The Reform party has proven that it is here to stay.
Time is running out for our rotten two-party system. Just imagine what could happen if Nigel Farage returns
RUPERT LOWE17 February 2024 •
Kingswood is not in the top 200 Reform-friendly seats. It’s a suburb of a heavily left-leaning Bristol, with a demographic that would be nowhere near our target list for a general election. We entered the race on January 16, and one month later we scored over 10 per cent.
Restricted resource, short campaign, average seat, limited name-recognition, zero data and overwhelming Tory/Labour manpower – so how did we enthuse such a respectable amount of the electorate to come out on a rainy Thursday and put their faith in a relatively new party?
Whether it’s in Kingswood or Wellingborough, there is no appetite for this Conservative Party. On the doorstep, people are seriously fed up and the Westminster establishment has not clocked just how disenfranchised the public is becoming. The Tory party machine can still seep thousands of votes from the crooked postal vote system, but this is the very definition of papering over the cracks.
When postal votes landed in Kingswood, we hadn’t even got going. Most didn’t even know we were standing after a last-minute change of heart, and quite honestly we got battered in that part of the election. According to our tallies, it was 5 per cent or so from those who voted early. In any case, this is a system which should be limited to those who physically cannot vote for medical or serious reasons.
From those who cast their vote on the day? We ran the Tories very close, and I have no doubt that if we had another fortnight or so we would have pulled away from them. Labour flooded the seat with people and resource, something we cannot compete with – and yet.
There is no genuine enthusiasm for Labour’s leader, people or policies, but in our deficient two-party system it seems to be their “turn” to play with the train set. Do we need a disastrous five years of socialism for people to truly understand the need for the radical reform that is necessary? It may hurt, but it may be a required pain.
I stood in Kingswood to give people a chance to voice their anger at the rotten Westminster establishment. At how their money has been wasted, at how immigration has spiralled out of control and placed unreasonable pressure on all parts of public life, at how the legacy parties have failed Britons up and down the country.
We couldn’t compete in the ground war, but we won the air war. A targeted social media campaign that was aimed at talking to voters rather than our own national supporters won us hundreds and hundreds of votes.
It was not enough to win the seat, or come close, but our result, and that in Wellingborough, shows that Reform is here to stay and we are not going anywhere. In better seats, with better resources and better preparation, we would at least double our vote share without a doubt.
If Nigel Farage were to return, the Conservatives face total and utter annihilation. It would be deserved. DT.
