Reform UK has won a fifth seat in parliament after a recount in Basildon South and East Thurrock gave candidate James McMurdock victory over Labour by just 98 votes.
The former Conservative MP for the Essex seat saw his vote collapse from 29,973 in 2019 to 10,159, and although Labour’s candidate Jack Ferguson increased his vote from 10,051 to 12,080 it was not enough to overhaul Mr. McMurdock.
Reform’s leader Nigel Farage said Mr. McMurdock had been a “paper candidate,” a term used in politics for a candidate who is considered to have no real chance of winning.
In a video posted on X, Mr. Farage said: “Our candidate James McMurdock was a paper candidate, drafted in at the last minute, former City boy, and he was absolutely neck and neck with Labour.”
“So I rang him up and said ‘Look, give me the name of your agent, so I can find out what’s happening because they were on the third recount.’ He said, ‘I haven’t got an agent. I’m my own agent,’” added Mr. Farage.
Mr. Farage said: “I said, ‘well, who’s in the hall watching the vote count? And he said, ‘my mum and dad,’ and he’s won. He’s an MP, go on my son!”
Promise to Get Rid of ‘Bad Apples’
But after three of the party’s candidates had their support withdrawn after it emerged they had made offensive or allegedly racist comments, Mr. Farage promised to get rid of “bad apples.”Mr. Farage was heckled by protesters as he walked on stage on Friday at a press conference in central London.
He described Reform’s success as a “political earthquake.”
They won 4,114,287 votes nationwide—more than the Liberal Democrats—but due to the first-past-the-post system won only five seats, compared to 71 for the Lib Dems.
He said a system of proportional representation would have given Reform “nearly 100 seats” and he called the first-past-the-post system “outdated” and “not fit for purpose.”
Reform took second place in 98 constituencies, often pushing the Tories into third place.
Referring to the hecklers, Mr. Farage said, “This is good preparation for the House of Commons I suppose, isn’t it? It’s going to be very lively in there.”
Farage Promises to ‘Professionalise’ Party
Mr. Farage said: “Above all what we’re going to do from today is we’re going to professionalise the party, we’re going to democratise the party, and those few bad apples that have crept in will be gone, will be long gone, and we will never have any of their type back in our organisation.“You have a 100 percent promise on that,” he added.
Mr. Farage denied he would “behave terribly” in the House of Commons, but said he would challenge parliamentary conventions after being elected as an MP for the first time.
With Reform UK having taken away votes from the Conservative Party and the landslide defeat of the Tories, the current leader of the Conservative Party, Rishi Sunak, announced on Friday that he would step down.
Asked whether she will bid for the leadership on Saturday, Ms. Braverman told journalists outside her home: “No announcements. We’ve just got to take our time, we’ve got to figure out what the situation is.”
“It’s been a really bad result. There’s no two ways about it. Hundreds of excellent Tory MPs have been kicked out of office,” she added.
