Nigel Farage has been heckled for what appears to be the latest in a growing series of hostile receptions on the local election campaign trail, this time in the Merseyside town of Formby, where a man interrupted an ITV News interview to tell the Reform leader he was “not welcome here” and to “get out of my town.”
The incident is the most recent in a pattern that has followed Farage around the country in recent months, with hostile confrontations recorded in Scotland, Wales, London and Suffolk. With two weeks to go until the May 7 local elections, the Reform leader is pressing ahead with his campaign in areas where the party hopes to make significant gains – including Sefton council in Merseyside, where Reform is targeting seats.
What happened in Formby
Farage was speaking to ITV News reporter Líse McNally in Formby when the heckling began. As he set out Reform’s hopes for Sefton council, a man in the background called out: “You’re not welcome here.” He continued: “Get out of my town, go back!”
When McNally asked Farage directly why he thought people have such a “hostile reaction” to him, his answer was characteristically defiant.
“Because they’re frightened of change,” he said. “Basically we’ve been Labour or Conservative for over a hundred years, that’s the way British politics has been, change frightens people.”
He went on to claim that the hostility he encounters reflects a wider intolerance from the political left: “There’s a new intolerance from many on the hard left of British politics who think those with different opinions shouldn’t be allowed to exist.”
A pattern of hostile receptions
Formby is the latest in a growing list of locations where Farage has faced public hostility on the campaign trail. He has been heckled in Scotland during the Holyrood campaign, confronted in Wales where multiple Reform candidates have quit citing concerns about the party’s culture, and met with protests in London when Reform launched its local election campaign – an event that attracted comparisons to Jimmy Savile from some protesters. In Suffolk, the protests outside RAF Lakenheath over the Iran war added another layer of tension to his campaign appearances.
Whether the pattern of heckling reflects a genuinely hostile public – or whether it is an organised effort by opponents – Reform has not elaborated on. What is clear is that the scenes have become a recurring feature of the party’s public appearances, generating media coverage that cuts against the image of unstoppable popular momentum Reform spent much of the past year projecting.
The bigger picture ahead of May 7
The Formby incident arrives at a moment when Reform’s polling has softened. The party has fallen to 15% in Scotland – its lowest in over a year – and has lost its outright national lead, now tied at 21% with both the Greens and the Conservatives in the latest Lord Ashcroft poll.
At the same time, Reform is still widely expected to make significant gains in the English local elections on May 7. The party is targeting councils across the north of England, the Midlands and parts of the south, and projections suggest it could gain over 2,000 council seats nationally – a performance that would represent a historic advance for a party that barely existed in local government terms two years ago.
But those projections come with a caveat that the Formby incident illustrates. Reform’s national polling surge has been concentrated in areas where the party’s message about immigration, energy costs and political establishment failure resonates most strongly. In parts of Merseyside – with its Labour political traditions, its tight-knit communities and its very different relationship with the politics of the north of England – the reception is not always warm.
The Greens frame it as hope versus hate
Farage is not the only party leader framing the May 7 elections as a binary choice. Green Party leader Zack Polanski has been equally direct, describing the local elections as being “between the Green Party and Reform” and characterising it as a “straight-up battle between hope and hate.”
That framing – which Polanski deployed at the Green Party’s local election launch – reflects the degree to which the two parties have emerged as the defining forces in the May contest. Labour and the Conservatives are both expected to lose hundreds of seats. The Greens and Reform are both expected to gain. The question of which party emerges as the primary beneficiary of voter anger with the political establishment will help define the shape of British politics heading into the next general election.
Farage’s answer to the heckler in Formby – that those who shout at him are simply “frightened of change” – is a formulation he has used many times before. Whether it rings true to the voters Reform needs in towns like Formby will become clearer on the morning of 8 May.
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