Reform UK

Reform UK is a right-populist political party founded in 2018 as the Brexit Party by Nigel Farage, rebranded as Reform UK in 2021. It holds 5 Westminster seats from the 2024 general election and is funded overwhelmingly by a single donor: businessman Christopher Harborne, who gave approximately £12 million in the second half of 2025. The party's 2026 campaign was shadowed by a disclosure from HOPE not hate that three candidates appeared on a leaked 2007-2008 BNP membership list, all of whom remained on printed ballot papers after expulsion.

On 7 May 2026 Reform UK returned 1,448 councillors across 14 English councils, finishing 894 seats below the PollCheck/YouGov MRP projection of 2,342 — a 38% undershoot, the worst projection failure in modern UK polling. Despite the shortfall, the councils gained include Sunderland (58 of 75 seats, ending 50 years of Labour control) and Wakefield (58 of 63 seats). Reform also entered the Scottish Parliament for the first time, winning 17 Holyrood seats alongside 17 for Scottish Labour, and became the second-largest group in a devolved legislature. In Wales the party won seats under the new Senedd PR system. Two days after the elections, Reform-controlled Lancashire County Council became the first council to withdraw from the UK's national refugee resettlement scheme.

Reform UK is now the dominant right-of-centre force in 2026 British local government, having displaced the Conservatives across northern England and rural east England. Its councillor base tripled from 678 to 2,126 in twelve months. A prior attrition rate of 65 out of 677 (2025 cohort) quitting or being expelled within a year projects a 200-plus annual departure pipeline across the expanded estate — the central test of whether the party's organisational infrastructure can sustain its electoral gains.