By-elections are always tough for a sitting government. Voters use them to take out their frustrations on politicians who haven’t delivered what they promised, without the risk of their vote having national consequences. Opposition parties can promise the world, knowing that later down the line if they don’t deliver, they can blame it on a lack of funding from the party in power.
While many see the upcoming Runcorn by-election as Sir Keir Starmer’s first major test in government, he’s not the only politician with a point to prove. Nigel Farage is attempting to persuade voters that Reform UK is a credible electoral force.
The party has grown in popularity in the past year – but it has also lurched from scandal to scandal. From last month’s explosive row with MP Rupert Lowe that saw him ousted over allegations he harassed female staff, to the party’s failure to properly vet its candidates at last year’s general election, it has been far from plain sailing.
But in selecting Sarah Pochin, Reform’s candidate for Runcorn and Helsby, Mr Farage is attempting to draw a line under the past.
Unlike Labour’s candidate, Karen Shore, who appears to be a safe-bet Starmer loyalist, Reform have taken more of a risk with Ms Pochin.
A self-professed “clean candidate”, she represents Mr Farage’s attempt to rebrand and sanitise the party.
Seeming to be the antithesis of the outspoken Lee Anderson – dubbed “30p Lee” for claiming low-income families they could cook meals for 30p when he was a Tory MP – or James McMurdock, who was locked up as a teenager for repeatedly kicking his ex-girlfriend, Ms Pochin is warm, likeable and, in what makes a change for Reform’s current MP lineup, female.
With freshly blow-dried hair, she tells The Independent about how, when time permits, she likes to take an hour out in the morning to do pilates to unwind.
On most topics, she is slick and selective with her language, careful not to say anything that could cause controversy. A far cry from many of the candidates Reform put up at the general election.
But when pressed on the issues that are fundamental to Reform UK, there is little separating Ms Pochin from the party’s other MPs. While she was previously pictured at a “Refugees Welcome” event, she is quick to clarify that this courtesy only extends to certain asylum seekers. Those who have crossed the channel, she suggests, are all “illegal economic migrants”. There is no acknowledgment that many of those people have been forced into impossible choices by circumstances beyond their control.
When we’re on this topic, she is less cautious, using dog whistle language to warn that illegal migrants are “flooding our country”.
Asked by The Independent if she sees there to be a difference between someone coming to the UK on the Ukraine refugee scheme, and someone crossing the channel who has fled war in the Middle East, she doesn’t hesitate.
“For a start, they could stop in France, or they could have stopped in any other country in Europe before that,” she says.
“Why should we have someone who’s come in illegally? Being a refugee is one thing, but these people are purposely coming to Britain. Why are they coming into Britain? Because of our welfare state. They know that when they arrive here, they get a house, they get money, you know, they get food. And then, a lot of them, are probably disappearing,” Ms Pochin continues.
“These people,” she claims, represent an entirely different scenario to those fleeing the Ukraine war.
Strikingly, though, Ms Pochin only addressed the issue of migration when asked. Had I not brought it up, I’m unsure if we would have discussed it at all. Instead, she is laser-focused on local issues. A new leisure centre. A new cinema. She also drops in the price of the toll road that takes constituents from Runcorn town centre to Widnes, an intentional indication that she is aware of the day-to-day issues facing her prospective constituents. Mr Farage’s attempt to persuade people that Reform is more than a one-issue party has begun.
But in order for him to truly persuade voters that he has cleaned up his party, he and his candidates must walk the walk. The public’s ability to take them seriously as an electoral proposition hinges upon their ability to be a respectable option – rather than just saying they are.
So far in the local election campaign, one candidate was found to have called for the hanging of Sir Chris Whitty and defended a golli*** toy she owned as “very cute”, while another was accused of racism after taking to social media to accuse black drivers of tailgating on the M1.
While Sarah Pochin is yet to have found herself in hot water of that magnitude, she hasn’t avoided controversy entirely. Last week, it was revealed that she was previously reprimanded for using her status as a magistrate to influence colleagues.
She also historically expressed support for means-testing the winter fuel payment, a position which is at odds with Mr Farage and Reform’s fervent opposition to Labour’s decision to withdraw it from millions of pensioners.
While neither of these difficulties have been enough to significantly damage her campaign, it speaks volumes that even Reform’s cleanest candidate has failed to avoid controversy entirely.
When it comes to the local elections, it is clear Mr Farage’s attempt to rebrand the party has failed. Whether Sarah Pochin will be able to persuade voters what she offers is truly different, remains to be seen.
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