The Reform Backlash: Caerphilly By-Election Result Shows Nigel Farage’s Party Is Much Weaker Than It Looks

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In the run up to Thursday’s Caerphilly by-election there was acres of media coverage suggesting that the Welsh constituency was about to be taken by Reform.

“Reform could make massive Welsh breakthrough TODAY” shouted the Daily Mail as it insisted that “Nigel Farage’s party is leading the race” for the seat.

Reporters, who previously couldn’t even point to Caerphilly on a map, were dispatched to the seat to conduct vox pops in which Welsh voters explained why they would soon be electing a new Reform representative.

“Caerphilly is crumbling to Reform” reported the website Unherd, while the Independent found that Reform was “turning a red heartland light blue”. Similar missives were filed by outlets including the Telegraph and Times.

There was only one problem. The actual voters had other ideas. 

Indeed, when the final result came, far from “crumbling” to Reform’s nativist politics, the people of Caerphilly instead handed a decisive victory to the centre left Plaid Cymru, with Nigel Farage’s party coming in a distant second.

This was obviously not the result that many of the media organisations dispatched to report on Reform’s supposedly inevitable victory had expected.

“I was amazed at how many journalists were at the count,” reported Will Hayward, whose newsletter on Welsh politics most closely covered the race.

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“GB News were there in force, clearly desperate to herald the success of their presenter’s party. Their disappointment was palpable as the results became clear.”

Yet even once it became clear that Reform had actually lost, the script barely changed. Footage from the result showed the visiting caravan of Westminster-based journalists crowded around the losing Reform candidate, with Plaid’s newly-elected representative stuck talking to local reporters instead.

Later write-ups of the result also focused almost entirely on Labour’s collapse in the seat, while downplaying Reform’s failure to win the seat, which these same outlets had suggested they would just hours before.

However, soon the reality of what had happened began to settle in for some.

“Nigel Farage should conclude that his party did not just fall short what it hoped for yesterday” wrote the respected pollster and commentator Peter Kellner.

“It fell short of what he needed to be on course to become Prime Minister.”

Even some at GB News spotted the significance of the result.

“Nigel Farage’s biggest electoral fear REVEALED as Reform’s path to power narrows” conceded GB News editor Jack Walters, who wrote that the result showed that the level of dislike for Farage’s party could lead to widespread and successful anti-Reform tactical voting in future.

“While Reform’s support is strong, dislike for Mr Farage permeates around the country with equal fervour,” wrote Walters.

“And one statistic more than any other proves that. Turnout in yesterday’s by-election was 50 per cent, making it higher than the overall turnout across Wales in 2021.

“Some of those will be new voters giving Reform UK a chance, others will be people desperate to stave off another momentum-building victory for Mr Farage.”

The result has a particular significance given it followed Reform’s former Welsh leader Nathan Gill pleading guilty to taking bribes to spread pro-Russian propaganda.

The revelation, investigated extensively here at Byline Times, was used by Farage’s opponents during the by-election campaign to highlight the dangers of putting a party like Reform in power.

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The attacks appear to have had an impact. Farage, who has spent years pushing pro-Putin talking points, suddenly went into reverse gear. In a noticeably prickly interview with the financial news service Bloomberg, the Reform leader said he would back NATO jets shooting down Russian planes.

In a further sign of a wobble, the normally sure-footed media performer spent the final days of the by-election campaign obsessing over his opponents’ attacks on him about his party’s Russian links, staging a rather sad one-man protest from the House of Commons gallery during Prime Minister’s Questions.

Elsewhere campaigners for Reform’s opponents report that coverage of the chaos unfolding at newly elected Reform councils are starting to cut through.

It’s far too early to suggest that we’ve reached peak Reform. National opinion poll averages still show the party well ahead, with Labour continuing to lose votes to other centre and left-wing parties. With the Government still pursuing an anti-migration agenda that plays right into Farage’s hands, it is still very possible that Reform goes on to consolidate and even further its recent gains. Indeed Labuor’s collapse in support in this by-election shows quite how bad a state they are currently in.

However, what last night’s result also shows is that far from being the unstoppable force they are often portrayed as by the press, Farage’s party still has a very long way to go until it can be confident of winning power at the next general election.

More importantly, while they have so far been successful at mobilising right-of-centre voters, the result shows that Reform now risk also mobilising even more left of centre voters in the opposite direction. 

With the next election likely to be a fight between Labour and Reform, it is still very probable that large numbers of left-of-centre voters will vote tactically to keep Farage’s party out. In a close contest that could make all the difference between whether or not Farage makes it into Number 10.

A Reform general election defeat will not happen automatically, however. Previous elections have shown that voters will only vote tactically when they broadly support the aims of the party they are lending their votes too. In order to successfully mobilise anti-Farage votes, Keir Starmer needs to start actually offering centre left voters something beyond just keeping out Reform.

Yet what recent events have shown beyond doubt is that, despite what some media organisations have been suggesting, Farage and Reform is a political force that can still be beaten.