Many Open Britain supporters have told us a version of the same thing lately. Farage is in trouble, Andy Burnham is in No 10, and things are on the right track now - everyone can sleep soundly again. I understand why they say that, but there’s a complacency in there that worries me. Here’s why.
Let’s start with why people feel like that. From spring 2025 until this July, Reform led the national polls without a break, and Keir Starmer became the least popular prime minister in Ipsos’s records. People who had watched Donald Trump’s actions since returning to the White House began to wonder whether Britain was next, and that fear was a fair reading of the evidence.
Now look at the past three months. Labour is back in front, and more people view Farage unfavourably than ever in YouGov’s tracking. Parliament’s standards commissioner is investigating a gift he didn’t declare, and the Metropolitan Police are investigating donations to his party. If you feel the pressure has come off, you are reading the news correctly.
But Westminster still uses first past the post, where whoever gets the most votes in a seat wins it, however small their share. In 2024 that gave Labour a landslide on about a third of the vote, and it works the same way for whoever is ahead. More in Common’s September model found that if two voters in every hundred switched from Labour to Reform, Reform would become the largest party. Two points. Yes, this is a snapshot and polls change, but it’s a snapshot that shows how little it would take.
Honeymoons usually fade, too. Gordon Brown’s ratings were comfortably positive in the summer of 2007, and four months later most people told Ipsos they were dissatisfied with him. Theresa May was riding high in 2016 and lost her majority the following year. Burnham may be riding high now but the next election can come as late as 2029 and a lot can change in the meantime.
And Farage has told us what he would do with power. In his conference speech on 4 September he said that if the House of Lords blocked his programme, “We’ll appoint hundreds of new peers so that we have a majority in the House of Lords.” Given Reform’s difficulties finding properly qualified candidates who don’t later turn out to have unsavoury back stories, imagine what that might look like. He said Reform would “perhaps have to consider how judicial appointments work in the future.” And he said that “if civil servants try to obstruct us, they will be removed from their posts and replaced by people from outside”.
Those are his words, and they are the evidence. I accept that Farage is not Donald Trump and that he has recently sought to give the impression that he has distanced himself somewhat from his old best buddy. Most notably, he has questioned Trump’s judgement over Iran and says the president “is not dictating policy to me”. But, that could just be media management for our consumption, and America shows what removing constitutional checks and balances looks like in practice.
None of this needs a majority of voters. It needs a majority of MPs, and first past the post can deliver one on a minority of the vote.
Something else I hear all the time is, “Wouldn’t a proportional system just help Reform?” Honestly, it likely would result in Reform winning more seats, roughly in line with its votes – which, as a democrat, I think is fair. But it would also need partners to govern. Sir John Curtice, the elections expert, says electoral reform could make it much harder for a future Reform leader to become prime minister. In May, in Wales’s first election under a fully proportional system, Reform won more than a third of the Senedd’s seats, and yet Plaid Cymru governs.
Burnham’s announcement of a new National Commission on Electoral Reform is a real and positive step. Yes, Open Britain has campaigned for fairer votes for years, and the past year is why the stakes are higher now. But the commission is a promise, not a change. The voting system only changes if Labour wins the next election and then passes a law, and that next election will be fought under first past the post.
If you are one of those who thinks the danger has receded and everything in the garden looks rosy, I’d ask you to pause and reflect on the consequences of being wrong. Mood music and warm words can be a sign of positive things to come, or they can be a way of deflecting our attention and diluting our efforts, exactly when those things are needed most.
Fair elections that serve the ordinary people of this country require four fundamental changes. The removal of disinformation from our public debate. A way to ensure uber-wealthy individuals cannot use their money to influence politics more than we can influence it with our votes. A voting system that ensures the will of the people expressed at elections actually translates into representation in Parliament. And clear rules, robustly enforced, so that those who treat the system with disdain are properly held to account. Those things do not exist today and we would be naïve to think they will come if we don’t maintain the pressure now.
The relief is understandable. But the circumstances that give rise to it could turn out to be merely a break in the storm. We would all do well to keep that in mind.
We can not sit back and get complacent where FR Farage * Co are concerned he's got billionaires backing him to the hilt to destabilise, he may be the mouthpiece but he's extremely dangerous for the UK.