25 Feb 2026
Last year, as the various political parties were heading off for their annual conferences, we launched our political party scorecard. This identifies, at a glance, where each of the most prominent parties stand on public ownership.
The ratings are based on a) what the political party says about public ownership, b) what it does (or did) when in power and c) the direction of travel - is it sticking with the status quo of privatisation? Or is it open to and moving towards running public services for people not profit? Has it moved away from its 2024 election manifesto?
What has changed
We originally gave Reform UK a tick for water, rail and energy in the scorecard because of the boldness of their manifesto policy (even though not full public ownership, they wanted 50% public ownership and 50% UK pension funds). It looked like a clear direction of travel with headlines to match. (We scored them with a question mark for buses and Royal Mail as they weren’t mentioned in the manifesto.)
Since then:
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Nigel Farage’s speech in November and his reply to a journalist asking about “Nationalisation Nigel” heavily qualifies the party’s support for nationalisation in general. He said he supports “in certain failing industries, a short-term partial nationalisation where the bondholders and shareholders get wiped out”
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Richard Tice spoke in June 2025 about buying back Thames Water for £1, however Reform MPs have failed to sign the We Own It pledge supporting permanent public ownership of Thames Water
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Reform MP Andrew Rosindell has failed to signed the open letter from MPs against Thames Water’s proposal for sewage outside of legal limits until 2040
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Headlines have switched with Farage calling for the boss of South East Water to step down, rather than stating the earlier demand for public ownership
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Richard Tice spoke in February 2026 about the party’s policy for a sovereign wealth fund which would “invest in critical national assets” and “could actually own British Steel”. A sovereign wealth fund is a good idea however this phrasing suggests that there wouldn’t be public ownership outside of British Steel. Water and energy monopolies (including transmission, distribution, supply) would presumably stay privatised
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We have not been able to find any further information about Reform’s policies on rail, buses or Royal Mail but the statements above seem to contradict the party’s earlier manifesto statement about “critical national infrastructure”
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Matt Goodwin, standing for Reform in the by-election in Gorton and Denton, has made no mention of any policy of public ownership
Given the developments above, we are downgrading Reform’s score on water, energy and rail to negative, and changing their score for buses and Royal Mail to negative. The official Reform UK position as stated by Nigel Farage is now for only “short-term nationalisation” in “certain failing industries”, and even in the case of collapsing Thames Water, Reform UK MPs have not been willing to take a stand for public ownership.
