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    Nigel Farage, Right-Wing Disrupter, Elected to Parliament for the First Time

    Nigel Farage, a supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, a driving force behind Brexit and Britain’s best known political disrupter, was elected to Parliament for the first time.The new insurgent party he leads — Reform U.K. — was projected in the national exit poll to have captured four seats, more than many analysts had predicted, in an electoral system that typically punishes small parties. His party has been buoyed by an anti-immigration platform.Mr. Farage won by a large margin in Clacton, a faded seaside town, where pre-election opinion surveys had suggested he had a strong chance of winning. He had tried and failed seven times before to be elected to Parliament.“The establishment are terrified, the Conservatives are terrified,” Mr. Farage declared gleefully in a speech last month, referring to the governing party. Britain was “a broken nation,” he added, attacking targets ranging from asylum seekers to the BBC.A polarizing, pugilistic figure and a highly skilled communicator, Mr. Farage, 60, helped the Conservatives to a landslide victory in the last general election by not running candidates from his Brexit Party in many key areas.This election, his plan was different: to destroy the Tories by poaching much of their vote, then replace — or take over — the party’s remnants. Early in the campaign, after a journalist asked if he wanted to merge his upstart party with the Conservatives, he replied: “More like a takeover, dear boy.”Reform U.K. has come under fierce criticism in recent weeks after a number of its candidates were found to have made inflammatory statements. One said that Britain should have remained neutral in the fight against the Nazis; another used antisemitic tropes by claiming that Jewish groups were “agitating for the mass import into England of Muslims.”The party has blamed some of its problems on growing pains, has dropped some candidates and has threatened to take legal action against a private company it paid to vet candidates.Last week, an undercover investigation by Britain’s Channel 4 News secretly filmed Reform campaigners in Clacton using racist and homophobic language, with one using a slur to describe the prime minister, Rishi Sunak.But for two decades he has shaped Britain’s political conversation, driving the Brexit cause, outflanking the Tories and pushing them further right. More

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    This English Naval City Is a Bellwether Seat. How Do Voters Feel?

    As voters cast their ballots in a pivotal election, many in the southern English city of Portsmouth expressed disillusionment over what they see as national and local decline.Voters streamed into a polling station in Portsmouth, a city nestled along England’s southern coast that is known for its naval base and historic dockyard, on Thursday morning as ballot workers greeted them warmly.Older couples walked hand in hand into the local church, which had been temporarily fitted out with ballot boxes, alongside parents with children in strollers, and young adults rushing in on the way to work.One by one, they weighed in on the future of the nation in a vote that polls suggested could end 14 years of Conservative-led government.“I just want to see change,” said Sam Argha, 36, who was outside the polling station on Thursday morning. “I just really want to see us do something differently.”Many people in the city expressed a similar desire for a new start at a moment of intense national uncertainty. Polls have predicted that the election could be a major turning point, with the center-left Labour Party expected to unseat the right-wing Conservative Party, possibly with a crushing landslide.Portsmouth North is considered a bellwether seat — the area has voted for the winning political party in every general election since 1974.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More