Nigel Farage’s Reform UK set to win 13 seats in shock overperformance

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is set to win more than a dozen Westminster seats in what would be a shock overperformance for the party, according to the exit poll.

The arch-Brexiteer is on course to become the MP for Clacton in Essex, while the party’s Tommy Dudley is set to win Hartlepool from Labour.

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A series of polls in the run-up to the general election suggested Reform could win between two and seven seats, with disgruntled former Tory and Labour voters turning toward the party.

But the official exit poll is pointing toward a shock result, with Reform forecast to end up with 13 members of parliament.

And in the first seats to declare results, Reform pushed the Conservatives into third place behind the Labour Party.

In Blyth and Ashington, Reform won 10,857 votes, behind Labour on 20,030 votes and in front of the Conservatives on 6,121 votes. In Houghton and Sunderland South, shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson won with 18,837 votes, with Reform second on 11,668 – more than twice as many as the Conservatives.

Among the seats expected to turn to Reform are Barnsley North and Barnsley South, Great Yarmouth and Hartlepool.

Robert Lomas, the party’s candidate in Barnsley North, was dropped by Mr Farage for reportedly saying black people should “get off their lazy arses” and stop acting “like savages”. The party said he would sit as an independent if elected.

Reform has been hit by a series of revelations about the online activities of a slew of its would-be MPs, from links to a British fascist leader to suggestions the UK should have remained neutral in the fight against the Nazis and admiration of Adolf Hitler’s “brilliant” ability to inspire action.

Others which are on a knife-edge and could go to Reform include former Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson’s Ashfield – which he won as a Conservative in 2019.

David Bull, Reform’s deputy leader, said that his party was “about to change history”.

Asked about Reform’s issues with candidates accused of racism, he told the BBC that every party had those kinds of issues.

“I think it’s in every party,” he said, adding that the Reform party is new. “We had to literally sprint to get those candidates.

“Anyone who looks at the rise of Reform will see that what we’re doing is breaking political history. I’ve said this before, everyone said that in that Brexit result, you won’t do it, we changed history, we’re about to change history once again.”

Asked which seats he thought Reform, which the exit poll projects to net 13 seats, could win, he listed Clacton, Great Yarmouth, Wellingborough and Boston and Skegness.

Mr Farage has tried and failed to get elected to Parliament seven times in the past, and if polls are correct it may be the eighth time lucky.

The exit poll by Ipsos UK for Sky News, the BBC and ITV News, said Reform UK has a likelihood of 99 per cent-plus that Mr Farage will win the seat in Clacton, Essex.