The Green Party is already attracting the votes of people who previously backed Reform UK, their newest MP has said, insisting that the eco-populist movement has something to offer for those who once supported Nigel Farage.
Hannah Spencer, who stormed to victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election earlier this year, told The Independent that the Greens are “now the option for people who are fed up of Labour, who are worried about Reform, or who actually have tried Reform.”
The 34-year-old claims that public trust in Reform UK has dwindled since the insurgent party took more than 4 million votes at the 2024 general election, and that the Green Party – which has seen its membership soar to 225,000 since Zack Polanski took over as leader – represents a viable alternative to disgruntled voters.
Her conclusions are supported by elections expert Lord Hayward, who told The Independent that he has seen a number of voters switch from Reform to the Greens as a result of an increasing “disenchantment with politics”.
Ms Spencer told The Independent: “Reform, in a really sophisticated way, targeted a lot of exhausted and tired people and promised them stuff that they could never deliver. And so now people are realising ‘hang on a sec, what Reform was selling us just is a lot of nonsense’.
“So they’re now looking at another opportunity to have change in this country, and it is the Greens.”
Pressed on whether the Greens think they can take votes from Reform UK, Ms Spencer said: “Yes, 100 per cent… A lot of my friends and colleagues and people who are really close in my life very openly support Reform.
“In the last 12 months or so, I’m finding they’re asking me questions. What they might have thought about Reform, it’s all just disappeared into thin air.
“The people I know that have supported Reform, I’m never there to convince someone or change their minds, we just have really good conversations and they’re now coming and seeing what we’re offering.”
She added: “People really trusted Reform. People thought that they were challenging the establishment, and now they have found out they are the establishment. So they’re looking at us and deciding that actually we’re the ones who they’re going to vote for.”
It comes despite the two parties having very different political positions, with the Greens wanting to implement a more “humane” approach to immigration and ultimately see a “world without borders”, while Reform UK has proposed mass deportations to crack down on the issue.
Tory peer and pollster Lord Hayward added there is “no question” that some voters would consider switching from Reform to the Greens.
“Anecdotally I am hearing stories of people moving from one to the other. And it’s logical, because what you’ve got is a large number of people who are pissed off,” he said.
“They are basically fed up with politicians. And the ‘fed up party’, if you go back two or four years, was the Liberal Democrats. They then moved to the Reform Party. But they’ve now got another option, which is the Green Party.”
He added: “There’s a general disenchantment with politics. So people are looking to register that disenchantment with different people. And currently, the flavour of the month is with the Greens.”
Lord Hayward referenced a Kent County Council by-election that took place earlier this month, which saw the Greens take the seat from Reform after the serving councillor was jailed.
“That was a very safe Reform seat, which went with a clear majority to the Greens. My expectation is that some of that rise of the Greens was people making a direct switch from Reform”, the pollster said.
It comes as Reform UK appears to be suffering a significant drop in popularity, with fresh polling from this week showing the party’s support has slumped by five points.
The More in Common poll, released on Wednesday, shows Nigel Farage’s party on 25 per cent, while the Tories – up by three points – are edging closer to Reform on 22 per cent.
The eight-point swing has left Mr Farage’s party with its lowest share in a More in Common poll since April last year.
Speaking about her victory in Gorton and Denton – which saw the Greens overturn Labour’s majority and snatch the safe seat – Ms Spencer said her party won because they offered voters a “political reset”, prioritising hope over division to “push politics in a different and better direction”.
“For a lot of people, it was the chance to do something completely different”, she said.
Ms Spencer claims the moment she realised Reform UK had lost the by-election – and that she had won – was when, during political interviews overnight, the party’s “language changed from describing people as Muslims to calling them Islamists”.
She added: “I knew that Reform knew that they had lost, because of that carefully planned shift in controlling and changing the narrative. And that was the bit where I was like, I know that Reform know they’ve lost.”
In the hours after polls closed in the by-election, election observer group Democracy Volunteers said it had witnessed “concerningly high levels” of family voting – an illegal practice whereby a person enters a polling booth with someone else or otherwise directs their vote.
Mr Farage claimed the election result was a “victory for sectarian voting and cheating” after his candidate Matt Goodwin came in second place behind Ms Spencer.
But the Green MP took aim at the allegations – which were later dismissed by the police – saying they were “really dangerous”.
“There’s always someone to blame for something when something doesn’t go the way that someone wants”, she said.
“It was really disappointing, because I myself was in and out of different polling stations during the day, just saying hi to the polling staff and asking if everything was all right. And not once did anybody raise anything with me.
“Not once did this group raise anything with anyone so something could be done about it. I welcome any checks or investigations into how our democracy is being run. But I felt in my gut that it was just really unfair.”
She added: “It’s just really sad, because it’s just that further attack on a group of people who are literally just trying to live a safe and peaceful life.”
A Reform UK spokesperson said: “Reform isn’t in government, so we haven’t even begun delivering the policies that put British people first. If Hannah wants to pretend our voters are flocking to the open-borders, drug-legalising, tax-hiking Greens, she’s welcome to.”
