Reform UK conference: Are the rebels losing momentum?

Nigel Farage arrived at Reform UK's conference in Birmingham with his eyes on Downing Street. The message emblazoned across the gathering is "the first 100 days," referring to the opening period of a Reform UK government. Farage does not appear to doubt that he will be the man leading it.

He used his speech to attack the newly installed Labour prime minister, Andy Burnham, calling him a "messiah without a mandate." Farage's argument was that only a few tens of thousands of voters in Burnham's northern English home region helped put the Labour politician into Parliament and, from there, into the prime minister's office.

Reform UK's own record, Farage told thousands of supporters in the main hall of the vast exhibition centre, looked different. The party has won more than 2,000 new council seats in two local elections since last year. That result forms the core of his claim that Reform UK has the stronger democratic momentum.

Yet the self-assured performance also sidesteps an awkward reality for the party: its popularity ratings are falling. The conference presents Farage's route to government as a near certainty, even as the party faces pressure over whether its electoral rise can continue.

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Messiah without a mandate