Rural constituencies will be a “massive” target for Reform, Farage’s deputy Richard Tice told POLITICO in an interview. In regional elections in May, the right-wing upstart party seized control of large rural county councils — including in Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Kent — from the Conservatives.
“The rural vote traditionally was a Conservative vote, and if you look at the places where we won control of the county council, it’s a massive rural vote. It’s a very traditional old English vote,” he said. “As we move towards the elections next May, I think that will be the ongoing battleground.”
But Farage’s political opponents are not relinquishing the countryside just yet. The Conservatives are on a drive to win back their lost rural vote. Incumbent Labour MPs are battling to push rural issues up the agenda in parliament. And the Liberal Democrat and Green parties spy an opening too.
“The countryside is being fought over now by four parties in England, and then in Wales and Scotland you could throw in the nationalists as well. It’s a real battleground,” Tim Bonner, chief executive of pressure group the Countryside Alliance, said.
Battle of the wax jackets
Controversial Labour inheritance tax changes, which will hit some farmers, have offered Starmer’s political adversaries an easy opening.
Tractor protests coursed through Whitehall, the center of British power, earlier this year and Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch donned a wax jacket while Farage put on his flat cap to try to seize the agenda.