Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me Alan Tolhurst.

This week, we're taking a look at Reform, still riding high in the polls and hoping for big successes

across the UK in May's elections. But having been the insurgent party on the right of British

politics for the past few years, they now, for the first time,

face a threat for that mantle. The launch of former Reform MP Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain Party,

along with former Reform Deputy Leader Ben Habib's Advance UK, both looking to be even more hardline on immigration and cultural issues represent a challenge to Nigel Farage as he seeks to become

the hegemonic force on the right,

but also to appeal to more mainstream voters in the hope of winning a majority the next election.

We'll me to discuss whether reform will distance themselves from the new parties on the right,

or whether their very online base will drag them further towards them,

are Sunder Katwala, Director of the Think Tank, British Future,

Scarlet Maguire, founder of Polsters Merlin Strategies, Rob Ford, Professor of Political Science at the

University of Manchester, and Tom Scottson, political reporter here at Politics Home.

So Tom, starting with you, do you mind just quickly explaining when we talk about these parties

to perhaps to the right of reform? Who are we referring to here? So we're referring to two political

parties. We're referring to Advance UK and Restore Britain. Advanced UK seemed to be the first party

that came onto the scene. They're run by Ben Habib, used to be a former Tory donor,

then a Brexit party MEP, and then later when Nigel Farage left the scene after the 2019 election,

he became the deputy leader. He was quite close to Richard Tice. He was seen as quite an eloquent

communicator on the right. Up until there was a huge fallout,

which is not unusual anyway, particularly in reform, former UKIP circles between Ben Habib and

Najafraj. As soon as Najafaraj, he became leader of Reform UK at the 2024 election campaign,

...