Reform UK builds ties with NZ First as polling lifts parties

Saturday, 24 January 2026

A board member of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party was in New Zealand this week, looking to deepen ties with NZ First.

Board member Gawain Towler met with NZ First leader Winston Peters and deputy Shane Jones this week, telling The Post he was keen to discuss strategy, policy and the challenges of power.

Reform UK has massively disrupted UK politics in recent years, winning hundreds of council seats and topping every national opinion poll since the middle of 2025.

Towler is a long-time political operative who served as chief press officer for the predecessor UK Independence Party for more than a decade.

It comes as both parties see lifts in political polling, with Towler describing the shifts in support away from Labour and the Conservatives in the UK as “utterly unprecedented”, with pressure rising on the two major parties in both the UK and New Zealand.

Reform UK is a populist right wing party that formed out of the Brexit movement, with strong anti-immigration and anti public spending positions. It has seen a large rise in public opinion polling over the last year, with multiple Conservative MPs defecting to the party.

Towler said the point of the meetings was to “strengthen relationships between ourselves in Reform and NZ First”.

Reform was conscious of the gaps in its knowledge base as a new party, he said.

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“NZ First have had experience of government and civil service… we don’t,” Towler said. “But we also are very good at what we do. We are, I think, acknowledged as the most effective campaigners.

“There are certainly things to learn on both sides. I’m definitely all ears, because we know we don't know everything.

“And of course there are significant differences between the problems faced in New Zealand and issues faced [in the UK], but there are also similarities. Both our rugby teams are rubbish at present.”

Towler met with NZ First deputy Shane Jones this week and said he met with leader Winston Peters. A spokesperson from Jones’ office confirmed the meeting, but said it was private when asked what was discussed.

Towler said they would be discussing “more policy… more on a strategic level”.

Asked about his meeting, Peters, who this week also visited Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Palau and Fiji as Foreign Minister, on Friday said, “this was a former official for Reform [Towler was formally Reform’s director of communications], yes, I did have a meeting, and that’s confidential”.

“You’re allowed to have a private meeting over the summer holidays without you guys,” he said, referring to the media.

“Of course it went well, we’re going to turn your polls into confetti this year. Stand back and watch.”

Asked if he was taking lessons from Reform, Peters said, “we take lessons from everybody that knows what they’re doing. Mind you, they take lessons from us as well”.

Towler said he was not against meeting with other politicians from other parties but the timing didn’t work.

“We regard New Zealand First and Winston as definitely friends,” Towler said, pointing to Peters’ UK meeting with Farage in November last year.

Towler said having friends “is always a good thing, particularly if you're a sort of party that stands up against establishment”.

“There will always be times we differ… But building up personal friendships makes differences much more easy to deal with.”

Public support between the two parties was also similar, Towler said.

“If the polling is anything to go by, both in New Zealand and in the UK, we're both going to find ourselves as parties with significant responsibilities,” Towler said.

NZ First on Thursday rose to 12% support in the latest Taxpayers’ Union-Curia Poll - the highest public polling result for the party in recent years.

In the UK, while the next general election is not until 2029, Reform received an almost instant bump in the polls following the 2024 election and has been sitting around the 25-30% support mark since early last year, pushing ahead of Labour and Conservatives which are teetering around 20%. The latest The Times/Sky News YouGov poll had the UK Greens on 17% and Lib Dems on 14%.

“What we're seeing in British political terms is utterly unprecedented,” Towler said.

“You might say it's very much around [leader Nigel] Farage with Reform, but we were on 12% before he came back in. We're now on 30% - but the 30% is largely not because we're brilliant, it's because there's a lot of rubbish.

“It would be idiotic of somebody to claim that everybody loves us,” he said.

“The risk of voting for Reform in people's minds - they're untested, untried - has been mitigated by the sheer incompetence from the people who are supposed to know what they're doing.”

Reform’s policy platform includes a ‘freeze’ on what is described as non-essential immigration and a massive increase on the national insurance rate to 20% for foreign workers - essentially a large tax hike on hiring any immigrants for UK employers.

“Essential skills, mainly around healthcare, must be the only exception,” its policy document states.

That could mean huge changes for Kiwis looking to live and work in the UK, but Towler said he could, “see no impact at all on the ability, if anything, more positive impact on the ability of New Zealanders being able to work in the UK”.

“It doesn't feel like immigration, because in so much of the UK, Kiwi people moving one to another are people who are already related to people on one side and the other…

“I think the key detail is New Zealand needs to be as attractive so they go back.”

Critics label Reform’s platform as radical, while the party says it is reflective of voter frustration over policy failures.

Towler said they were used to criticism from other parties, “they’ve been slagging us off for years”.

UK Labour MP and secretary for Culture Lisa Nandy implied in an interview last week that a Reform UK led Government would be “fascist”.

“If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, in my experience it usually is a duck,” she said.

Towler rejected this, and referenced a delay of 29 council elections due to reforms of English Councils, and plans in the UK to replace some jury trials with judge-alone trials.

“They have the temerity to call us fascists?”

On the wider criticism of immigration policies, Towler said that “time after time after time, the British public have elected governments that have promised to cut immigration down to tens of thousands. Instead, they've had millions of people brought in. Not surprising that the patience of the British public has worn very, very thin.

“Our country has this tradition and a history of being very good on refugees, but because the system has been abused so badly that patience has gone.”