Reform's campaign for the British local elections: guest post

Friend of the newsletter Sam Jeffers from WhoTargetsMe has, for his sins, been monitoring the online campaign ahead of today's local elections in Britain.

Reform has taken a fundamentally different approach to this election, working hard to make itself the main character. As Sam summarises:

In 2024, Reform’s digital campaign was narrow, personality-driven and sometimes amateurish. It relied heavily on Nigel Farage, but suffered from relatively unsophisticated execution. What we’re seeing now is something more scalable, mostly thanks to their new money. There’s more content, more localised messaging, broader experimentation, and a campaign organisation beginning to convert attention into organisation and infrastructure.

(I wonder where they got the money from)

Sam has pulled out 4 insights into Reform's campaign, looking at their content, spending, targeting and overall web presence. I am sharing the first of these insights below, and you can then read the rest over on his excellent Substack, which is linked at the end.

But first I had to ask Sam, who lives in Cork - what can we learn from this in Ireland? His answer -

"Keep an eye on the money. If you want to know when right wing populism is hitting the mainstream, it is when the money comes in, and they start to look as polished as everyone else. And of course the bar is lower in Ireland; you need less money to compete, and mainstream party skills and standards - at least on design, messaging and digital - are much easier to match in a smaller country"

Here is an excerpt from his piece:

Reform’s ad content operation has got bigger, and more professional

Everything Reform is creating is better designed than it was in 2024. It’s now properly filmed and lit. It’s more consistently on-brand. And most importantly, there’s much, much more of it. During the 2024 election campaign Reform’s Facebook page ran just 40 different ads and variations. Over the last month, 2,300.

The messenger for their content is also important. Looking back to 2024, Reform’s main party page was the only advertising account until halfway through the campaign, when Nigel Farage decided to stand for Clacton. It then fairly abruptly stopped spending cash and everything switched to Farage’s page - he became the sole messenger, the rising tide to lift all of Reform’s small boats.

In 2026, things have switched back. Reform’s page now outspends Farage’s £10 to 1. Farage has still run some ads, but the messaging has been restricted to the most directly anti-immigration advertising. He’s by far Reform’s most important figure, but he’s no longer carrying the party campaign on his own.

By comparison, the party’s massive increase in content output has allowed the Reform account to run ads focused on every rival - Labour, Tories, Plaid Cymru, Greens - even Independents. Only the Lib Dems have escaped.

Whereas in 2024 they fought mostly on stealing Tory votes, Reform are now campaigning on an area-by-area basis and taking on each specific local rival directly. In short, rather than targeting Lib Dems, they’ve stolen their ads: