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Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party made a dramatic statement at the general election, winning more than four million votes and taking a significant bite out of support for the Tories.
Yet despite taking 14 per cent of the popular vote, the right-wing party returned with just five seats of the 650 represented in Westminster. That is because under the First Past the Post system, the party came second in 98 seats, many of which are now held by Labour.
Vowing to build a “mass movement” that can mount a generation election challenge in 2029, Mr Farage, who is now MP for Clacton, said: “We’re coming for Labour – be in no doubt about that. “This is just the first step of something that is going to stun all of you,” he added during his victory speech in the early hours of Friday morning.
Below we take a look at the five new Reform MPs, who attended Parliament for the first time on Tuesday.
Nigel Farage
Nigel Farage finally won an MP seat at an election at the eighth attempt, comfortably beating the Conservative candidate Giles Watling with a majority of 8,405.
The 60-year-old declared in his victory speech that his party is “coming for Labour” with 46% of the vote in Clacton-on-Sea, a seaside town in Essex which voted for Mr Farage’s pro-Brexit UKIP party in 2015.
The former commodities trader is Reform UK’s highest-profile figure and the leader of the party. His policies have connected with a section of the electorate who felt forgotten by more conventional politicians. But for others, he is a figure of hate whose views on immigration have seen him accused of being a racist — a charge he has always denied.
His re-emergence at the fore of Reform UK’s electoral push is for many Tories their worst nightmare amid fears he will cost them vital votes. Farage used his two-decade stint in the European Parliament to mock top European officials and drove Britain’s Conservatives to call the 2016 referendum on European Union membership in which Britons narrowly voted to leave.
Not shy of the limelight, Mr Farage went to the Australian jungle last year to take part in ITV’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! for which he was reputedly paid £1.5 million. The son of a stockbroker, he attended fee-paying Dulwich College school and is now in a relationship with right-wing French politician Laure Ferrari after being married twice before.
Richard Tice
Richard Tice was hurtling towards his first general election as party leader until Mr Farage pulled off a dramatic U-turn and stood in Clacton, taking over as the party’s leader.
Mr Tice is now the party’s chairman and the new MP for Boston and Skegness in Lincolnshire. A former member of the Conservative Party, he joined the Brexit Party as its chairman in April 2019 and became an MEP for just six weeks, serving until 2020 when the UK officially left the EU.
The 59 year-old kicked off his campaign by saying he would be pleased if he could help “punish the utter failure of the Conservative Party” - while labelling a Labour win “Starmergeddon”.
Mr Tice is a multi-millionaire and former CEO of the Mayfair-based asset management company Quidnet Capital Partners LLP. Like Mr Farage, he also attended private school boarding at Uppingham School of which he is currently the vice chair.
He previously claimed that the whole government, including the NHS, “could be made more efficient if successful businessmen such as himself were parachuted into the civil service”.
Rupert Lowe
Rupert Lowe is the less well-known of the new Reform MPs, although some football fans may recognise him as the former chair of Southampton FC.
The 66-year-old is active in the political scene, first standing as the Referendum Party candidate for Cotswold in the 1997 general election. He was a Brexit Party MEP for the West Midlands from 2019 to 2020. He then returned to politics last year as Reform UK’s business and agriculture spokesman, finishing in third at the 2024 Kingswood by-election.
His political success finally came last week when he gained 35.3% of the vote for the Great Yarmouth constituency. In his acceptance speech, Mr Lowe said a “flood of change was coming over Britain’s political system” and said he would be looking to buy a property in the area.
In an interview with The Athletic in 2019, Mr Lowe said Southampton fans used to chant about lynching him and said of Brexit: “The best thing we can do is walk away, clean break, then negotiate with Europe on the basis of what’s in their interests and what’s in our interests. That will work fantastically well.”
Also privately educated, he boarded at Radley College before a successful career in the City of London for companies such as Morgan Grenfell, Deutsche Bank and Barings Bank.
Lee Anderson
Former Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson defected to Reform after he was suspended by the Conservatives over racist remarks directed at London mayor Sadiq Khan.
In his victory speech, he called his constituency, Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, the capital of common sense and said he wanted “his country back.”
Mr Anderson’s divisive outspokenness helped him win a show on GB News and gain an accolade from Conservative Home for the Backbencher of the Year in 2022 — on winning the award, was praised for his blunt views on Brexit, Travellers and poverty.
He gained the nickname “30p Lee”, after criticising people who use food banks. He then again criticised nurses who use food banks amid a cost of living crisis, telling Times Radio: “Anybody earning 30-odd grand a year – which most nurses are – using food banks, then they’ve got something wrong with their own finances.”
Mr Anderson worked as a coal miner for 10 years and then volunteered for Citizens Advice for another decade. He entered politics as a councillor for Labour.
James McMurdock
Reform UK unexpectedly gained its fifth and final MP in South Basildon and East Thurrock after James McMurdock beat Labour with a majority of just 98 votes.
The result was so close that counting was suspended at 6am for the process to start again at 2pm on Friday after Labour demanded a third recount.
Mr McMurdock is the youngest elected MP for the party. He grew up in Basildon and previously worked in finance, including roles at Barclays, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. He revealed he got a text from his boss shortly after the result was finally called, saying: “I guess I’ll be getting your resignation letter soon.”
He is married with four children, has never been to Parliament and joined Reform having become disillusioned with the main political parties. Unlike his party colleagues, he grew up in a council house and went to a state school.
