2025 is a make or break year for Reform UK and Nigel Farage as they contest council seats across England and Wales.
One poll has Reform just behind the Tories and ahead of Labour. With momentum behind the insurgent party, next year’s local authority elections will not only test the party’s credibility but could lay the foundations for being the official opposition if not government.
Perhaps with a view to the Reform threat, Angela Rayner has said she wants every region of England to have a mayor with more powers over housing, transport, education, and employment.
The deputy PM’s plans however already provoked warnings about threats to local democracy and accountability, something Reform is likely to pounce upon.
Rayner may be right about Britain being over-centralised but are mega councils really the way to go? For Farage – a man whose career was defined by opposition to what he saw as an unaccountable EU mega project – Labour’s plans will offer fresh ammunition to attack the Government.
Right now, constituencies up and down the UK are becoming three horse races as Reform UK breathes down the necks of both Labour and the Conservatives.
But with only a pocketful of MPs, and little local authority representation, there has been little testing of how Reform UK would actually exercise power.
That could change next year however, and Farage knows this is his big moment to lay the groundwork for a major push in 2029.
Whatever fear this may strike into Labour hearts, double the impact for a discredited and marginalised Tory opposition, adrift and unloved with Reform UK parking its tanks on their lawn.
Rayner’s plans may grab some brief headlines, but next year’s council elections will not only be a test for an increasingly incompetent Labour government but for a Reform party chomping at the bit to exercise real power.
