| Nigel Farage has been generating almost unprecedented levels of interest in the UK recently, which has injected his Reform UK party with new polling success. However, a lack of strategic focus from Euroscepticism’s ‘charismatic leader’ could undermine him as he rails against both of Britain’s major parties. Polling on 15 June awarded Farage’s far-right Reform UK seven of the UK’s 650 parliamentary seats in the 4 July General Election. This is a sharp increase from their lone MP, Lee Ashfield, who defected from the Conservatives in March 2024. Seven out of 650 seats is however a tiny 1.08% of the parliament, and the amount of popular support Farage has garnered is significantly higher than this. YouGov polling from 13 June had Reform at 19% of the popular vote, putting them in second place behind only the Labour Party, and one percentage point ahead of the Conservatives. If seats were awarded proportionally in the UK, Farage would head to Westminster with 122-and-a-half colleagues in tow and sit directly across the benches from Labour’s Keir Starmer as leader of the opposition, a line of messaging he has embraced. The quirky British electoral system The reason for the disparity between the popular vote and seats awarded is Britain’s infamous First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) voting system. In each of the 650 constituencies, the candidate with the most votes becomes MP. This favours candidates running against a divided opposition, and it also means a party’s voter base needs some geographic contiguity in order to translate votes into seats. | 