Imagine this: It’s May 2029 and Britain has just held a General Election. You turn on the television to find Nigel Farage standing outside 10 Downing Street.
He’s wearing a Union Jack tie, flanked by hundreds of new Reform MPs, and is thanking the British people for having just made him Prime Minister.
‘The People’s Army have taken over British politics!’ declares the new PM. ‘The political class in this country used to laugh at me. Well, they’re not laughing now!’
Sound fanciful? Some will say so. But having successfully predicted many events the Establishment dismissed as preposterous – from Brexit to both of Donald Trump’s presidencies – I think that Nigel Farage has every chance of pulling it off.
I’m not a member of the Reform Party but I do know Farage well. Over time, we’ve become friends.
From left, Nick Candy, Elon Musk and Nigel Farage in Florida this week
I’m also a passionate patriot who sympathises with the millions of ordinary Britons who have flocked to his upstart party, fed up with the consensus on soaring immigration, tax, wokery and Net Zero that unites Left and Right – or what Reformers call the ‘Uniparty’.
This is why I sense what many elites in this country do not: Nigel Farage now has all the momentum while the old dinosaur parties will be blown apart in a few years’ time.
It’s not just because of Farage’s seminal meeting this week with US billionaire Elon Musk who, after helping orchestrate Trump’s return to the White House, is reportedly considering a donation of up to £80 million to Reform. Nor is it because of the growing numbers of former Conservative Party supporters defecting to Reform – such as billionaire Nick Candy who looks set to give Farage the money, insight and advice he has lacked in the past.
No, it’s because of what we can already see taking shape in the country.
At the last election, Reform mobilised 14 per cent of the national vote – four million voters. But last week, they surged to a new record high of 25 per cent in the polls – pushing ahead of the Tories and trailing Labour by just one point.
In other words, Farage and his ‘People’s Army’ are now within what canvassers call the ‘margin of error’ of leading the polls: quite an achievement for a party that still has only 15 full-time staff.
Remarkably, Reform is also now more popular than the Tories among men and under-65s – and is poaching one in five of the voters who stuck with the Tories in July. Farage is continuing to devour the Tory vote.
What do these numbers mean? If they translated to a General Election, Reform would rocket from its current five seats to around 100. Clearly, this populist revolt against the system is growing – and quickly.
I have studied Reform’s strategy in detail, and I’m privy to many of their tactics. Key to it is the ‘two-prong strategy’: Invading Tory seats on England’s coast in Lincolnshire, Essex, Kent and Hampshire while simultaneously smashing Labour in the Red Wall and Wales.
Reform believe they can win in areas where the Tories are toxic, while exploiting the widespread unpopularity of Keir Starmer in former Labour strongholds.
Clearly, winning 100 seats would not be enough to gain power.
But I’m convinced this is just the start. Between today and the next General Election, I believe Nigel Farage will manage to take over the entire system, pulling off the same kind of political ‘realignment’ as his close ally Trump just achieved in America.
Growing numbers of former Conservative Party supporters defecting to Reform – such as billionaire Candy, centre
The first step in this takeover would need to be ideological.
Neither of the old parties is connecting – leaving a political vacuum for Farage’s party to fill.
Only this week, pollster Ipsos Mori found that the share of Britons who feel dissatisfied with Sir Keir Starmer’s hapless Labour Government has soared to 70 per cent.
Meanwhile, two-thirds of people expect the economy to get worse, while three-quarters are fed-up with mass immigration – still one of Britons’ top priorities.
If things are this bad now after just five months of Labour, what will they be like after five years?
And the Tories aren’t much better. New party leader Kemi Badenoch is failing to inspire. She won’t commit to leaving the European Convention on Human Rights or protecting our borders, while demoralised Tory MPs have described her performances at Prime Minister’s Questions as ‘woeful’.
Indeed, that same Ipsos Mori poll has her rating at minus 15. She’s not cutting through and it seems both the public and Westminster know it.
This leaves a massive open goal for Farage. He must use his appearances both in the Commons and media to feed off of the Establishment’s unpopularity while targeting Reform voters’ top two priorities: slashing legal immigration and stopping the small boats.
With this foundation, Reform can focus on political gains in its second step: the county council elections next May.
I know from my conversations with the party that they plan to copy the Liberal Democrat strategy of ‘going local’ – building their local branches and activist armies to convert support into votes.
If they’re smart, Reform will focus on the areas they plan to target at the next General Election such as Essex, Hampshire and Lincolnshire – councils now under Tory control.
Farage himself will also want to go on a national tour, collecting data and new members as he goes. The third step will come a year later, with the Welsh Senedd election.
Farage with Donald Trump at the US president-elect’s Florida residence
Currently, the Welsh Parliament is dominated by Labour – which has overseen record NHS waiting lists in the country and the disastrous leadership of First Minister Vaughan Gething who served just 118 days in office.
However, Reform could be poised for big wins, having received the third largest share of the Welsh vote in the last General Election. Personally, I expect 2026 will see a massive breakthrough in South Wales, the home of the Industrial Revolution, including Cardiff Bay – the first sizeable crack in the Red Wall.
By the end of this third stage, around 2027, Reform’s momentum would have grown exponentially. It would have recruited more than 100,000 members – and would want to claim it is a bigger force than the Conservatives.
This could also see more defections from the senior echelons of the Tory Party. From my conversations at Westminster, I personally know at least half a dozen Tories who are thinking about defecting – a few are household names.
As high-profile donations continue to roll in, these would be used to fund a nationwide billboard campaign. The party would also ramp up its investment in social media platforms such as TikTok, where Farage has already amassed more than one million followers.
By the run-up to the next General Election in 2029, Reform will be in prime position – having moved from the margins to the mainstream.
Can the Tories stop it?
To be honest, I doubt it. Kemi Badenoch would need to change course radically, pledging more border protections and an end to uncontrolled immigration. Whether voters trust her and her party after the past 14 years, however, is another question.
Bodies such as the Electoral Commission would surely try to stop Farage by fiddling the rules around overseas donations. Already, the head of the watchdog has warned that the rules need strengthening to ‘protect the electoral system from foreign interference’.
But sometimes revolutions grow so fast, no ceiling can quash them. When ordinary people decide they’ve had enough, they will push forward somebody who is willing to speak on their behalf. And right now, like him or loathe him, that person is Nigel Farage.
- Matt Goodwin is a political commentator and author of the substack mattgoodwin.org.
