A crop of Reform UK candidates led by Nigel Farage could be on course to enter parliament if the populist party’s strong polling translates into seats.
Farage, who is standing in Clacton, remains the party’s best hope of winning a seat. Clacton, in Essex, is the only UK constituency to have returned a Ukip MP in a general election, when it was won by Douglas Carswell in 2015.
However, an MRP poll last week for Find Out Now and Electoral Calculus predicted that Reform could win 18 seats and a higher vote share than the Conservatives.
If that happens, Reform MPs are likely to include some of the following:
Richard Tice
The businessman and chair of Reform UK bankrolled the party with loans of more than £1.4m in the lean period before Farage returned as leader and donors started to open their wallets.
After being expected to run in Hartlepool – where he finished third in the 2019 election – he switched to the heavily leave-voting constituency of Boston and Skegness, which has been represented by the senior one nation Conservative Matt Warman.
Tice, who has had stints broadcasting on GB News, is regarded as a polished performer, if lacking in Farage’s ability to connect with audiences.
Lee Anderson
The former Conservative deputy chairman and one-time Labour party member is seeking to retain the “red wall” seat of Ashfield he won for the Tories in 2019 with a majority of 5,733.
In March he became Reform UK’s first MP after being kicked off the Tory benches over his false claims that the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, was “controlled by Islamists”.
Rupert Lowe
The former Southampton Football Club chairman is standing in Great Yarmouth, which was won in 2018 by the Conservatives’ Brandon Lewis with a majority of 17,663.
He won a seat for the Brexit party in the West Midlands constituency in the 2019 European parliament elections. Lowe, a farmer, has acted as Reform’s agriculture spokesperson. His past comments have included that “the cult of climate change marches on, with no definitive evidence to support or deny the factual accuracy of their assertion”.
Noel Matthews
Reform UK’s national organiser is in with a potential chance of winning the Midlands seats of North West Leicestershire thanks to the unpredictable nature of how voters will behave there.
While the seat has long been held by the Conservatives, the Tory MP Andrew Bridgen is sitting as an independent after he was ejected from the party after comparing the use of Covid vaccines to the Holocaust. Where his votes go could be central to the outcome, with Labour and the Tories also in the hunt.
An investigation by the campaign group DeSmog found that Matthews had reposted an article in 2018 claiming that the far-right activist Tommy Robinson had been “persecuted” by the UK.
Simon Garvey
Reform UK’s relatively youthful candidate in the Yorkshire seat of Skipton and Ripon is a former teacher who founded a business developing software apps for schools.
Garvey is attempting to unseat the Conservative former Northern Ireland secretary, Julian Smith, who is defending a 23,694 majority from the 2019 general election.
Keiron McGill
The Reform UK candidate, Keiron McGill, is attempting to tap into an older reservoir of support for Brexit-supporting politics in Castle Point. Ukip came second in the Essex constituency in 2015, with 20,400 votes.
He is attempting to unseat the Conservative’s Rebecca Harris, who represents a constituency that has long been a target of the various parties led by Farage.
Sean Matthews
A former Metropolitan police officer, Sean Matthews is attempting to overturn the 28,868 majority of the health secretary, Victoria Atkins, in Louth and Horncastle, in Lincolnshire.
While the seat is at the outer range of Reform’s chances, a YouGov MRP poll last month had the party winning in the constituency, where 69% voted to leave the European Union in the Brexit referendum.
Stephen Conlay
MRP polls have Conlay on course to take the long-held Conservative seat of Basildon and Billericay. Basildon became synonymous with the Conservative party of the early-80s as a result of “Basildon man”, a supposed voter type from working-class origins who was lured by Thatcherite ideals.
A win by Conlay, a semi-retired retail and property businessman, would deprive the Conservative party chair, Richard Holden, of a seat and could prove to be one of the biggest upsets of the night.
