the European Union.
But it “isn’t sufficient to be a contender for prime minister” at the next election in 2029, Harmon believes, as Farage’s party cannot yet make up the numbers in enough constituencies. Under the U.K.’s winner-take-all voting system, Reform is “more likely to be a vote splitter than a plurality vote winner,” she adds, pointing to how Reform ate into Tory and Labour majorities at last year’s election but only took five seats (one MP was later suspended).
May’s election upsets mean Farage’s Reform party can be judged on how it delivers in the areas of the country where it is in power, with all the ups and downs that brings. Its leader has been on a long political road to get to this juncture.
Farage is the classic example of a charismatic populist leader, says Marianna Griffini, assistant professor in international relations and anthropology at Northeastern. Formerly a commodities trader in London, it was his Euroscepticism — a belief that Britain was worse off as a member of the EU — that saw him enter into politics in the early 1990s.
He was a founding member of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and became leader 13 years later. Its steady growth in popularity — UKIP won the most number of European parliamentary seats at the 2014 election — pressured then-prime minister David Cameron into calling the 2016 Brexit referendum. Farage was on the winning side of that vote, delivering his life’s mission of pulling Britain out of the EU in the process.
After quitting UKIP, the 61-year-old has since more than once dabbled with the idea of stepping back from frontline U.K. politics, having spent time in America supporting Trump during his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. At an Arizona rally in 2020, Farage called Trump the “most resilient and brave person” he had ever met. And this was coming from a man who had survived a plane crash.
He was cajoled back to Westminster politics to lead the Brexit Party, which later morphed into Reform. With Brexit done, his party has focused on issues such as immigration and pushing back against what its leaders dub “woke culture.”
Griffini says Farage has looked to deploy “copycat” policies taken from Trump’s playbook. After Reform took control of Durham County Council in north-east England at the May Day elections, Farage warned council workers who advance diversity, equality and inclusion policies and those working from home that they should be “seeking alternative careers very quickly.”
His ability to make himself a mainstay of British politics has in part been due to a well-cultivated image, Griffini argues, that can appeal to a wide range of voters.
“He believes that he’s representing any British person — and I would say mainly any British male,” adds Griffini. “When I teach my students, I show them an image of Farage standing outside the pub holding a pint of beer and smoking. This is an everyday act that is part of the U.K. tradition — something we call an everyday act of nationalism. It may seem banal but it isn’t.”
Farage’s 1.2 million followers on TikTok have helped him connect with young voters. A 40-second TikTok clip from Farage’s recent campaigning showed him searching for a new toy figurine called “Future PM.” As Harmon argues, turning that from fantasy to reality could prove difficult — unless something quite dramatic occurs.
There had been speculation after the last general election in 2024, when the Conservatives were swept aside after 14 years in power, that Farage could defect to the Tories — a party he left in 1992 — in a bid to lead one of the main parties. If that were to happen, that could seriously change his prospects of becoming Britain’s next leader, Harmon positions.
“If he were to do that and run for leader of the Conservatives, should it continue to be demoralized and low-polling, he could very much be a contender for PM,” she continues. “But as leader of Reform, it is an extremely distant prospect. The electoral system quite simply wouldn’t support this scenario within existing voting habits.”