The Reform bubble has not burst – but we now know how to stop Farage

Reform UK did not make the breakthrough in this Labour heartland that they had hoped for, says Sean O’Grady, but the Caerphilly by-election is nonetheless an earthquake that will send shockwaves through Westminster

Well, you can’t say Reform UK didn’t do everything they could to win the Caerphilly by-election. And they were, as party chair David Bull admits, disappointed by the result. By the way, Reform also failed to win its usual clutch of local council elections around England. From the Fenlands to Torridge to Birmingham, the Farageistes were, for a change, pinned back.

One might be tempted to wonder if Reform is running out of momentum, and has – dread phrase – “peaked too early”. That temptation is also premature. “Reform will be disappointed at coming second with 36 per cent,” said the pollster John Curtice, “but I don’t think we should run away with the idea that this, in any way, suggests that Nigel Farage’s bubble is burst.”

Much can change. Reform may have to get used to tasting defeat from time to time – even if they have become an established fact of political life, and will continue to top national opinion polls for some time. Despite the plethora of polls around, it’s worth pointing out that a British general election is still some years away.

Reform expected to win here, and this is a stumble. In the Runcorn Westminster by-election earlier this year, they stormed in and won one of the safest Labour seats in the country, albeit by six votes. Their victories in the traditionally Tory English county councils was a revolution, even if almost taken for granted. The Conservatives were declared dead by the latest defector to Reform, Nadine Dorries, and few quibbled. It was Nigel Farage himself who declared that they were now coming after Labour. Not in South Wales, boys.

The Farage party – it’s still a one-man band – threw everything at Caerphilly. They opened the obligatory shop/campaign HQ on the high street. There was a huge social media campaign, and, as far as can be seen, there were plenty of volunteer party workers. They copied Lib Dem tactics, like getting rows of big Reform UK posters on boards in gardens along main roads. Their MPs – all English, and mostly English in a very public school kind of way – were ubiquitous in a town most of them won’t have visited before, and might have been hard pushed previously to pinpoint on a map.

I can’t help wondering whether such an influx of alien voices haranguing the locals might have put the voters off a bit. They can’t have enjoyed the publicity about their former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, who has pleaded guilty to taking bribes from the Russians. The Reform candidate didn’t seem that compelling, especially next to the likeable Caerphilly boy, born in the miners’ hospital, Lindsay Whittle.

But the real reason Reform UK failed here was because they inspired as much hostility as they did support, and thus a considerable amount of tactical voting against Farage. Just look at the minuscule 2 per cent the Lib Dems and the Tories each picked up, and the cataclysmic 11 per cent recorded by Labour. Once it became very obvious that Labour couldn’t win, and it became a two-horse race between Reform UK and Plaid Cymru, different calculations came into play – and it was Reform that came off worse. The poor showing by all of the mainstream UK parties – Labour, Tories and the Lib Dems managed just 15 per cent between them – exaggerates their weakness, both in Wales and in Britain.

The real reason Reform UK failed here was because they inspired as much hostility as they did support, and thus a considerable amount of tactical voting against Farage (PA)

After a tumultuous few months, it’s apparent that Reform cannot carry all before it. There will be setbacks, as in Caerphilly. Farage’s outfit is vulnerable – a shaky policy platform; local Reform councils proving incompetent and already ramping up council tax; that sympathetic association with Putin.

Having said all that, Reform UK and Farage aren’t going away. They will probably come first in the Welsh parliament elections next May, make significant progress in Scotland (unbelievably), and capture more councils, and win more by-elections. They are leading in the polls, and they could win the next general election, if only from a sense of anger and despair in the country about the economy, public services and immigration.

They are the beneficiaries of a freakish situation in which both Labour and the Tories, having had to take the tough decisions needed to run the country, are historically weak. Labour’s lurch rightwards in an effort to fend off Reform has seen it haemorrhage voters to the left. Starmer and co rode into battle at the general election with a message of “Change!” Well, the outriders have unseated them and stolen their horses.

The Reform bubble has not burst, but it does feel as though it is no longer ballooning uncontrollably – and if there is a determined force of voters willing to vote tactically, as has happened in Caerphilly, then it can be punctured. But Labour, in particular, will need to recapture some of that spirit of optimism and direction that it enjoyed in July 2024.

With record-breakingly awful performances, scandals, growing splits, and disquiet about Starmer’s leadership, that easy confidence feels a long way distant now. When you lose the political citadel once held by Keir Hardie, Aneurin Bevan, Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock, even to a “progressive” rival, then you are still facing an extinction-level event.