Liberal Democrats will not stop Reform by warning people about it. To understand why people listen, we must understand what Reform offers that too many feel they no longer get from us.
We have spent years failing young men — and by the time many reached adulthood, they had already spent years being failed as boys, especially when they were white and poor. Reform has noticed. It is turning our blindness into political support.
Education shows how early that failure begins. Boys fall behind from the start, are heavily overrepresented in special educational needs, more likely to be suspended or excluded, and less likely to enter higher education. A 2026 study by George Leckie and Konstantina Maragkou found teachers systematically predicted lower grades for boys than comparable girls, even after controlling for later achievement. An Ofqual review found bias favouring girls or against boys more often than the opposite.
If this evidence concerned girls, we would call it a gender-equality problem. When it affects boys, we hesitate. DfE data make that hesitation impossible to justify: 44% of White British boys on free school meals are identified as having SEN; boys account for 70.7% of pupils with Education, Health and Care plans; among White British pupils on free school meals, only 13% of young men enter higher education by 19, compared with 21% of young women.
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