Reform UK is on the march - and the most popular party on TikTok. There's just one problem

Sky News

20-07-2025

Reform UK is on the march.
Following a barnstorming performance in this year's local elections, they are now the most successful political party on TikTok, engaging younger audiences.
But most of their 400,000 followers are men.
I was at the local elections launch for Reform in March, looking around for any young women to interview who had come to support the party at its most ambitious rally yet, and I was struggling.
A woman wearing a "let's save Britain" hat walked by, and I asked her to help me.
"Now you say it, there are more men here," she said. But she wasn't worried, adding: "We'll get the women in."
And that probably best sums up Reform's strategy.
When Nigel Farage threw his hat into the ring to become an MP for Reform, midway through the general election campaign, they weren't really thinking about the diversity of their base.
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As a result, they attracted a very specific politician. Fewer than 20% of general election candidates for Reform were women, and the five men elected were all white with a median age of 60.
Polling shows that best, too.
According to YouGov's survey from June 2025, a year on from the election, young women are one of Reform UK's weakest groups, with just 7% supporting Farage's party - half the rate of men in the same age group. The highest support comes from older men, with a considerable amount of over-65s backing Reform - almost 40%.
But the party hoped to change all that at the local elections.
Time to go pro
It was the closing act of Reform's September conference and Farage had his most serious rallying cry: it was time for the party to "professionalise".
In an interview with me last year, Farage admitted "no vetting" had occurred for one of his new MPs, James McMurdock.
Only a couple of months after he arrived in parliament, it was revealed he had been jailed after being convicted of assaulting his then girlfriend in 2006 while drunk outside a nightclub.
McMurdock told me earlier this year: "I would like to do my best to do as little harm to everyone else and at the same time accept that I was a bad person for a moment back then. I'm doing my best to manage the fact that something really regrettable did happen."
He has since suspended himself from the party over allegations about his business affairs. He has denied any wrongdoing.
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Later, two women who worked for another of Reform's original MPs, Rupert Lowe, gave "credible" evidence of bullying or harassment by him and his team, according to a report from a KC hired by the party.
Lowe denies all wrongdoing and says the claims were retaliation after he criticised Farage in an interview with the Daily Mail, describing his then leader's style as "messianic".
The Crown Prosecution Service later said it would not charge Lowe after an investigation. He now sits as an independent MP.
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A breakthrough night
But these issues created an image problem and scuppered plans for getting women to join the party.
So, in the run-up to the local elections, big changes were made.
The first big opportunity presented itself when a by-election was called in Runcorn and Helsby.
The party put up Sarah Pochin as a candidate, and she won a nail-biting race by just six votes. Reform effectively doubled their vote share there compared to the general election - jumping to 38% - and brought its first female MP into parliament.
And in the Lincolnshire mayoral race - where Andrea Jenkyns was up for the role - they won with 42% of the vote.
The council results that night were positive, too, with Reform taking control of 10 local authorities. They brought new recruits into the party - some of whom had never been involved in active politics.
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'The same vibes as Trump'
Catherine Becker is one of them and says motherhood, family, and community is at the heart of Reform's offering. It's attracted her to what she calls Reform's "common sense" policies.
As Reform's parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Highgate in last year's general election, and now a councillor, she also taps into Reform's strategy of hyper-localism - trying to get candidates to talk about local issues of crime, family, and law and order in the community above everything else.
Jess Gill was your quintessential Labour voter: "I'm northern, I'm working class, I'm a woman, based on the current stereotype that would have been the party for me."
But when Sir Keir Starmer knelt for Black Lives Matter, she said that was the end of her love affair with the party, and she switched.
"Women are fed up of men not being real men," she says. "Starmer is a bit of a wimp, where Nigel Farage is a funny guy - he gives the same vibes as Trump in a way."
'Shy Reformers'
But most of Reform's recruits seem to have defected from the Conservative Party, according to the data, and this is where the party sees real opportunity.
Anna McGovern was one of those defectors after the astonishing defeat of the Tories in the general election.
She thinks there may be "shy Reformers" - women who support the party but are unwilling to speak about it publicly.
"You don't see many young women like myself who are publicly saying they support Reform," she says.
"I think many people fear that if they publicly say they support Reform, what their friends might think about them. I've faced that before, where people have made assumptions of my beliefs because I've said I support Reform or more right-wing policies."
But representation isn't their entire strategy. Reform have pivoted to speaking about controversial topics - the sort they think the female voters they're keen to attract may be particularly attuned to.
"Reform are speaking up for women on issues such as transgenderism, defining what a woman is," McGovern says.
And since Reform's original five MPs joined parliament, grooming gangs have been mentioned 159 times in the Commons - compared to the previous 13 years when it was mentioned 88 times, despite the scandal first coming to prominence back in 2011.
But the pitfall of that strategy is where it could risk alienating other communities. Pochin, Reform's first and only female MP, used her first question in parliament to the prime minister to ask if he would ban the burka - something that isn't Reform policy, but which she says was "punchy" to "get the attention to start the debate".
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'What politics is all about'
Alex Philips was the right-hand woman to Farage during the Brexit years. She's still very close to senior officials in Reform and a party member, and tells me these issues present an opportunity.
"An issue in politics is a political opportunity and what democracy is for is actually putting a voice to a representation, to concerns of the public. That's what politics is all about."
Luke Tryl is the executive director of the More In Common public opinion and polling firm, and says the shift since the local elections is targeted and effective.
Reform's newer converts are much more likely to be female, as the party started to realise you can't win a general election without getting the support of effectively half the electorate.
"When we speak to women, particularly older women in focus groups, there is a sense that women's issues have been neglected by the traditional mainstream parties," he says. "Particularly issues around women's safety, and women's concerns aren't taken as seriously as they should be.
"If Reform could show it takes their concerns seriously, they may well consolidate their support."
According to his focus groups, the party's vote share among women aged 18 to 26 shot up in May - jumping from 12% to 21% after the local elections. But the gender divide in right-wing parties is still stark, Tryl says, and representation will remain an uphill battle for a party historically dogged by controversy and clashes.
A Reform UK spokesman told Sky News: "Reform is attracting support across all demographics.
"Our support with women has surged since the general election a year ago, in that time we have seen Sarah Pochin and Andrea Jenkyns elected in senior roles for the party."