Nigel Farage owns the immigration issue today, but that could change (Image: Getty)
Farage has momentum, money and a message that cuts through. He’s just launched Reform UK’s manifesto for the Welsh Parliament elections, predicting the contest will “end the premiership of Sir Keir Starmer”. It includes crowd-pleasing pledges such as income tax cuts and new roads, and there’ll be plenty more as the general election edges closer. But we all know what his big vote-winning pitch will be.
Farage owns the issue that dominates British politics: immigration. He’s the only politician who appears serious about stopping the boats, safeguarding our borders and repairing our broken asylum system. And the money is pouring in. Reform UK received more than £5.4million in large donations in the final three months of last year, more than any other party.
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But winning power won’t be easy. Farage will face unprecedented tactical voting from lefties who loathe him. Reform is the party voters are most likely to tactically vote against, polling by More in Common shows.
Another huge threat to Farage is now emerging. And it comes from a direction nobody expected.
For the first time in decades, a Labour home secretary is getting serious about fixing Britain’s immigration system. Her name is Shabana Mahmood and she’s the only serious politician in the entire cabinet.
She’s just back from a trip to Denmark where she studied one of Europe’s strictest asylum regimes at first hand. The Danes have tightened family reunion rules, restricted permanent residence and required migrants to integrate and contribute before gaining access to the full welfare state.
And it’s working. Asylum applications have plunged and immigration is far more tightly controlled.
Danish PM Mette Frederiksen is aiming for “zero asylum” but she’s no right-wing populist. Instead, she’s leader of the centre-left Social Democrats government.
She’s framed this as a left-wing policy, arguing that uncontrolled migration harms working-class communities most of all.
Farage should be terrified. Like most European countries, Denmark has its own populist anti-immigration party, the Danish People’s Party. Support once topped 20%. It’s now collapsed to just 2.6%.
Mahmood is taking radical action and if she succeeds, she could neutralise immigration as a political issue, and with it Farage’s most powerful weapon.
That’s a very big “if” of course. Some of her ideas are already controversial. Reform chairman Zia Yusuf blasted proposals to pay some asylum seeker families up to £40,000 to leave Britain as “a prize for breaking in illegally”.
Mahmood also faces legal limits. She admits Britain cannot deport failed asylum seekers to countries deemed unsafe, including Afghanistan, Eritrea and Sudan, which just happen to be the three biggest sources of asylum claims.
Her biggest challenge will come from inside her own party. As we know, gutless PM Keir Starmer is likely to U-turn at the first whiff of a back bench rebellion. But if she hangs tough and immigration falls, Nigel Farage could suddenly find his chosen political battlefield looking very different.
One thing may save him. Mahmood may be a serious force but comedians like Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband dominate. These serial bunglers could still hand the election to Farage on a plate.
Nigel Farage has just met his match – and nobody saw it coming
For much of the past year, Nigel Farage has presented Reform UK as the political force capable of breaking Britain’s traditional party system. Yet one of the most striking developments of 2026 has come not from another party on the political right, but from the Green Party.
Under its leader Zack Polanski, the Greens have begun competing for voters who might previously have been expected to remain within Labour’s orbit. At the same time, Reform has continued to attract support from voters dissatisfied with Labour and the Conservatives.
The result is a political landscape in which Farage is no longer operating in a simple two-way contest with the established parties.
The Green Party’s victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election in February provided one of the clearest demonstrations of that change. Green candidate Hannah Spencer won 14,980 votes, representing 40.7 per cent of the vote. Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin finished second with 10,578 votes, or 28.7 per cent, while Labour’s candidate received 9,364 votes, or 25.4 per cent.
That result did not establish that the Greens have replaced Reform as Britain’s principal challenger to the major parties. It did, however, demonstrate that the Greens could compete for voters in areas where Reform was also making substantial gains.
And that is where the idea that Farage has “met his match” becomes particularly interesting.
The unexpected challenger
For years, Farage’s political campaigns have been built around issues including Brexit, immigration, national sovereignty, taxation and dissatisfaction with the established political parties.
