The May 2026 UK local elections spelled disaster for Labour and the Conservatives, with both parties losing hundreds of council seats across 136 councils.
Most of these were lost to Reform UK, the party co-founded by Nigel Farage, which he has led since 2024. They ended up with a staggering gain of 1,452 seats, bringing 14 more councils across the country under the party’s control.
Under the leadership of Farage, the party has become a real electoral force to be reckoned with, shoring up support from disaffected voters from most mainstream parties.
Start your trial of MoneyWeek today
Get unparalleled financial insight, analysis and expert opinion you can profit from.
Start your trial
Sign up for MoneyWeek’s free twice-daily newsletter.
Join more than 165,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with latest financial news, insights and expert analysis to help you understand what really matters when it comes to your finances.
Join more than 165,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with latest financial news, insights and expert analysis to help you understand what really matters when it comes to your finances.
Reform has led in the opinion polls since April 2025, with polling by YouGov on 5 May finding that around 25% of the electorate would vote for the party if an election was called today.
Latest Videos FromMoneyWeek
The latest set of elections have shown that Reform is capable of translating dismay with the government into victory on a local level. But the question remains whether the party can turn local victory into national power during a general election campaign.
If they are able to manage this, it will have consequences on your money. We look at what the party has said it would do if brought into power.
Would Reform cut income tax?
In previous statements about the party’s economic policy, spokespeople for Reform UK have alluded to a sweeping set of tax cuts should they get elected.
In the party’s 2024 manifesto, they campaigned on an economic package that included cutting £150 billion of expenditure while funding £50 billion of other government spending.
One of these policies was a promise to raise the threshold at which you start paying income tax from £12,570 to £20,000, a move that the IFS calculated could cost around £40 billion.
However, in November 2025 the party distanced themselves from this policy and many more pledges stated in their 2024 manifesto, revising their policy platform after criticism that it was unrealistic.
Setting out Reform’s economic vision for the UK in November 2025, Farage said that while he would still like a £20,000 personal allowance threshold, this was no longer a promise.
Instead, he committed his party to only “relatively modest” tax cuts.
He said: “We want to cut taxes, of course we do, but we understand substantial tax cuts given the dire state of debt and our finances are not realistic at this current moment in time."
When asked for clarification on what that meant, he later said: “We will raise thresholds. I cannot tell you what the state of the economy will be as the next general election approaches.”
That comment means that an income tax cut as steep as the one previously pledged is unlikely if Reform wins the next general election.
Inheritance tax
Before Reform’s November economic policy reset, the party pledged to abolish inheritance tax entirely.
Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice has now changed the language around this policy, saying the party still plans to get rid of the tax, but that it was an “ambition” rather than a promise.
The exception to this is when inheritance tax is due from family farms. Reform UK says it is still their policy that they will remove inheritance tax from them even after the November speech.
How much do you know about inheritance tax? Test yourself in our quiz.
Pensions
Like all major political parties, Farage has said the party will stand by the state pension triple lock, a mechanism that means the state pension increases each year by the highest of either earnings growth, inflation, or a flat 2.5%.
The triple lock is one of the biggest pressures on the public finances thanks to its immense cost, which is expected to reach £15.5 billion a year by 2030.
Many groups have warned that the triple lock is unsustainable as the cost of the state pension will only increase with an ageing population.
Speculation had been mounting that Reform would break away from the crowd and come out against the triple lock, but Farage clarified in April that the party will keep it.
In a press conference on 2 April, he acknowledged the high cost of the triple lock, and said its continuation would be funded through “the biggest cuts to the benefits bill ever seen in the history of this country”.
Robert Jenrick, Reform’s economic spokesperson, said he had found ways to save £40 billion from cuts to welfare, but details of this have not yet been released.
Energy bills
One of Reform’s major policies is to entirely scrap plans for net zero. Under current plans, the government is committed to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
That means that polluting forms of energy generation are being phased out and being replaced with more environmentally friendly ones like solar and wind.
Critics of net zero say the regime is pushing up household energy bills as customers have to pay levies to help fund the energy transition.
Reform says that if they are elected they will scrap the 2050 net zero target, which they claim will help cut energy bills.
They say: “Reform UK will prioritise energy security, expand domestic energy production, and scrap policies that drive bills higher while making Britain more dependent on foreign energy.”
But whether scrapping net zero will lead to lower bills in the long-term has been questioned, as critics say that the best way to reduce reliance on imported energy is to produce renewable energy in the UK.
Crypto
Unlike any other major political party in the UK, Reform is a strong proponent of cryptocurrencies, saying it wants to “[make] Britain a Crypto Hub.”
The party’s “Cryptoassets and Digital Finance Bill”, a draft piece of legislation published last year, sets out Reform’s crypto policy.
The draft bill says, among other things, Reform will introduce a single 10% capital gains tax on crypto, a sovereign Bitcoin reserve fund managed by the Treasury, and permit the paying of taxes in cryptocurrency.
Immigration
While Reform UK’s economic platform is mostly made up of broad principles rather than concrete policies, their immigration policies have much more detail available.
Reform has pledged to entirely stop all refugees coming into the UK via small boats.
While former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s government had struggled to do this, Reform says they will succeed by leaving the European Court of Human Rights, which will give them more power to deport migrants who reach the UK outside of legal routes.
Reform said it will also take on a large-scale programme to “identify, detain, and deport illegal migrants in the UK”.
Where will the money come from?
The policies pledged by Reform UK involve a lot of tax cuts or additional spending. That raises the question of where the money will come from.
When out of government it is very easy to say that your party would cut taxes, but doing it in practice is far harder.
So far, Reform has said it will make cuts to welfare spending. As mentioned earlier, Jenrick says he has found £40 billion of spending cuts, though it has not been made public where these might come from.
The party also said it will make deep cuts to the foreign aid budget, capping it at £1 billion a year. That is around 90% less than the current foreign aid budget. Reform says such a cut would save around £30 billion over the course of a five-year parliament.
Reform has pledged to make major cuts to the civil service, announcing plans in December 2025 to cut around 68,500 jobs if the party wins. They say this will bring about savings of around £5.2 billion a year.
If Reform wins the next general election, Robert Jenrick is set to become the chancellor of the exchequer, in charge of the economy.
Jenrick was a member of the Conservatives until January 2026. He held the position of shadow justice secretary under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership of the party and had previously been immigration minister from 2022 to 2023 during Rishi Sunak’s government.
In January he was sacked by Badenoch after it came to light that he had held discussions with Farage about the terms of a possible defection to Reform UK.
He defected to Reform later that day and was officially appointed as Reform UK’s economic spokesperson on 17 February.
While no concrete economic plan or manifesto has been drawn up yet, Jenrick will be one of the key figures (along with Farage and deputy leader Richard Tice) involved when it is being made.
