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The only time one of Farage's parties has ever won any seats in parliament is when sitting Conservative MPs have defected to them and then resigned, triggering by-election in which they were returned, this time as UKIP candidates.Well... let's just consider for one moment that Farage really returns with Reform UK in the next GE, and they take over a nice amount of seats the Tories had before. What will do that then with the Tories left in HoC?
They were effective because they were able to take sufficient votes from the Conservatives for Labour or the Lib Dems to win in competitive seats, not because there was ever a serious chance they'd be elected to Westminster, thus frightening the Conservatives into adopting anti-EU policies to keep their anti-EU voters loyal.
Reform UK generally poll between 5%--8% in public opinion polls, and Farage returning and taking it over from Richard Tice (assuming there's a vacancy) wouldn't change that much.
We'll see, but I'd be astonished if they come close to winning even one seat, let alone "a nice amount of seats", in the next election.
I can certainly see the Conservatives splitting after the next election, assuming they lose, because there will then be a huge fight between people who think they lost because they were insufficiently right-wing and those who want to be more centrist. If that happens, and the centrists win, I can see the right joining up with Reform, but that still leaves them a small and ineffective group.
ETA
Reform UK under its present leadership
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