Even if Farage did become our next prime minister it won’t be for long
It was curious timing. Just as Reform produced record local election gains and a surge in the opinion polls – with Nigel Farage suddenly being taken seriously as a possible next prime minister – the Reform Party itself was spiralling into utter chaos.
Zia Yusuf, a Muslim businessman, sensationally quit as party chair after describing new Reform Runcorn MP Sarah Pochin as “dumb” when she challenged Keir Starmer over the legality of women wearing the burqa in the UK during Prime Minister’s Questions.
The next day, the party stalwart posted on X that he no longer believed that “working to get a Reform government elected” was “a good use of my time”. Later, Farage said Mr Yusuf had “snapped” after receiving a “tirade of personal racist abuse” on social media, suggesting Yusuf was “burnt out,” and blaming the “very hard extreme right” for the abuse.
Yet, within 48 hours, Yusuf was making a dramatic U-turn: rejoining the party and reclaiming leadership of the new, Donald Trump-inspired Doge team – a task force that claims to champion taxpayers by cutting waste. Yusuf was not the first member of Reform to be caught in a spiral. In March 2025, after legal allegations emerged, Farage suspended the whip from MP Rupert Lowe, and three branch officers in Great Yarmouth promptly resigned in protest.
Today, Dr David Bull – a doctor-turned-TV-presenter of the paranormal series Most Haunted Live! – was unveiled as the new chair of Reform UK to replace Yusuf, and so the Reform show trundles on.
However, on closer inspection, Reform’s internal disarray suggests it is suffering from some of the same symptoms of a wider disorder that has afflicted some of the new far-right parties across Europe. Firstly, the veneer of unity collapses at the slightest provocation, revealing leadership struggles and competing factions that undermine any coherent strategy. Secondly, there is an almost slavish fixation on Trump-style showmanship, assuming the same crude “pound-shop Maga” theatrics will be enough to hide the cracks and win over voters in Europe.
But when they get to power, those cracks are there for all to see.
Strategic misjudgements and internal disputes have become particularly evident in the aftermath of the May 2025 local elections. While Reform won huge victories in May’s local council elections – gaining control of nine councils and minority control in a further three – reports of shambolic governance have already emerged.
Across the 12 Reform-controlled councils, 33 meetings have been cancelled or postponed within the first nine weeks since the election. Opposition councillors are reporting that organisation and productivity have been a “shambles” since the election, with some claiming the Reform representatives “do not know what they’re doing”.
Organisational chaos is verging on farce, with newly elected councillors displaying a startling ignorance of basic procedures – reportedly abruptly cancelling meetings and making some curious choices.
One glaring example comes from the deputy leader of Durham County Council, Darren Grimes. Grimes has insisted that scrapping so-called “wasteful” EDI programmes should now be a central aim – adopting similar Trump-style rhetoric. Yet the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts local authority spending at £72.3bn in 2024–25, of which the £22.8m devoted to EDI roles accounts for just 0.03 per cent.
Across Europe, other newly formed parties elected on emotive, racialised slogans rather than credible and costed economic policies have also unravelled under scrutiny.
In the Netherlands, the conspiracy-minded PVV leader Geert Wilders, who secured 23.5 per cent of the vote for his far-right Freedom Party in the 2023 general election and cobbled together a coalition, has abruptly withdrawn his party. From the start, it was a coalition characterised by infighting and power struggles, and after months in office, the government had barely made any concrete plans. Support for the PVV has since plunged from almost 50 per cent a year ago to trailing behind the Green-Left-leaning GroenLinks–PvdA alliance at 30 per cent.
Similarly, Greece’s far-right landscape shows how chaotic these new disruptor parties become once they seize power. Over the past six years, four new parties – Greek Solution, Spartans, Victory, and Voice of Reason – have all emerged, yet today only Greek Solution remains relevant.
