Farage’s UK election tactics means a far-right that is all talk but no trousers

By Chris Powers

Nigel Farage has been generating almost unprecedented levels of interest in the UK recently, which has injected his Reform UK party with new polling success. However, a lack of strategic focus from Euroscepticism’s ‘charismatic leader’ could undermine him as he rails against both of Britain’s major parties.

Polling on 15 June awarded Farage’s far-right Reform UK seven of the UK’s 650 parliamentary seats in the 4 July General Election. This is a sharp increase from their lone MP, Lee Ashfield, who defected from the Conservatives in March 2024.

Seven out of 650 seats is however a tiny 1.08% of the parliament, and the amount of popular support Farage has garnered is significantly higher than this.

YouGov polling from 13 June had Reform at 19% of the popular vote, putting them in second place behind only the Labour Party, and one percentage point ahead of the Conservatives.

If seats were awarded proportionally in the UK, Farage would head to Westminster with 122-and-a-half colleagues in tow and sit directly across the benches from Labour’s Keir Starmer as leader of the opposition, a line of messaging he has embraced.

The reason for the disparity between the popular vote and seats awarded is Britain’s infamous First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) voting system. In each of the 650 constituencies, the candidate with the most votes becomes MP.

This favours candidates running against a divided opposition, and it also means a party’s voter base needs some geographic contiguity in order to translate votes into seats.

France’s financial markets lost further ground on Wednesday after the European Commission announced it intends to open an excessive deficit procedure (EDP) over the national budget, exacerbating fears that the ongoing political reshuffling may compound the country’s economic headwinds.

The French far right, united behind the Rassemblement National (RN), has made the carve-up and sale of public broadcasting one of its priorities, although the details of the sale remain unknown.

The question of how to support the Ukrainian agrifood sector amid Russia’s war remains unanswered after last week’s Ukraine Recovery Conference, the president of the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club (UCAB) told Euractiv in an interview.

All three blocs running in French parliamentary elections are promising rebates on energy bills, with most of the envisaged measures compatible with European law but subject to certain conditions.

France is lagging behind in the production of medicines, the association of French pharmaceutical companies, Leem, warned in a new barometer published on Tuesday.

The bilateral military agreement between the USA and Sweden has been adopted by the majority of the Swedish Parliament, despite the concerns of the ecologist and far-left opposition about the transfer of nuclear weapons to Swedish soil.

Backstage talks over the EU top jobs continue after an informal summit earlier this week did not seal a preliminary deal, with the centre-right raising additional questions over the Socialist pick, ex-PM Antonio Costa.

For more policy news, don’t miss this week’s Green Brief and the Health Brief.

• Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni participates in 12th Annual Meeting of European Stability Mechanism in Luxembourg on Thursday.
• Commission Vice President Vĕra Jourová speaks at European Data Protection Summit on Thursday.
• Eurogroup meeting on Thursday.
• Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council (Social policy) on Thursday.

Views are the author’s

[Edited y Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]