Farage is quite reasonable on many policy positions also and reflects the views of quite a lot of the British public who would prefer traditional values, less immigration and the like. While I don't think I'd vote for him personally he has a good chance of being the next PM.
I think its also that people greatly dislike the big parties, and have turned away from the Blair/Cameron "centrist" consensus.
AT the last election the parties that got the biggest increases in their share of the vote were Reform and Green. Two very different parties and they have little in common other than not being Labour or the Conservatives. I suspect they would have done even better without a FPTP system.
Reform support is too broad geographically and demographically that Farage has very little chance of being the next PM, unless the UK changes from FPTP. They take votes away from the Conservatives much more than they do Labour. This is why Cameron and Boris both buckled to UKIP/BrexitParty/Reform, but Starmer doesn't need to.
FPTP also benefits parties with strong regional hotspots, such as Labour in cities.
