Wow. It's happened.

A seismic moment in British politics

Matt Goodwin

Jan 24

It’s happened.

For the first time in history, Nigel Farage and Reform are number one in the polls.

Not joint top with another political party.

Not number one in local elections.

Not number one in polls for an election to the European Parliament.

No.

Number one in a national poll ahead of the next general election.

It is a truly seismic moment —a watershed—not only in Nigel Farage’s political career but in British politics.

As I’ve both predicted and written about for some time, right here on this Substack, what we are witnessing in real time is the ongoing ‘realignment’ or reconfiguration of the traditional two party system.

Something's happening out there

An ‘inflection point’, in which Nigel Farage’s self-anointed People’s Army is not only bearing down on the established Uniparty but is starting to replace it.

And how is it doing so?

By rallying millions of hardworking, tax paying Brits who are utterly frustrated and fed-up with the elite consensus that has been imposed on them, top down, for much of the last thirty years.

Mass immigration. Broken borders. Islamism. Woke ideology. The small boats. A London-centric economy. A visibly failing state policy of multiculturalism.

And now, as we’ve been reminded in recent weeks, a staggeringly incompetent state.

A government, a political class, a state bureaucracy which tells us to trust the establishment but which, at the very same time, have overseen the horrific failures on the rape gangs and repeatedly failed to stop the hideous and horrific murder of our children in Southport.

And what makes all this even worse is how, even today, the state and the government refuse to tell us the truth about the rape gangs by holding a national inquiry, refuse to fix our broken borders, and refuse to be open and honest with us about what really happened in Southport.

I used to think politics was about Left versus Right. But increasingly I think it’s about the Truth versus Lies.

And you know what?

I actually think this is only the start of a major uprising in British politics, one that will increasingly see Reform pull away from the Uniparty.

Why?

Because what this opinion poll and others reflect is how we are now living in a very different political system from the one that we had in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

The old tribal allegiances that used to keep the people bound to the old parties are gone —they’ve withered away.

In their place has arisen a system, a political marketplace, that has become highly volatile, fluid, chaotic, and unpredictable.

A place where cultural issues like immigration, identity, borders and belonging matter just as much to voters as taxes, public services and the economy.

And a place where in just five years we have gone from a massive Conservative Party majority under Boris Johnson to a massive Labour majority under Keir Starmer.

So, to all those people who say Nigel Farage and Reform could never replicate what Labour achieved in the early twentieth century, by fully replacing the Liberals, or what the Reform party of Canada achieved in the early 1990s, by completely reshaping the two party system, I say ‘why not?’

The issues are there. The distrust in the establishment and legacy media is there. The collapse of confidence in the state is there. The sense of existential crisis and hopelessness is there. The economic collapse and looming recession is there. The charismatic leader is there. The proof of concept from Donald Trump to Georgia Meloni is there. The electoral coalition for such a people’s rebellion is there.

And now, as the national opinion polls are increasingly making clear, the support out there in the country is there, too.

So put on your seatbelt Britain because I have a sense that things are about to get very interesting indeed.

And as usual, this Substack was once again well ahead of the curve …

© 2025 Matt Goodwin