Reform UK is on a "mission" that "boils down to bringing back British babies", said Politico. Nigel Farage's party "has started to see childbearing as fertile political territory" and is backing up the rhetoric with policy proposals.
We want a "shift in attitudes" to improve the country's birth rate, a spokesperson said. "We're trying to cut immigration drastically", so "to fix the population crisis", we need to "encourage British people already here to have kids".
In May, Farage said Reform would scrap the two-child benefit cap, which restricts the amount of means-tested state benefit a family can receive for their children. Last year, in its election manifesto, the party said, "Families are the bedrock of a thriving society," and pledged to "give parents back control" by extending the tax break for married couples to the first £25,000 of annual income for either spouse, and "front-loading the child benefit system" for parents with young children.
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"The majority of mothers would choose to stay at home more if they could," the manifesto said. So "front-loading" child benefit for children aged one to four, would "give parents the choice to spend more time with their children".
It's not just about addressing the birth-rate figures; Farage believes his "family focus" will win him votes, said Politico. Reform's parenting policies are thought to be a factor that's "drawing in some of its youngest female recruits". The party's vote share among women aged 18 to 26 has "shot up", according to the More in Common think tank.
Reform also wants to target "voters switching from Labour to Reform", partly in protest at the government's failure to scrap the two-child benefit cap. While the two-child limit actually "polls well among voters, especially Reform voters", said social-policy professor Chris Grover on The Conversation, to get into government, Reform needs to "build a coalition of voters or split left-leaning voters". Its pledge to abolish the two-child limit "may be aimed at both".
Will it work in the UK?
A fixation on family and birth rates "echoes US-style conservatism", said Politico. But it might not work here because the UK is a "more secular society", said Patrick Brown, Republican family policy expert at Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center. "Family" is considered "the F-word in British politics", said Joe Shalam, policy director at the UK's influential Centre for Social Justice think tank, as parties fear accusations of "moralising about what people should or shouldn't be doing".
The rhetoric is certainly "straight from the playbook of other right-leaning politicians", such as the US Vice President J.D. Vance, said Vicky Spratt in The i Paper. In Hungary, the right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán introduced free SUVs, generous tax breaks and subsidised mortgages for families under the age of 40 who have three or more children, but this "has not worked" and birth rates are "still falling".
Other countries, such as France and Sweden, offer "generous" support for parents but birth rates continue to fall there, too, so "it's going to take more than a free SUV or time off work to change this downward trajectory". One thing seems clear, though: if Labour fails to offer "progressive policies to support young families and those who would like to have children, other voices will fill the void".