In 2024, Spartans collapsed after the Supreme Court confirmed it was led by convicted neo-Nazi Ilias Kasidiaris. Ultra-religious Victory fizzled out thanks to its all-consuming focus on US-style culture-war skirmishes that hold little sway in Greece. Voice of Reason plummeted from 9 to 7 per cent in the polls and then to under 2 per cent.
From the Netherlands to Greece and back to Britain, the far right’s playbook remains the same: charismatic leadership, superficial unity, single-issue zeal, and fragility once they gain real power due to a lack of viable policies and meaningful experience of government.
Reform under Farage epitomises this dynamic. His decades-long presence suggests gravitas, but he has always specialised in disruption rather than delivery. With Ukip, he rattled the Tories into a 2016 Brexit referendum; once that box was ticked and the Brexit Party left the European Parliament in 2020, his influence vanished almost overnight, revealing the hollow core of his political project.
However, circumstances have shifted dramatically. Last week’s polls put Reform an astonishing 8-10 points ahead of Labour – a margin that would have been unthinkable in 2016 or 2020. Farage’s dogged persistence has clearly paid off. This surge owes as much to a changing media environment as to voter disillusionment. The BBC – once wary of fringe parties – now treats Reform as a serious contender, sanitising its narrative and obscuring the turmoil at its core. That hesitancy echoes last year’s public apology when the corporation retracted its description of Reform as “far right”.
Most importantly, Labour’s 2024 victory has ushered in even more voter disillusionment. Keir Starmer’s failure to seize the moment and his government’s missteps in judging the public mood have only deepened a sense of drift. Labour’s inability to tell a positive story is creating the perfect opening for an insurgent force with little more than outrage to offer.
Meanwhile, the Tories, collapsing under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership, have begun desperately echoing Reform’s rhetoric – so much so that whispers of a future merger are already circulating.
Reform’s recent organisational chaos has so far failed to deter voters weary of austerity, government U-turns, and a polarised environment. The party may lack a coherent manifesto or disciplined apparatus, but in an atmosphere of frustration, mere opposition suffices. Its strength lies in the grievances it amplifies – and that dynamic is poised to reshape Britain’s political landscape long after the current spectacle has faded.
But the most pressing question is whether Farage can ever translate Reform’s rise into real governance at a local or national level. On current evidence, even if he did become prime minister, the spiral of chaos suggests it might not last long. As we have seen in Europe, when parties of opposition become the establishment, they are prone to spectacular displays of self-destruction. If they are handed the reins and fail to deliver anything but internal rifts and inexperienced personnel, the whole edifice quickly comes tumbling down. One grave misstep could condemn Reform to the same ignominious fate that felled Ukip and Farage’s Brexit Party.
Time will tell whether the “Nigel Party”, as Reform is often dubbed, is ever handed the chance for the rest of us to find out.
Dr Georgios Samaras is an assistant professor of public policy at the School for Government and Policy Institute, King’s College London. His upcoming book ‘Who Rules the Land of Denial?’ will be published by Palgrave Macmillan and Springer Nature in September 2025
Reeves’s spending review is just the beginning of a Labour civil war
It was a disgruntled backbencher who summed up the mood in Labour ahead of tomorrow’s spending review announcement by Rachel Reeves.
“You don’t become a Labour MP to make cuts,” the MP said, looking at the prospect of at least £5bn needing to be slashed across government departments – including housing, local government and policing – to fulfil the chancellor’s spending plans.
The billions of pounds of necessary savings, estimated by the House of Commons Library, was a calculation made before the chancellor committed herself to another £1.25bn of spending a year by restoring the winter fuel payments to 9 million pensioners.
When the chancellor gets to her feet after Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, she will no doubt be cheered by the Labour MPs behind her.
But the reality is that much of the applause will be performative rather than heartfelt.
The truth is that senior members of the government – and the wider party – are now openly at war with Keir Starmer and Reeves over economic policy.
In their eyes, Reeves will effectively confirm “austerity 2.0” in her spending review, but will not have delivered the boost to growth that she promised.
Labour will be in the worst of all worlds.
Already, the bitterness and bad feeling felt from the negotiations over the available budgets are threatening to deepen long after Reeves has delivered her statement.
