Nigel Farage has admitted that Reform UK is not yet ready for power, saying his party is only “halfway ready” to govern Britain.
Despite being ahead in polling for months and welcoming several former Tory cabinet ministers into his party, the Reform UK leader said they would not be prepared to run the country yet.
Speaking to Laura Kuenssberg in the BBC’s Reform: Ready to Rule? documentary, Mr Farage was asked about how ready the party was to come to power in the next general election.
“We are halfway towards being ready,” he said.
It comes as recent polling finds that Reform UK’s polling gap has shrunk amid doubts over their readiness for government.
A recent Ipsos poll has found that only a quarter of Britons agree that Reform UK are ready to form the next government, while 58 per cent disagree. This position has slightly worsened from September 2025 when 53 per cent disagreed – though the party still holds an 8-point lead overall.
Mr Farage vowed to start preparing for government at his party conference last year as he announced he was setting up a department for the preparation of government and appointing Zia Yusuf as head of policy.
He said the next national election might come in 2027 rather than 2029, and that the party must be ready for government at any time.
“All I can do is promise that I will give this everything, I will give this absolutely everything that I’ve got,” he said in September. “No one cares more about the state of this country than I do. I am determined to do something about it.”
A Reform UK associated website, under the domain ‘preparingforgovernment’, also declared the party is “set to form the next government” and is “looking for people to help us prepare for that moment”.
The Reform UK leader was also asked by Ms Kuenssberg whether the recent defections from high profile Conservatives, including Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman, had made them the “home for Tories who messed up” and “lost the argument in their own party”.
“Yes, they have lost the argument in their own party,” he admitted. “You are absolutely right, which is why they’re coming to us, and why the centre right of British politics is uniting around reform.”
Meanwhile, the party is attempting to gain another seat in Parliament amid a highly-contested by-election in Gorton and Denton.
Since the resignation of former MP Andrew Gwynne in the seat, speculation has mounted that Reform could win the seat Labour retained with 51 per cent of the vote in 2024.
