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00:00And for more on these local elections in England, we can welcome Ben Williams, who's a lecturer in politics at Manchester Metropolitan University.
00:09Good morning, Ben, and thank you for joining us.
00:11Nigel Farage's Reform UK party is heading the polls by a bit of a distance going into these elections.
00:17Might we see them make an electoral breakthrough?
00:21Yeah, I think it is possible.
00:24The polls at the moment in the UK are showing a very tight spread of support.
00:30And Reform UK have come from effectively a very low base and are competing at the moment with the two established parties.
00:37And in fact, a number of polls in the last few weeks have put Reform UK actually ahead of Labour and Conservatives.
00:44So it is possible that they could make a breakthrough, but it's still quite unpredictable at the moment.
00:49And today will show us a lot more when we see the results later on.
00:53And if Reform were to gain control of any of the 24 local authorities that are up for grabs,
01:02it would put them in a position of holding office for the first time.
01:05In your opinion, is Reform UK ready for this?
01:09That is a very good question.
01:14And I suppose we don't really know the answer to that because there is, of course, Nigel Farage.
01:19He's at the head of Reform UK and he's a fairly experienced politician.
01:22He's been an MEP and he's been around for some time.
01:26But there are quite a lot of newer figures, inexperienced figures who have not got that much political experience.
01:32So that is, I suppose, a disadvantage in some ways.
01:36However, he has managed to kind of bring over with him recently some defectors.
01:41So there are quite a number of prominent conservative defectors, for example, standing for some of the key positions.
01:48So I suppose with some more experienced figures on board who are elected, who've got experience from other parties,
01:55that might hold them in good stead.
01:57But as I say, it's something of a leap in the dark because they are such a new party
02:01and people really don't know what's going to happen, I suppose, until they get into power in certain councils to see what they can do.
02:07Now, there have been concerns about large foreign donations being made to reform,
02:14circumventing fairly lax regulations on party funding in the UK.
02:21Could this be decisive for Farage's party either today or in the future?
02:29Well, yeah, I mean, obviously, any new party starting out in politics in most countries
02:34is going to have a disadvantage to the established parties.
02:37Because they won't have the funding that the established parties have, you know,
02:41and Labour and Conservative in the UK have a kind of solid historical stream of donorship.
02:47So, of course, a party like reform will need money to compete.
02:53Now, there has been talk of foreign donations.
02:57I know Elon Musk went on Twitter earlier this year to indicate he might be willing to do so
03:03and make some foreign donations.
03:04The slight problem is there are limitations on foreign donations in UK politics that have been in place for some time.
03:13And there is talk of tightening it up.
03:15So it could be that foreign donations actually are restricted anyway.
03:21And, you know, essentially Reform UK will have to get donors of their own.
03:24Now, there have already been some recent examples of, for example, former Conservative donors moving over to Reform UK
03:31and giving them money domestically.
03:35So it could be that they don't need foreign donors in the same context
03:38and they can rely on some quite wealthy people in Britain to support them,
03:43as is the case with the other parties.
03:45Now, Labour are going to take a bit of a hit in these polls, as is often the case with incumbent governments.
03:53But the big loser is likely to be the Tories who hold the most seats nationwide in local authorities.
03:59Have reforms stolen the Tories' thunder?
04:02Well, in many ways, the answer to that is yes, because you do normally expect that when the main incumbent party,
04:13which of course is Labour since last summer, when they become unpopular,
04:17which they have done very quickly due to various factors,
04:21it is normally the main opposition party, the benefits.
04:25But the polls at the moment are actually putting the Conservatives consistently in third place.
04:29And as I say, it is reform who look likely to benefit.
04:33And to some extent, some of the smaller parties further down the list.
04:38So, yeah, it is a problem for the Conservatives.
04:40And I think, you know, one of the factors is they were in power for 14 years up until 2024.
04:47And there was a general consensus that they, you know, that it ended very badly and with a lot of problems.
04:53And I think people do have a memory of that.
04:55And while they're disenchanted with Labour, they're not necessarily willing to go back to the Conservatives,
05:01given it was only last year that the Conservatives were kicked out of office.
05:05And that's where reform have stepped in to take advantage.
05:08Now, both Labour and the Tories have been making overtures to voters that might be tempted by reform
05:15by taking a rightward tack on some policies, such as migration and transgender rights.
05:21Is British electoral politics now increasingly resembling three dogs running after the same bull?
05:30Well, yeah, I mean, that's a good way of putting it.
05:33And in effect, Britain has for some time now been moving in the direction of what you might say is multi-party politics.
05:39Traditionally, it has been two parties that have been established and have alternated in power.
05:44But the signs in recent years have been that that is weakening.
05:47I mean, we can go back to 2010 when actually there was a coalition with the Conservatives
05:52and the minority Liberal Democrat Party who were like a third party at the time.
05:57So there is some signs definitely over the last two decades that smaller parties are making a breakthrough.
06:04And this manifestation of reform is just the latest example of that.
06:09So, yeah, we are in interesting times.
06:11The polling is showing that the three parties, Conservative, Labour and Reform, are all polling anything between 20 and 25, 26 percent.
06:20So we're in a multi-party era in Britain, which is something we're not used to, something far more common in parts of Europe.
06:26And it's something that's going to be interesting to see how it develops in the months and years ahead.
06:30Thank you very much for that, Ben Williams, a lecturer in politics at Manchester Metropolitan University.
06:38No.
06:38No.
06:38No.
06:38No.
06:38No.