Reform UK: is Britain poised to re-embrace conservatism? 

Last month’s central London relaunch of Reform UK (formerly Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party) was a rather anticlimactic affair. Having been primed for something substantial via party leader Richard Tice’s Twitter feed, ‘Later this morning, we’ve got a major announcement and a big press conference at 11 O’clock. You won’t want to miss it’, the press were expecting either the defection of a sitting Conservative MP, or the oft-anticipated return of Nigel Farage to frontline politics. They got neither. Instead, the desultory media assembly was bemused to discover the ‘announcement’ consisted of 11 former Brexit Party MEPs, Nigel Farage as ‘Honorary President’, and the signing of former Conservative minister, Ann Widdecombe, who has confirmed she will not be standing for parliament at the next election.

However, it would be foolish to write Reform off just yet. Although Farage was keen to emphasise that he would not be reassuming control of the party any time soon: ‘For the avoidance of doubt, my role in this is honorary and advisory’, a return to frontline politics is not inconceivable, particularly as any political vehicle led by Farage would immediately threaten the loss of senior Tory seats. The return of Ann widdecombe should not be underestimated either. While the media may scoff at the return of the ’75-year-old former Tory minister’, there is reason to believe Widdecombe’s principled renaissance could prove to be no laughing matter for the Tories.

For a start, Widdecombe is a popular, straight-talking conservative, and is well aware of the problems faced by smaller parties attempting to break the stranglehold of Westminster’s two-party system. When I interviewed her last year and asked specifically about the possibility of an alternative to the Conservative Party, she had this to say:

The fact of life is that in Britain, splinter groups and small parties do not prosper; I mean it’s as simple as that. Even the Brexit Party which did phenomenally well in the European elections and which did change policy, that never prospered in a general election…I think we’ve got to be practical, there is no room for a new party for the simple reason that when people are faced with a choice at a general election, they don’t want to risk the wrong government getting in because they’ve voted for a smaller party.

For Widdecombe to eschew her own advice, suggests she believes something has gone profoundly wrong at the heart of the Conservative Party. Having resisted pressure to join the party for several years, Widdecombe explained her decision to come on-board after Rishi Sunak’s ‘Windsor Framework’, which leaves Northern Ireland shackled to the European Union:

Last time the Brexit Party stood down candidates because the Conservatives were promising to get Brexit done. But they have ratted on that promise. And as far as we’re concerned, we’re not going to be bought off a second time – so we will be standing in every single seat. They are not Conservatives anymore. The current party is neither Conservative nor unionist and I am both a Conservative and a unionist and I see no future at all in the current party.

It is no secret that Britain is crying out for a genuinely conservative party, and the soil has perhaps never been so fertile for a viable alternative to the current administration. There is tangible anger across Britain on a range of issues: punitive lockdowns which were not observed by those mandating them, the betrayal of Brexit (the sole reason Farage’s Brexit Party stepped aside in 2019), the immigration crisis, the cost of living, and the state of the NHS to name but a few. And despite the Labour Party’s healthy ascendancy in the polls, this is likely more to do with being ‘the lesser of two evils’, rather than confidence in Keir Starmer himself: a man who opportunistically kneels for Black Lives Matter, flip flops on every major issue, and as a result has still failed to connect with the electorate.

The anger and mistrust of government is not limited to Britain, but resonates across Europe. Only last week, the Farmer Citizen Movement (BBB) shockingly won the Dutch provincial elections, receiving the most seats in all 12 provinces, and putting them on track to top the Senate election with 17 seats. Populist opposition to authoritarian government policy is en vogue, something which should give Richard Tice grounds for optimism.

It is of course too early to say whether Reform UK will become a viable alternative to the Conservative Party, and I suspect a good many planetary forces need to align before we can begin to get excited. The first thing the party needs is a bounce in the polls. The latest YouGov poll credits Reform with 7%; on par with the Greens, just a few points shy of the Liberal Democrats. This is not going to concern Number 10 just yet.

To provide such a bounce will take more than a press conference – Reform needs a significant defection from the Tories. While councillors and party members have already jumped ship in their droves, the party is yet to secure a sitting Member of Parliament to their cause, though not for want of trying. There has been much speculation as to who would be the first MP to join Reform, particularly with media rumours that Tory MPs have already been approached with a ‘golden handshake’ of £400,000.

But the ultimate arbiter of Reform’s longterm prospects is surely Farage himself, and how long before he reassumes his rightful place as leader. Farage is the nuclear ingredient missing from British politics – the only man to take on the establishment and win, twice; both times without ever becoming an MP. He is the man who took the Brexit Party to a lead over both Labour and the Conservatives in the opinion polls back in 2019, garnering an astonishing 26% of the vote. It is testament to his affinity with the public, that previous electoral vehicles like UKIP or even Reform itself, have languished in the polls bereft of his stewardship.

Unlike the 2019 general election, Reform confirms it will contest every seat at the next one, their expressed aim to ‘obliterate the Tory Party’. How successful they will be remains to be seen, however one thing is for certain – if Farage truly comes out of retirement, Westminster is guaranteed a much-needed shakeup if nothing else.

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