I'm not really sure what I can tell you.
English politics is in a somewhat strange state at the moment. Support for the Conservatives cratered during the last months of Boris Johnson's premiership, and then Liz Truss's brief but disastrous period of office put the last nails in the coffin. They limped along under Rishi Sunak but, come the general election in July last year, the Conservative vote collapsed.
Because of our first past the post system, this gave Labour a landslide victory, but this was very much a vote to remove the party that had been in office, if not always in power, for the last 14 years rather than a positive vote for Labour. Reform did extremely well, coming second (often a very close second) to Labour in many constituencies but ended up with only 5 MPs.
Since then, Labour have been pretty unimpressive, but the Conservatives haven't recovered, so Labour, the Conservatives and Reform are all polling in the mid-20s, with the LibDems and the Greens moving between 9% --15% each.
The forthcoming local elections (held this Thursday, May 1) are the first big test, with the Conservatives expected to do extremely badly, particularly since they're defending seats they last won in 2021, with the country coming out of lockdown after the successful vaccine roll-out. Many of these local districts (including Lincolnshire) are ones where Labour have never stood much of a chance, so Reform will doubtless collect many votes both from disenchanted former Conservative supporters and also from people whose vote in the last election was an anti-Conservative Labour vote rather than a pro-Labour one.
Nigel Farage's Reform are an odd bunch. The party leadership are right-wing, free market, Thatcherite Conservatives (Andrea Jenkyns is a former Conservative cabinet minister). However, their supporters tend to be socially conservative and anti-immigration but also often in favour of economic policies well to the left of Labour,
Net Zero is a pet hate of the Reform leadership (and, indeed, of the right-wing of Conservative Party) but I'm not sure -- from what I've read of opinion polls and focus groups -- how much traction that has with voters as a whole.
Reform are expected to do very well tomorrow, but it'll then be interesting to see how they handle political power at the local level. They're very much a protest party at the moment, and it's far clearer what they (and Nigel Farage) are against than what they're actually in favour of.
Also, Farage notoriously has never been able abide competition within his own parties, so it's going to be interesting to see how handles Reform mayors with their own personal mandates.
I'm not too worried (partly because I live in a safe Labour area) because there's a limit to the amount of damage local councils can do. It's also the case that there's a considerable anti-Farage constituency, and I think a lot of people (including Conservatives) will be considering a tactical vote to keep Reform out, at least when we come to the next General Election. But that's 4 years away yet, and a lot can happen before then.
www.thetimes.com
