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6h ago

Study Ties Poorer Constituency Health to Higher Reform UK Support

The ecological analysis based on 2022–23 NHS indicators reports strong links for obesity, COPD and epilepsy, with the authors explicitly avoiding causal claims.

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Overview

  • Imperial College London researchers, writing in BMJ Open Respiratory Research, report constituency-level associations between worse health metrics and higher Reform UK vote share in the 2024 general election.
  • Reform UK won roughly 14% of votes and five English seats, and areas electing Reform MPs showed higher average prevalence for 15 of 20 common conditions compared with other parties’ constituencies.
  • Across England, each 10% rise in Reform vote share was associated with higher prevalence of obesity (+1.5%), COPD (+0.3%), asthma (+0.1%) and depression (+0.1%) after adjusting for age, sex and deprivation.
  • Three of the five Reform seats lie in the most deprived fifth of England and include coastal constituencies such as Great Yarmouth, Clacton, and Boston and Skegness, which have older populations and more long-term conditions.
  • The authors highlight structural factors such as austerity, COVID-19 effects and poor housing as possible contexts for the patterns, the Department of Health and Social Care cites recent NHS improvements, and GB News commentators criticized the study’s framing.