Reform’s crushing defeat in the Gorton and Denton by-election is just the latest sign that the wheels are starting to fall off the Nigel Farage project.
A campaign which began with Reform as firm favourites, ended with voters in the Manchester constituency roundly rejecting the politics of hate represented by its candidate Matt Goodwin.
In the wake of the result Farage and Goodwin took to Twitter to accuse their opponents of “cheating” and “sectarianism”.
However, as I told the Byline Podcast this morning, the only “sectarian” politics came from Reform itself.
By spending its entire campaign warning about the UK’s “Christian heritage” being under threat, while proposing a visa ban on predominantly Muslim countries, Farage’s party showed how the only real “sectarianism” is now coming from the right.
Their reaction this morning only confirmed this.
After being defeated by a white woman representing a party led by a Jewish man, Reform have instead sought to blame their defeat on Muslims.
It is this divisive and hateful form of politics, rather than anything to do with “family voting” or “sectarianism” that really lays behind Reform’s defeat.
Watch my full discussion of the result with Adrian Goldberg and the Byline Podcast above.
