Reform UK won 4.1 million votes at the 2024 general election, 14.3 per cent of the national share, and returned five MPs. Under first past the post, that 14.3 per cent converted into 0.8 per cent of the seats. Two years later the party leads national polling, controls councils for the first time in its history, holds seats in the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd, and its performance in the May 2026 local elections was followed within weeks by Keir Starmer's announcement that he would stand down as Prime Minister.
The 2024 result set the pattern. Nigel Farage won Clacton with 46.2 per cent. Richard Tice took Boston and Skegness; Lee Anderson, who had defected from the Conservatives that March, held Ashfield; Rupert Lowe won Great Yarmouth; and James McMurdock took South Basildon and East Thurrock. Five seats came from 4.1 million votes, while Labour turned 9.7 million votes into 412 seats.
Reform's parliamentary group has since been rebuilt almost entirely. Sarah Pochin won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election in May 2025, overturning a Labour majority of 14,696 by a handful of votes. Danny Kruger defected in September 2025, followed by Robert Jenrick, Andrew Rosindell and Suella Braverman in January 2026. Two of the original five left: Lowe was suspended in March 2025 after a KC's report found credible evidence of unlawful harassment of two women, and went on to found Restore Britain; McMurdock stepped down in July 2025 after admitting business misconduct. The group that entered Parliament with five members now has eight, only three of whom arrived at the 2024 election.
The local elections carried more weight than the by-elections. In May 2025 Reform won 677 council seats, 41 per cent of those contested, and took control of ten councils, the first time the party or its predecessor the Brexit Party had run any council. Rallings and Thrasher estimated that a Britain-wide contest would have given Reform the largest share of seats on roughly a third of the projected national vote; Labour took 6 per cent of seats and the Conservatives 20 per cent. In May 2026 the figures grew: more than 1,400 council seats, 17 seats in the Scottish Parliament and 34 in the Welsh Senedd, against Labour losses of 1,498 councillors and 38 councils. John Curtice noted that no party commanded broad public backing, putting Reform in the mid-to-high twenties and the other parties roughly between the mid-teens and twenty. When the government tried to postpone 30 of the 2026 council elections, citing local-government reorganisation, Reform brought a legal challenge; the government withdrew the plan after advice that a delay could be unlawful, and every election went ahead.
The party's finances have grown with its vote. In August 2025 the cryptocurrency businessman Christopher Harborne gave Reform £9 million, part of a reported £12 million across the year. Harborne had separately given Farage a personal gift of £5 million in early 2024, weeks before Farage reversed his decision not to stand for Parliament, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has opened a formal investigation into whether that gift should have been declared; Farage says it covered security costs. In a separate finding, the Commissioner concluded that Farage had breached the MPs' Code of Conduct 17 times by failing to register £384,064 of outside earnings, from Google, GB News, Direct Bullion and others, within the required 28 days. Essex Police assessed and dropped allegations of campaign overspending in Clacton, and the Electoral Commission took no further action. In February 2026 the party's treasurer, Nick Candy, was named in the Epstein files; Farage said Candy "never had anything to do with Epstein."
The platform has moved from protest to programme. The 2024 "Contract with the People" set out positions on immigration, tax, energy, welfare and constitutional reform; since the election Farage has appointed a party board in August 2025 and named a frontbench team on 17 February 2026, with Anderson serving as both chairman and chief whip and Braverman holding the education, skills and equalities brief. The party has said a Reform government would place up to half its Cabinet in the House of Lords rather than drawing it from MPs, a marked break with convention.
Reform's support rests on a claim a large share of voters accept, that the system is not delivering: housing is unaffordable, the tax burden is at record levels, public services are under strain, growth has been weak for most of two decades, and trust in institutions has fallen. Labour and the Conservatives are judged on their records in office; Reform is judged on what it says it would do instead. A party that has identified failures has not yet had to correct them from government.
The electoral obstacle is the same system that under-rewarded Reform in 2024, when its 4.1 million votes produced five seats while the Liberal Democrats' 3.5 million produced 72. The 2026 local results showed Reform's vote concentrated in coastal towns, former mining areas, post-industrial Midlands towns and Lancashire market towns, the seats where concentration could work in its favour at Westminster. Whether that produces a few dozen MPs, a hundred, or a majority depends on the 2029 general election, and on whether higher turnout and tactical voting reassert the older pattern.
Two tests remain open. The Commissioner's investigation into the £5 million gift has not yet reported, and the 2029 general election will be the first at which Reform is judged as a potential government rather than a protest against the last one.