Is Nigel Farage losing his appeal?
4 min read
There are signs that the party leader's shine is fading with potential Reform UK voters.
In Thinks Insight & Strategy's latest focus groups with 2024 Labour voters now considering Reform, conducted on 24-25 June, participants were, for the first time since the general election, equivocal about Nigel Farage.
As researchers, particularly when dealing with qualitative data, we should always be cautious about drawing conclusions from small numbers of conversations. And it is really important to say that these voters were far more positive about Reform than about any other option available to them.
But the tone and energy amongst these participants definitely felt more muted – less convinced that Farage ‘gets it’ and is different from other politicians – than in any focus groups we have conducted with this audience in the past two years.
The ‘anti-politics’ sentiments that have characterised conversations with these voters since the election were still present. The sense that none of the mainstream parties have the interests of ‘ordinary people’ at heart. That they are failing to put British people first. That they simply can’t grip the problems the country faces.
But while, for many, Reform is still the only truly credible alternative to the mainstream parties, the bullishness that the party truly represents a break from the past, and that it will deliver the change they feel the country needs, was more muted than previously.
The change was mainly down to a shift in perceptions of Farage.
In the focus groups, carried out in two constituencies, Pontefract and Thurrock, voters said:
“Yes, probably. Got no choice… I’ll have to give him a chance, but… I’m not a big fan of Nigel Farage.”
“I’m not a fan, to be perfectly honest… the party could do good… let’s give Reform a chance, but yeah, maybe they should have someone else in charge.”
"He got a £5m gift from a donor … I don't know who it was. It was some businessman based over in Thailand or something, and he said it wasn't for anything, and he said … it was for his own security. And, well, you know, come on, man, you can't say that you're a man of the people whilst getting £5m gifts. It's just not on.”
"There's some hoo-ha about him receiving £5m as a gift, and there's been questions asked: 'Well, why were you given that? Was that by influence?' He's kind of answered it by saying it's not really anybody's business but his own, which you kind of think, okay. That kind of makes me think you're hiding something."
“They are losing momentum… they are very Nigel Farage heavy, so the more he slows down, the more that party doesn’t have anything else, leadership-wise.”
Where once Farage was the spear-point of the party’s appeal, embodying its anti-establishment, tell-it-as-it-is, common sense, in our latest focus groups, some respondents seemed less sure that Farage is truly different from other politicians.
Even among those most strongly considering a vote for Reform at the next general election, Farage was beginning to look less like the party’s main selling point, and more of a source of concern. While some felt he is what makes Reform and that the party is completely reliant on him, others went so far as to say he was a liability for Reform, and that it could do better without him.
Interestingly, the sentiment felt stronger amongst participants who are struggling financially.
In the most financially pressured groups, the £5m “gift” was spontaneously raised as a concern. The scale of the gift, and Farage’s assertion (one of several justifications he’s offered) that he needs the sum to feel secure, felt completely divorced from the realities of these voters’ day-to-day lives and financial worries. Few had believed that Farage was really ‘like them,’ but this made it harder than ever to believe he could truly understand their lives.
Amongst the public as a whole, our most recent survey also shows an increasing sense among the UK public that Reform may have peaked. In June 2025, 47 per cent thought Reform was going to go from strength to strength. Now only 36 per cent do so. They are more likely to agree that Reform has peaked and is unlikely to grow its support (48 per cent).
Ben Shimshon is Co-founder and CEO of Thinks Insight & Strategy