Reform’s growth has often been interpreted primarily as a challenge to the Conservatives and Labour from the right.
The Greens present a very different type of challenge.
Polanski has attempted to position his party around economic inequality, public services, climate policy, housing and a more left-wing political alternative to Labour.
That means Reform and the Greens can appeal to very different groups of voters while simultaneously benefiting from dissatisfaction with the same established parties.
Gorton and Denton demonstrated precisely how complicated that competition can become.
The constituency had long been associated with Labour. Yet at the by-election, Labour fell to third place, while the Greens won and Reform finished second. The result was particularly significant because turnout was 47.5 per cent, meaning the outcome could not simply be explained by an extremely small electorate participating.
The Greens gained the seat from Labour, with a majority of 4,402 votes.
It was the Green Party’s first parliamentary by-election victory.
Farage’s challenge from the right
Reform’s performance was also substantial.
Goodwin’s 10,578 votes represented a rise of 14.6 percentage points compared with Reform’s share at the 2024 general election.
That meant Reform was not simply an observer watching the Greens advance.
It had established itself as a major competitor in a constituency where Labour had previously been dominant.
The significance of the result was therefore not that one party had suddenly become overwhelmingly dominant.
Instead, it illustrated the fragmentation of Britain’s electorate.
Labour lost support in both directions.
Some voters moved towards the Greens, while others moved towards Reform.
This is an important distinction because it challenges the assumption that every Labour voter dissatisfied with the government will automatically move to the party on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
The evidence from Gorton and Denton suggested that different groups of disillusioned voters could choose radically different alternatives.
Zack Polanski’s political opening
Zack Polanski has sought to build on that opportunity.
His leadership of the Greens has coincided with a period in which the party has attempted to become more prominent nationally rather than remaining primarily a local-government or environmental movement.
Polling has shown that Polanski remains considerably less well known than Farage, but his personal profile has increased.
Ipsos polling conducted in August found that 19 per cent of respondents were favourable towards Polanski, compared with 26 per cent for Farage. The same poll found that 43 per cent said they were clear about what Polanski stood for, compared with 60 per cent for Farage.
Those figures demonstrate both the opportunity and the difficulty facing the Green leader.
He has greater room to increase his national profile, but he starts from a much lower level of recognition than Farage.
That distinction matters.
Farage has spent decades in British political life and has led several political campaigns. Polanski is a much newer figure on the national stage.
Yet the Greens’ electoral progress means the party cannot simply be dismissed as a minor political force.
The Holborn and St Pancras test
The next major test came when Polanski announced that he would contest the Holborn and St Pancras by-election.
The seat was vacated by former prime minister Keir Starmer following his departure from the Commons.
Reuters reported that Polanski saw an opportunity in the London constituency, where the Greens had performed strongly and Labour’s vote share had fallen compared with earlier elections.
The decision immediately increased the national significance of the contest.
Polanski was no longer simply building the Green Party from Westminster headquarters.
He was putting his own political standing on the line.
The seat also provided a fascinating contrast with Gorton and Denton.
In Manchester, the Greens demonstrated that they could win in an area traditionally associated with Labour.
In London, Polanski was attempting to turn his growing national profile into another parliamentary breakthrough.
The outcome would provide useful evidence about whether the Gorton and Denton result represented a specific local realignment or part of a broader Green expansion.
Reform has its own vulnerabilities
While the Greens have been building their profile, Reform has faced challenges of its own.
Recent polling has shown that Farage’s personal ratings have not consistently matched Reform’s party support.
Opinium’s August poll put Reform on 25 per cent, two points behind Labour on 27 per cent. The Conservatives were on 19 per cent, while the Greens were on 12 per cent.
The same poll gave Farage a net approval rating of minus 23, although that represented an improvement from the previous measurement.
A later Opinium poll in September put Farage’s net approval at minus 26, while Polanski was on minus 22.
These figures should not be interpreted as a prediction of an election result.
They do, however, illustrate an important feature of contemporary British politics: party support and personal popularity can move differently.
Farage may have a highly recognisable political brand without being broadly popular among the entire electorate.
