I have been looking at the polls and they are showing stuff that I haven’t seen since the early to mid 1980’s which is the really good showing of a new party. In the case of the 1980’s the new party was the original iteration of the Social Democratic Party whereas in 2025 it’s Reform. Reform have outperformed nearly every alternative party that has existed since the original SDP imploded in the late 1980’s to early 1990’s. Reform have even eclipsed the United Kingdom Independence Party a party that forced, by way of electoral threat to the Tories, former Prime Minister David Cameron to allow a referendum on membership of the European Union. In terms of support Reform have even more support than did the Brexit Party, Reform’s previous iteration.
The massive poll rises for Reform are in my view coming from a place very different from the rise in support for the SDP in the 1980’s. Back then support for the SDP was coming from those who were horrified at the far left takeover of the Labour Party but who were also worried that the Thatcher government was too extreme in the opposite political direction. Many of these voters may not have been inclined to choose to support the Liberal Party because of their association with propping up Labour in the 1970’s during the Lib Lab Pact and because of the various scandals such as the Thorpe Affair that had tarnished the public image of the Liberals. The SDP became a home for those who couldn’t, for various reasons, vote for the Liberals and neither could they vote for Tory or Labour Party’s that they saw as ‘extremist’ in some ways.
This is a very different scenario from what’s happening in British politics today. The support for Reform is not coming from those who want a slightly different flavour of mainstream party, which is where I recall support for the SDP coming from. Reform’s support is coming from an increasing number of people who are pissed off with ALL the establishment parties, Labour, Tory, LibDem and the nationalist parties of Scotland and Wales. This is because all of the Establishment parties are to some degree responsible for many of the ills that afflict Britain today. All of the Establishment parties were responsible for Britain’s migration disaster and the economic problems along with the social and legal problems that Establishment party meddling has created. After all if you want strong border control, the removal of the burdensome and troublesome foreign born or those more loyal to ideologies such as Islam than they are Britain or freedom of speech then the last people that are going to be trusted by the electorate to deliver these things are the Establishment parties. Voters tried that when they voted Tory for election after election. On each electoral contest the Tories said they would deal with migration, deal with crime and grow the economy. Not only have they failed to keep these promises made to the electorate but many of the Tories policies have made these problems much worse than they were in 2010 when the Tory Lib Dem Coalition was formed.
If support for the SDP back in the eighties was ‘a plague on both your houses’ then support for Reform is an expression of ‘a plague on ALL your houses’. This is because every mainstream party has created the problems that we all have today. Reform is being seen as a last throw of the electoral dice by many Britons, a last chance for Britons to elect a government for the majority of the British people and not one that merely acts in the interests of the ideology of Islam or open borders fanatics or the metropolitan ‘they/thems’.
Another major difference between the SDP of the 80’s and the Reform Party of today is policy or rather in the case of Reform the lack of it. The SDP back in the day did have fully thought out policies that they could present to the electorate whereas Reform have little more than vibes as their policy presentation is virtually non-existent. What the big support for Reform despite a dearth of detailed policy may be showing is just how pissed off Britons are with their political classes. They are willing to support Reform, despite this party’s issues because they see them as the only party that stands for them.
I find the lack of detailed policy plans by Reform lamentable but this lack of detail might be down to Reform not being able to come to any detailed policy conclusions but it also might be a clever ruse. Labour have been so bad that nobody really knows how awful things might be when it comes to the time of the next General Election in 2029. Setting out detailed policy when things are in so much of a political, economic and social flux might handcuff Reform to policies that might be later on seen to be unworkable. A detailed policy plan might also give the Establishment parties and their allies in the mainstream media ammunition to use against Reform. Reform leadership may have calculated that it’s better to be vague about policy now and let the enemy expend their energies screaming ‘racist’, ‘fascist’ or any of the other numerous empty snarl words that the Establishment use at Reform whilst keeping their political powder dry for when it is really needed which will be at General Election time?
At present we do not have much of an idea whether Reform’s current ‘policy light’ situation is due to incompetence or internal party division or whether it is a genius tactical idea. However what we do know is that Reform are being favoured in polls because the majority of people in the UK have been let down by the mainstream parties. Not being Labour or Tory or Lib Dem or Green/Communist or Celtic nationalist socialist, is starting to be a major selling point for Reform and that may carry them for a fair distance politically until nearer to the next General Election. What happens then is anyone’s guess but if things get as bad socially, politically and economically as I expect them to get for Britons then, if elected with a majority to the House of Commons, Reform are going to have to come up with policies that will extract Britain and Britons from the mess that Reform are almost certainly to inherit because of the national mismanagement by the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems .