Nigel Farage is riding high in the polls. And the last few months his party has had a slew of political defections from the Conservatives – with more expected to follow. He’s also fresh from Davos, the meeting of the World Economic Forum that he once railed against as a jolly for the global elites.
But where does all this leave Farage and Reform’s renegade image? Peter Walker is the Guardian’s senior political correspondent and says some Reform voters would like the defections to stop. “There is a worry if you get to the election and there’s loads of former Tories, then Keir Starmer can go, ‘look at them, they’re just another version of the Tories’.”
And, hears Nosheen Iqbal, the defections in some way have been good news for Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives – inspiring them to fight harder for voters. “They’re now in a fight to the death and they’re quite relishing it. They’re quite up for it. They now know where they are and I think they quite like that.”
Photograph: @Nigel_Farage
