Let's be clear - Reform's policies would be the final nail in the coffin for the NHS.

Call To Action

For the first time, the Reform Party has come first in a national poll, beating both Labour and the Conservative Party when people were asked who they would vote for if a General Election was called tomorrow. The Telegraph wrote an article about this on Friday, and as they’ve explained:

“The poll, conducted on Wednesday, gave Reform 26 per cent of the vote, up by one point on the previous week. The Conservatives placed second on 23 per cent, down two points, with Labour third on 22 per cent, also down by two points.”

It’s important not to place too much importance on a single result like this; polls come out all the time, the results shift about from week to week, with results often influenced by whatever’s in the news. But if you look at the website of the organisation that ran the poll, Find Out Now, they’ve shared a bit more information about how things have been changing recently. It looks like the Reform Party is steadily growing in popularity by attracting those who voted for the Conservatives last time around, and also by attracting those who didn’t vote at all in the recent General Election:

“The main trend has been the growth of Reform UK (from 22% to 26%) – driven by them by retaining almost all of their 2024 GE support (retaining far more than any other party), winning over a fifth of 2024 GE Conservative voters, and winning almost half (46%) of people who didn’t vote in 2024 but say they would “definitely vote” this time. Notably they have not dropped in support over any of our voting intention polls since November.”

They’re gaining more party members too. Laura Kuenssberg wrote about a Reform UK rally for the BBC at the beginning of January, and her piece includes this line:

“As if by magic, when Farage was on stage the party's membership passed 170,000, and two hours later the party told me they had added another 1,000.”

More party members means more money for the Reform Party to hire staff and work on its public image, an image which is already becoming more sophisticated. Reform is also attracting interest from wealthy financial backers and from high profile figures associated with the Conservative Party. In short, we shouldn’t be underestimating them; not now, and not in the months and years to come. They’re capitalising on an unhappy public who have been let down by the major political parties for many years, who have endured endless false promises, false hope, and financial hardship because of terrible political decisions. They also have the advantage of offering the general public something new. After all, no one can point fingers at previous failures from the Reform Party, because they’ve never been in power. They’re not bogged down with decades’ worth of internal politics and bureaucracy. They don’t have a bloated party with various warring factions vying for power.

The Reform Party has been able to write their own new policies, fuelled by their own ideas; and so now’s the moment to examine those ideas, because the public deserves to know exactly what Farage is planning. I’m seriously concerned about what they’re planning for the NHS…