In particular, home secretary Yvette Cooper has emerged as a surprising opponent to the Starmer-Reeves project and was said to be on resignation watch after the Treasury enforced a settlement on her department.
But the one to watch out for is deputy prime minister Angela Rayner whose allies are in manoeuvres over potentially triggering a leadership challenge against Starmer at some point.
After weeks of bitter negotiations, Rayner settled reluctantly on Sunday evening after, according to one MP, a threat that she too would have a settlement imposed on her Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).
Both Rayner and Cooper will be spending the months ahead having to defend cuts essentially imposed on them by a chancellor that they themselves opposed.
The problem for Reeves and Starmer is that they are not only failing to deliver significant economic growth but the job market is also tanking – almost as quickly as Labour’s popularity in the polls.
Still, there are a number of Labour MPs looking at the English council and Scottish and Welsh election results in May next year as a marker of whether to look for a change at the top.
One MP noted that “the toxicity in the party has definitely dropped” since the local elections. This was largely put down to the U-turn on winter fuel.
But it appears to have emboldened many now into pushing for a change in direction on the two-child benefit cap and the disability benefit payments.
Others will be looking for a much tougher stance on Israel.
Meanwhile, the spending review will not end the argument on economic policy but, instead, fuel it.
Now that Rayner’s memo to Reeves – calling for eight wealth taxes on the super-rich and big corporations – is out in the open, the calls for imposing them as opposed to making the cuts implicit in the spending review will only grow louder.
As revealed by The Independent, the trade unions now are in full support of such a move and are campaigning for wealth taxes through the TUC.
As Labour’s biggest financial backers, they carry a lot of weight and will strongly influence the debate.
All this adds to the speculation that an oncoming reshuffle could see Reeves’s time at the Treasury come to an end. This could be hurried along if Reeves continues to be awkward about committing to higher future defence spending – something the prime minister is much more committed to.
If Starmer decides that his survival depends on a new chancellor and a change of direction in economic policy then she will be gone. The only serious question will be who replaces her.
United Nations experts call for Starmer’s Chagos deal to be suspended
Keir Starmer is facing humiliation on the international stage after experts at the United Nations (UN) called for his controversial deal with Mauritius on the Chagos Islands to be suspended.
UN special rapporteurs Nicolas Levrat, KP Ashwini, Bernard Duhaime, and Bina D’Costa have slammed the agreement, which hands back sovereignty of the archipelago to Mauritius and leases back the UK-US military base on Diego Garcia for £101m per year for 99 years, for failing to protect the rights of Chagossians.
It follows Sir Keir’s government moving rapidly last month to prevent a High Court appeal against the treaty by representatives of the Chagossian community, who had opposed the deal.
Now, the prime minister is under pressure from critics on all sides to suspend the deal just weeks after he signed it with Mauritius.
The attack from the UN comes as the Tories have tabled legislation in parliament to block the deal from coming into law.
In a statement on Tuesday the UN experts said: “By maintaining a foreign military presence of the United Kingdom and the United States on Diego Garcia and preventing the Chagossian people from returning to Diego Garcia, the agreement appears to be at variance with the Chagossians’ right to return, which also hinders their ability to exercise their cultural rights in accessing their ancestral lands from which they were expelled.”
They added: “In light of these significant concerns, we call for the ratification of the agreement to be suspended and for a new agreement to be negotiated that fully guarantees the rights of the Chagossian people to return to all islands of the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia. This includes their right to adequate and effective remedy and reparations, including restitution, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition, as well as their cultural rights.”
The deal is also being criticised in the UK for potentially undermining the UK/US base on Diego Garcia, which is seen as crucial to western defence.
While the government claimed that the overall cost would be £3bn for the taxpayer, critics have estimated that over the 99-year lease period, it will cost £30bn potentially eating up the extra spending on the defence budget.
Sir Keir and Foreign Secretary David Lammy have maintained that they had to do the deal because a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that the islands should be handed back to Mauritius threatened the existence of the crucial military airbase.
