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Reform UK

right-wing populist political party

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ104721252 ↗
Source-derived summary

Reform UK, also known as the Reform Party or simply Reform, is a right-wing populist and far-right political party in the United Kingdom. It has eight members of Parliament in the House of Commons, two members of the London Assembly, thirty-three members of the Senedd, seventeen members of the Scottish Parliament, two police and crime commissioners, and controls twenty-six local councils. It is to the right of the Conservative Party. Nigel Farage has been leader of Reform UK since June 2024.

The party was co-founded by Farage and Catherine Blaiklock in 2018 as the Brexit Party, advocating a no-deal Brexit; it won the most seats at the 2019 European Parliament election in the UK. The UK withdrew from the European Union in January 2020, and later in the same year the COVID-19 pandemic began in the UK. The Conservative government imposed a series of national lockdowns and Farage focused on anti-lockdown campaigning. The party was renamed Reform UK in January 2021. Farage stepped down as leader in March 2021 and was succeeded by Richard Tice.

Classified as part of the radical right, since 2022, the party has campaigned on a broader platform, pledging to reduce taxation, limit immigration, oppose net-zero emissions policies and substantially reduce public spending. In March 2024, Lee Anderson, who was elected in 2019 as a Conservative MP, defected to Reform UK, becoming its first MP. In June 2024, Farage resumed the leadership. The party won five seats at the 2024 general election, the first time it had elected MPs.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Reform UK” as right-wing populist political party. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Reform, right-wing and populist.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2024, 2018, 2019, 2020—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2019-01-20. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Reform, right-wing and populist providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Reform UK”, the useful work is to connect “right-wing populist political party” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q104721252. VIAF identifies the subject as 5705173731292011890000. The Library of Congress control number is no2024126112. 1 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2024, 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Reform UK”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Reform UK primary sources, Reform UK archive and Reform research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Reform UK”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Reform UK” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.