With Reform’s polling briefly overtaking the Conservatives, many political commentators have drawn parallels with the 1993 Canadian election, which saw Canada’s major Conservative political party overtaken by the splinter ‘Reform Party’ in parliament. Will Reform really replace the Conservatives, or will they just split the Conservative vote?
This article also asks: will Labour’s majority be big or just comfortable? What do the bellwether seats mean for the Lib Dems?
Will Reform ‘Take Over’ The Conservative Party?
Nigel Farage has repeatedly rejected a leadership run for the Conservative party, saying instead that he intends to “take it over”, supporting the prospect of leading a merged Conservative-Reform Party when asked.
Many in Reform, including Farage himself, have drawn comparisons to the 1993 Canadian federal election which saw the ruling ‘Progressive Conservative Party’ be wiped out to only two seats, with a right-wing splinter party known as ‘Reform’ supplanting it as the main force for conservatism in parliament.
The remnants of the Progressive Conservative Party would eventually merge with Reform to create the more right-wing modern Conservative Party of Canada. The neatness of this parallel, down to the sharing of the name Reform, has offered an inspiring electoral vision for the leadership of the Reform Party, who have predicted the supplanting of the Conservatives as the opposition party.
It is also, however, one that is at odds with electoral reality. Polls now consistently put the Conservatives at least five points ahead of Reform and due to Reform’s comparatively diffuse voter base, seat projections have the party predicted to only gain a handful of seats, with their main effect being to spoil conservative gains.
However, drawing from 1993, it was exactly this vote splitting that gave Reform the leverage over the Progressive Conservatives to force a merger. A lack of seats may not necessarily prevent the potential for merging. That being said, tense relations, illustrated by the fact that Conservative ministers have repeatedly denounced Reform make an immediate merger unlikely.
To watch Chamber UK on the campaign trail with Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Bromsgrove, Bradley Thomas, please click below.
Can Reform Survive its Scandals?
“Mark my words Reform will be the next opposition party, then government awaits”, Reform leader Nigel Farage optimistically titled a comment piece to the Telegraph on the 8th of June. The 10th of June saw a new wave of revelations regarding past comments made by reform voters. So far, suspended Reform Party parliamentary candidates have produced a diverse range of misogynistic, antisemitic, anti-Muslim, and anti-Black statements, with the most enthusiastic candidate having written an article describing his support for ethnic cleansing in 2022.
Likely more damaging have been those whom the reform party has not suspended, most notably Ian Gribbin, who argued that the UK should have “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality” in an article in 2022; something a reform spokesperson defended as “probably true”. Nigel Farage’s comments accusing NATO of having “provoked” Russia, a line repeated from 2014, drew widespread condemnation from Conservatives.
In the wake of these revelations, Reform UK’s poll numbers continued to increase, seeing only slightly blunted momentum. The polls only showed obvious movement following Rishi Sunak’s response to a canvasser in Farage’s constituency of Clacton referring to the Prime Minister by a racial slur, which saw his party gain at Reform’s expense. Rather than the polls, the greatest effect of these scandals is likely to be in the widespread denunciation by Conservative ministers that they have triggered.
This being said, the Canadian Reform Party overcame similar challenges. The fact that Reform party literature seemingly opposed non-white immigration as a threat to the “ethnic makeup of Canada” was strongly condemned by the Progressive Conservative Party and widespread racism among individual party members was publicised significantly.
Progressive Conservative opposition to Reform was so strong that party leader Joe Clark not only refused to merge Reform in the 2000 election, but went on to endorse the Liberals over the newly merged Conservative party in 2004 as “the devil we know”. It was through great reluctance and a decade without a viable path to government that much of the leadership and membership eventually gave into a merger.
Will Labour Win Like the Liberals Tomorrow?
The collapse of the Conservative Party in 1993 saw the greatest Liberal Landslide since 1949. It is undeniable that the Labour Party are on track for a comfortable majority, but with polling narrowing slightly in the runup to the election, Labour leadership have told the electorate to “not take anything for granted.”
Bromsgrove, the seat of Sajid Javid, is expected to be a bellwether seat indicating the scale of the labour majority. If Labour are able to overturn Javid’s 40% majority, the scale of a labour victory may be truly unprecedented.
To watch Chamber UK on the campaign trail with Labour Parliamentary Candidate for Swansea East, Carolyn Harris, please click below.
Will the LibDems Lose out Like the NDP?
Another party to look out for is the Liberal Democrats. Seeing the election as a two-horse race between the Conservative and the Liberals, the NDP, historically the largest third party in Canada saw their votes collapse. This time around, with the election seen as being in the bag for labour, Liberal Democratic candidates are encouraging the electorate to vote their conscience rather than tactically.
Lib Dems are expected to improve their seat count significantly from 2019, but the extent of that shift is still uncertain. To see the thrust of a LibDem result, keeping an eye on the bellwether seats of Chelmsford and Henley and Thame is vital. Both outside the LibDems traditional heartland of the South West, a victory here would illustrate a shift of Blue Wall voters to the Libdems
Final Thought: A British 1993?
1993-inspired predictions of a Reform parliamentary surge are deeply unlikely. Reform are too geographically dispersed to have a chance in overtaking the conservatives, with them likely to only vote split the conservatives further. The historical lesson that should be learned from is 2003, when Canada’s fatigued Conservative party finally gave in to Reform. If Reform has the political endurance to replicate this vote splitting in future election cycles, history has shown that Reform could force a merger, regardless of Conservative opinion.
This article was written by Chamber UK’s features writer, Alex Connor.
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To explore other electoral analysis from Chamber UK, click here.