Nigel Farage’s Reform UK stood at the brink of a “politically seismic” breakthrough, its deputy leader said, after it was projected to win as many as 13 seats in the general election.
The poll results indicated that Farage, who sparked a political earthquake on the right after he returned as leader of the party last month, was set to win the Essex seat of Clacton.
While there was caution about how the poll of 20,000 would ultimately translate into seats, it was clear that millions of people had voted for the hard-right anti-immigration party, which has previously stated that it was intent on destroying the Conservative party.
Ben Habib, Reform’s deputy leader, was the first of the party’s senior figures to seize on the BBC/ITV/Sky survey projection. He tweeted: “This is a huge bridgehead. This is politically seismic. This is the beginning of the fightback for the nation state of the United Kingdom.”
While Farage had kept his cards close to his chest about how many seats he expected to win, the projected seat share is believed to be much higher than what he could have hoped for.
Farage’s agent, Peter Harris, told the Guardian that it was early days but the party appeared to be in a strong position. “We could see that there was a strong turnout. In places like Jaywick, the queues were long, and had people in there who had not voted before or had given up on voting until now,” he said.
The expected vote share opened up the possibility of the electorate returning Reform MPs in target seats from Essex, the Kent Coast, south Wales and Yorkshire and the Humber.
Richard Tice, Reform’s chair and the man who stepped aside so that Farage could return, appeared to be in a strong position to win in the Lincolnshire constituency of Boston and Skegness, which has been represented by Tory Matt Warman since 2015.
Others who were in a strong position included the former Southampton Football Club chairman, Rupert Lowe, who was running in Great Yarmouth, which has been held by the Conservatives since 2010.
In places such as Barnsley north, a Reform target seat, voters were on course to elect a candidate who had been dropped during the campaign. Robert Lomas was among a number of Reform candidates disowned by the party last month as it was engulfed by a row over racist and offensive comments by some of its members.
In the main, Reform’s progress came at the expense of the Conservatives. However, the close contest in Barnsley North reflected the extent to which the radical right party could emerge as a political threat to Labour. Dan Jarvis, the shadow security minster, was the Labour candidate in Barnsley North, a new constituency.
Stephanie Peacock, who has been a Labour MP since 2017, also appeared to be under threat from Reform in Barnsley South.
However, a note of caution was sounded by Prof Sir John Curtice, the psephologist and lead election analyst for the BBC, who said that the projected seat shares for Reform UK and the SNP were the two figures about which he and others were least certain. “Basically, what we have got is a lot of places where there is a small chance that Reform will win the seat. We are talking about 20%, 30%t chances,” he said.
“We add up these probabilities and that is how we get to the figure of 13. To be honest, the figure could be quite a lot less, or indeed rather more, depending on how the cookie crumbles.”