The Greens face the opposite problem.
Their leader is less established nationally, but the party has demonstrated an ability to win votes from people who previously supported Labour.
The political space is becoming crowded
The traditional Labour-Conservative contest is no longer enough to explain British politics.
Reform has established itself as a major competitor on the right.
The Greens have expanded their appeal on the left.
The Liberal Democrats continue to hold substantial parliamentary representation and local-government strength.
The Conservatives are attempting to rebuild after their 2024 general-election defeat.
And Labour, despite having won a large Commons majority in 2024, has experienced major electoral challenges since entering government.
That creates a much more complicated political environment for every party.
For Farage, the existence of a strong Green alternative means that attacking Labour alone may not be enough to capture every dissatisfied voter.
A voter unhappy with Labour’s economic or public-service policies may move Green rather than Reform.
Likewise, someone primarily concerned with immigration may move towards Reform rather than the Greens.
The electorate is therefore dividing along several different lines at once.
Gorton and Denton changed the conversation
The significance of Gorton and Denton lies partly in what happened to Labour.
The Greens did not merely finish ahead of Reform.
They won a seat in which Labour fell to third place.
The figures are striking.
Labour’s share fell from 50.8 per cent at the 2024 general election to 25.4 per cent at the by-election. The Green share rose from 13.2 per cent to 40.7 per cent, while Reform increased from 14.1 per cent to 28.7 per cent.
That was a major redistribution of votes.
It also demonstrated that Reform’s rise does not necessarily mean the Greens will be squeezed out of contests involving Labour.
Instead, both challengers can grow simultaneously.
That is potentially more complicated for Labour than a straightforward loss of support to one opposition party.
Two very different political messages
Farage and Polanski represent sharply different political programmes.
Reform has placed immigration, national sovereignty, taxation and government reform near the centre of its political message.
The Greens have focused heavily on climate policy, public services, wealth distribution and social and economic reform.
Their electoral coalitions consequently have important differences.
Yet both leaders have something in common: they are attempting to convince voters that the established political parties no longer adequately represent their interests.
That common element helps explain why both parties have benefited from dissatisfaction with Labour and the Conservatives.
It also means that their success cannot simply be measured against each other.
A Reform gain in one constituency and a Green gain in another may reflect entirely different political dynamics.
Is Farage really facing a rival?
The phrase “met his match” is, ultimately, a headline interpretation rather than an established political fact.
Farage remains one of Britain’s best-known political figures, and Reform remains a major party in national polling.
But the emergence of Polanski and the Greens has complicated the political environment in which Farage operates.
The evidence is particularly visible in constituencies where Labour’s support is weakening.
Instead of voters moving overwhelmingly in one direction, support can fragment between Reform, the Greens, Liberal Democrats and other parties.
That makes Britain’s electoral map harder to predict from traditional political assumptions.
It also means that the next stage of Reform’s development may depend not only on its ability to challenge Labour and the Conservatives, but also on how effectively other parties respond to the voters Reform is targeting.
A new kind of political competition
The most important development may therefore be broader than Farage versus Polanski.
It is the emergence of a multi-party political system in which several parties can challenge different sections of the electorate at the same time.
Gorton and Denton provided an unusually clear example.
Reform surged.
The Greens surged even further.
Labour collapsed from first to third.
And the result demonstrated that political dissatisfaction does not have a single destination.
That is why Polanski’s rise matters even if the Greens do not become the country’s largest party.
The party has demonstrated that it can convert national dissatisfaction into parliamentary representation.
Farage, meanwhile, has demonstrated that Reform can do the same from a very different political direction.
Britain’s political competition is therefore no longer simply about which party can defeat Labour or the Conservatives.
It is increasingly about which parties can persuade voters that they offer the most credible alternative to the political establishment.
Farage has spent years building a movement around that argument.
Polanski is now attempting to build one of his own.
Whether the two ultimately compete for the same voters on a large scale remains uncertain.
But the events of 2026 have already shown that Reform does not have a monopoly on political disruption.
And that may be the most unexpected development of all.