Yep, and you missed possibly the most significant one, which is the defection of scores of left-wing Liberals to Labour in the 1920s!
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Not that they were a formal party as such, but they were a significant political force
sep 2, 2025, 10:40 am ā¢ 5 0 ā¢ view
Yeah I was only going with formal parties, but you're right about that. The move of right Liberals to either to Tories or National Liberals (and then the Tories later) is also very important, as of course was the forming of the Liberals themselves from the Whigs, Radicals and Peelites.
sep 2, 2025, 10:48 am ā¢ 3 0 ā¢ view
One thing that makes me slightly more bearish on Reform than most, is that we've had more or less the same 3 main parties at a UK level since the 1880s. Unless Ref can totally replace the Tory vote, there is a real danger for them that the Tories will stick around and deny them 10-15% of the vote
sep 2, 2025, 10:48 am ā¢ 6 0 ā¢ view
My prediction is still that we'll probably see a Canada-style reverse merger at some point
sep 2, 2025, 10:51 am ā¢ 6 0 ā¢ view
I mean, Reform are doing well in the polls at the moment, but by the standards of a main opposition party their polled vote share isn't *that* high, and their vote is too evenly spread for tactical voting on the right to be effective
sep 2, 2025, 10:54 am ā¢ 6 0 ā¢ view
It's feeling less and less likely as time goes on but I think there's still a half decent chance and if it happens Reform falling back to "objectively a strong third" will do so extremely quickly
sep 2, 2025, 11:34 am ā¢ 2 0 ā¢ view
There's still a chance for that, and talking to Reform supporters recently has allowed me to put my finger on why What unites them all is anger, but a general sense of anger at society, the world, just everything. It's less ideology, and more just raw populism. Anger can inflate and deflate quickly
sep 2, 2025, 12:19 pm ā¢ 1 0 ā¢ view
It's easy to see the RW vote swinging behind Reform in Labour-held seats where they're currently 2nd, but Tory-held seats and traditional LabourāTory marginals will be more of a challenge for them
sep 2, 2025, 10:57 am ā¢ 4 0 ā¢ view
There's probably another 20-30 Tory seats in the SE & SW the Libs can grab fairly easily next time. Which leaves about 100 Tory seats where either Lab or Ref are the main challenger. How Ref decides to play that will matter hugely for their success. Farage bottled it in 2019, will he do so again?
sep 2, 2025, 11:19 am ā¢ 2 0 ā¢ view
I can see a situation where he stands down his troops in those seats, and lets the Tories unify the right wing vote. But the issue is that if he does that, he might find it hard to make up the numbers elsewhere in the teeth of a determined centre-left opposition.
sep 2, 2025, 11:32 am ā¢ 2 0 ā¢ view
If the Tories keep 90 seats, and Reform only gets 120, then he's throwing the Tories a lifeline and splitting the right wing haul of seats. Whereas if he doesn't do a pact, he could gain all of those 210 seats for Reform, at the expense of splitting the right vote elsewhere.
sep 2, 2025, 11:32 am ā¢ 1 0 ā¢ view
I'm betting that right now Reform is hoping they can totally absorb the Tory vote, but that isn't going to happen (trust me, I come from a deeply Tory rural village in the SE. Many old school Tories I know would much rather vote Davey than Farage) They will need to deal with 10-15% of Tory holdouts
sep 2, 2025, 11:32 am ā¢ 1 0 ā¢ view
the funny thing is, wasn't the party that invoked this over in Canada literally also called Reform lol
sep 2, 2025, 10:55 am ā¢ 4 0 ā¢ view
Yeah, thatās precisely why Farage picked that name
sep 2, 2025, 11:01 am ā¢ 5 0 ā¢ view
yep there was a handful of other countries that have also had "reform" parties emerge modeled after the Canadian Reform party the ideology behind Canadas original reform party, is what we in canada often call "Manningism" One thing I will point out, the reverse merger wasnt exactly consensual
sep 2, 2025, 11:14 am ā¢ 2 0 ā¢ view
The leader of the PCs decided to put it to party wide referendum Thing is, in Canada, you are not limited to being a member of only one party So Reform supporters began massively buying up PC membership to vote in favour of the merger, basically performing an internal coup
sep 2, 2025, 11:14 am ā¢ 3 0 ā¢ view
Yep, and that's less likely to happen here for a bunch of reasons, hence why we might end up with a permanent split on the right
sep 2, 2025, 11:17 am ā¢ 5 0 ā¢ view
Big difference is that the Tory branding is pretty toxic even at the best of times, and one of Reformās big advantages right now is not having that baggage
sep 2, 2025, 11:18 am ā¢ 2 0 ā¢ view
Once the merger happened, the New merged Conservative party (lead at that point by Harper), began to openly purge every PC era MP and replace them with parachuted in Reform aligned candidates
sep 2, 2025, 11:14 am ā¢ 2 0 ā¢ view
So while a merger in name, it was more of a parasite hollowing out another party so it could wear the name "conservative" and its historical legacy as a facemask to disguise itself Most PC era tory MPs, retired or moved to Provincial level politics instead after they were purged
sep 2, 2025, 11:14 am ā¢ 2 0 ā¢ view
Yep, although the key difference is that support for Canada's Reform party was concentrated in the western provinces, which allowed them to win scores of seats on a relatively low vote share. Reform UK by contrast, has a wider geographic spread and often is in direct competition with the Tories.
sep 2, 2025, 11:00 am ā¢ 6 0 ā¢ view