They warned that the UK would face a number of legal challenges which could make the operation of the base of Diego Garcia impossible.
The deal was signed after Donald Trump gave it his blessing, despite lobbying from Nigel Farage.
But the UN experts were highly critical of the government’s refusal to properly engage with Chagossians who have been made homeless by their removal from Diego Garcia and the impact of the deal.
They said: “We are gravely concerned about the lack of meaningful participation of Chagossians in processes that have led to the agreement.”
The Independent has contacted Downing Street for comment.
The 7 best outdoor adventures in Sydney and New South Wales
Whether you’re lacing up your hiking boots, throwing on a wetsuit to catch some waves, or hitting the wide-open roads of New South Wales (NSW) by campervan, this Australian state is home to some of the country’s most exciting outdoor adventures – all easily accessible thanks to Qantas’ extensive domestic network.
Flying into Sydney with Qantas is the ideal way to experience a slice of Australia before you’ve even landed. And with onboard wellbeing perks, plus the option to book more discounted domestic legs using Qantas Explorer, it really is the savvy traveller’s best way to explore Australia.
Here are seven next-level outdoor adventures in NSW, and the best way to get there.
Sydney might be a modern metropolis, but it’s also home to an extraordinary natural playground, the star attraction of which is Sydney Harbour National Park. This protected area weaves through the city’s coastline, offering walking trails, secluded beaches, and panoramic views that blend wild bushland with iconic urban landmarks. Away from the National Park, you can paddle a kayak at dawn beneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge, go on a cycle tour and sunset cruise around Manly and North Heads coastal cliffs, or follow the Bondi to Coogee coastal walk for sweeping ocean views and refreshing swim spots.
Just a 90-minute trip from Sydney by road, the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Blue Mountains is an endless landscape of towering eucalyptus forests and striking sandstone cliffs as far as the eye can see. There are few places quite as grand as this so close to a city. Don your hiking boots and traverse spectacular scenery to Wentworth Falls or take on the Grand Canyon Track – a 6km loop of dramatic cliffs, fern-fringed valleys and thundering waterfalls with lookouts to match. If you’re an early riser, watch the sunrise at Echo Point, where the Three Sisters rock formation is lit up by the glow of first light.
Wildlife lovers need to head north to Port Macquarie for some of the best marine encounters on the east coast. Humpback whales are almost guaranteed from May to November, and dolphins can be spotted all year round. For front-row views, jump on a whale-watching cruise, or pitch up with a picnic on a headland and watch the breaching giants from afar.
Swap the sandy beaches for subtropical rainforest in Coffs Harbour’s hinterland in Dorrigo National Park, where winding roads serpentine through flourishing banana plantations, dense palm-filled forest and endless rolling hills. The region’s cycling trails range from casual loops to more challenging rides with jaw-to-the-floor sea views.
Aussies love their surfing, and Byron Bay is the epitome of surf culture Down Under, with beaches to suit all skill levels; from the gentle swell at The Pass to barrel-laden breaks at Tallows. If you’ve got any stamina left, soak up the view from Cape Byron Lighthouse post-surf – the easternmost point of mainland Australia.
With over 8,000 islands to its name, Australia offers the ultimate in island adventures. Lord Howe is one of them, a UNESCO World Heritage-listed pristine island, where only 400 visitors are allowed at any one time. You’ll find rare birds, kaleidoscopic coral reefs, and Mount Gower, offering one of the best day hikes in the country, with epic coastline views and dizzying drops.
For those who need more than a beach stroll to get the heart pumping, grab a kayak and explore the Sapphire Coast from the water in Merimbula. Glide over crystal-clear waters, past secluded coves, pristine beaches, and the untouched beauty of surrounding national parks. Keep an eye out for dolphins and other marine life as you paddle. Once back on shore, refuel with the region’s famous fresh oysters and enjoy a refreshing dip at Bar Beach.
Book your flight to Sydney today at qantas.com and start your Australian adventure.