Reform UK
What is Reform UK?
Who founded Reform UK?
What are the key policies of Reform UK?
When was Reform UK rebranded from the Brexit Party?
News •
Reform UK, populist far-right political party in the United Kingdom. Since it was launched in 2019 as part of an effort to speed up and harden the terms of the Brexit process, the party has grown rapidly, posing an unprecedented challenge to the two-party system that has dominated British politics for a century. Its leader, Nigel Farage, has said he hopes to become prime minister in 2029.
Birth of the Brexit Party
The party that became Reform UK emerged in early 2019 as British legislators were debating the details of how and when the country would exit the European Union. Farage, who had previously belonged to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), has played a key role in the Brexit movement from the beginning. The government of Prime Minister Theresa May was encountering delays in the exit process as it negotiated with the European Union.
May was hoping for a deal that would allow Britain to negotiate with the EU on favorable terms. The alternative—exiting with no deal—meant trading with the EU and other countries on the terms of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which was predicted to cause severe economic disruption. Farage was a leading proponent of the no-deal option because he preferred it over delaying Brexit. “Basically right from the start she was happy for us to be kept very close to the customs union,” he told the BBC that spring, referring to May. “So where we are now, the only way the democratic will of the people can be delivered is to leave on a WTO deal.”
" height="20" alt="HEW Logo">
Farage and his allies launched the Brexit Party that April. Farage reported that the party received £750,000 in a 10-day span, mostly in small donations from people who wanted to see “the rebirth of democracy in this country.” In the elections held that May for Britain’s delegation to the EU Parliament, the Brexit Party dominated, taking 29 seats—compared with 16 for the Liberal Democrats and 10 for the Labour Party.
Brexit Party leaders turned their attention to the British parliamentary election scheduled for December. Ultimately, Farage decided that his party would only run candidates in areas that had traditionally been strongholds for Labour, in hopes of peeling off voters who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Conservatives. In the end the Brexit Party did not win a single seat, but the Conservatives had a crushing victory. The Brexit Party’s role in the outcome has been a matter of debate.
Election performance
The United Kingdom left the EU in January 2020. Later that year the Brexit Party announced that it was changing its name to Reform UK. By this point it had expanded its scope, with its leaders harshly criticizing lockdown measures meant to limit the spread of COVID-19 and speaking up on other policy matters. In January 2021 the party officially became Reform UK, and two months later Farage stepped down as the party’s leader; Richard Tice, a property developer, succeeded him. Over the next several years Reform expanded its presence in Scotland and Wales.
In June 2024 Farage returned to politics, announcing he would run for prime minister and lead Reform UK for the next five years. The party released an official platform called “Our Contract with You,” in which it promised to reduce taxes (especially in lower income brackets), cut the country’s foreign aid budget in half, abandon carbon emissions targets, nationalize 50 percent of utilities, and increase the size of the police force and military, among other measures. In the election that July, the Labour Party dominated, securing a third of the vote and 411 seats. Reform UK took five seats and 14.3 percent of the vote—its best result up to that point.
The trusted destination for professionals, college students, and lifelong learners.
SUBSCRIBE
Reform UK performed exceptionally well in the May 2026 local elections, gaining more than 1,450 seats across the country—while Labour lost nearly 1,500. The result suggested that the two-party system that has dominated British politics for a century might be giving way. “It’s possible we’re now at a tipping point where voters are really wholesale rejecting the two traditional parties on a scale like never before and may not even go back to them again in the future,” Oxford professor Jane Green told ITV News. Farage described it as a “truly historic shift in British politics.” The election outcome almost certainly played a role in the resignation of Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer, but Reform UK’s success also invited increased scrutiny of the party, its leaders, and their finances. After the parliamentary commissioner for standards opened an investigation into a previously undisclosed £5 million gift from cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne, Farage resigned his seat in Parliament only to pledge to regain it in a by-election.
Platform, controversies, and scandals
Over time opposing immigration became increasingly central to Reform UK’s platform. Before the 2024 election, Farage unveiled a manifesto that promised to freeze all “non-essential” immigration if the party took power. He described the arrival of people who crossed the English Channel on small boats as an “invasion” and said the immigration wave was like a “slow-motion D-Day in reverse.”
In 2026, in the run-up to local elections across the United Kingdom, the party escalated its rhetoric, promising to create an agency that would deport as many as 288,000 immigrants annually—which drew comparisons to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the United States—and to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights. In fact, immigration to the United Kingdom had declined sharply from its 2023 peak, and net migration in 2025 was the lowest it had been (excluding the COVID-19 pandemic) since 2012.
This was not the only area in which Reform UK bore increasing resemblance to the MAGA movement under U.S. Pres. Donald Trump (a close ally of Farage). By 2025 Reform UK had also taken to holding rallies that resembled Trump’s, and it has called for schools to teach a more “patriotic curriculum.”
Several of Reform UK’s prominent members have quit amid accusations of bigotry. Catherine Blaiklock, who cofounded the party with Farage, quit in the spring of 2019 after The Guardian revealed that she had posted anti-Muslim comments on social media. In 2024 Reform UK withdrew support from several candidates because of bigoted comments they had made in person and on social media, and party organizers were also recorded using racist, homophobic, and Islamophobic slurs while campaigning.