At this weekend’s Reform conference in Birmingham, the opening speech will be given by a man who wasn’t even a member of the party until four months ago. James McMurdock stood in what was once a Tory safe seat. Against the odds and after three recounts, he won, and is now Reform’s accidental member of parliament.
The day after the general election, Reform leader Nigel Farage held his celebratory press conference alongside fellow seat-winners Lee Anderson, Richard Tice and Rupert Lowe, announcing their new gang of four. Half an hour later, from a Westminster pub, they learned that they would be five – after McMurdock, a supposed ‘paper candidate’, was declared the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock. ‘It was the first time I’d heard James’s name,’ admits one party insider. ‘The only reason I’d hear about a candidate is because they were in trouble, so therefore this was someone that wasn’t a bad news story.’
McMurdock’s rise says a lot about where Reform’s success has come from – and where the party is going. He is a 38-year-old Essex banker who signed up to the party on a whim after concluding he liked what it was saying on tax and the £25 membership fee was worth it to ‘teach the [main] parties a bit of a lesson’. A few weeks later, Rishi Sunak called the snap election and Reform emailed possible candidates, asking for another £25 to be vetted. McMurdock complied.
James McMurdock overturned a 20,000 majority with no serious funding or publicity
He was interviewed over Zoom, he says, by ‘a Scottish chap’ who was in a car and pressed him on his stance on green issues. ‘I told him that listening to the Reform energy policy is like listening to your granddad give advice. Not especially exciting, but probably good advice,’ he says. ‘Listening to Labour was more like listening to your pal who has just finished his first term at university and is deeply excited by everything that he’s just heard.’ McMurdock passed the Reform test.
Paternity leave meant he had paid time off to campaign – ‘My wife was happy to have me out the house’ – so he set off trying to win the seat in which he grew up. His was an insurgent campaign with no support from the centre: ‘My patter started with, “Hello mate, can I ask you a question?’’.’ He didn’t know to list a sponsor on his leaflets – a legal requirement for campaign literature – so had to get a special stamp made with Reform on and then manually stamp 20,000 leaflets at home with his wife, who’d recently given birth. ‘What a bloody bugger that was,’ he recalls. ‘I had to set up a bit of a conveyor-belt system on my dining table.’
McMurdock ran his comms largely on TikTok, amassing 10,000 followers. His biggest donor was a lady called Barbara – whom he’s never met – who gave £50. His second largest donation was £25. In total, he raised £95. On election night, he turned up at the count with his parents. ‘My dad was like, “I don’t have to count, do I?”. No, you don’t have to count. My wife is there with the buggy, my mum, my dad, my sisters, my mother-in-law, it was just the family going, what’s going on here then? Then Labour turn up with their clipboards and iPads and the Conservatives the same.’
McMurdock overturned a 20,000 majority with no serious fundraising or publicity. But the energy he drew on was exasperation with all of the main parties. This was the case for most Reform candidates, who between them won some 4.1 million votes. According to those on the campaign, 95 per cent of Reform candidates were given no help from the party machine and were not expected to win. After his election, it came out that 20 years ago, McMurdock spent a week in a young offenders’ institution for assaulting a former girlfriend. He describes the incident as the biggest regret of his life.
All of this raises a question: if McMurdock could fight his way into parliament with no help, what could happen in a future election if Reform has carefully selected candidates and party support? Answering this is what the party is now focused on. For Reform’s leadership, the last election was largely about hurting what they felt was a treacherous and useless Tory party. Now, Farage’s party has Labour in its sights.
As Reform prepares for its first conference as a serious political force, it is aiming for more Labour upsets between now and the next general election, which is expected in 2029. When Farage theatrically announced his return to the fold a few weeks into the campaign, he did warn that his party would soon be as much of a problem for Labour as the Tories. At the time, however, that did not worry Labour’s Southwark HQ. Instead, aides huddled around the screen and fist-bumped. As one Labour figure put it then: ‘They might take some of our voters but they will hurt the Tories a lot more.’
‘At that stage of our development they were right,’ Farage says now. ‘Just like Ukip. We rose on Conservative voters, but in the end reached the big numbers on Labour votes.’
When this year’s election campaign began, 40 per cent of the country did not know what Reform was – so Farage sees his 4.1 million votes as a fraction of what might come with more awareness. With Labour already polling below 30 per cent, and Keir Starmer’s personal poll ratings plummeting, the opportunity is clear.
A poll by J.L. Partners suggests that one in four Labour voters is considering backing Reform. ‘If they came to us, that’s half the number needed to win the next election,’ says Farage. Reform’s new chairman, Zia Yusuf, has been tasked with professionalising the party so it can take advantage of these opportunities.
What of Farage’s target seats? Reform finished second in 98 constituencies, of which 89 are now held by Labour. Farage is looking to make gains in Wales and Scotland and to be the main challenger to Labour in the Red Wall seats of the Midlands and northern England. ‘That’s where we’ll be fighting Labour and of course we’re going to measure our success next year in the county elections.’
Starmer and his party are eager not to give Reform the publicity it craves. Labour would prefer to keep bashing the Tories rather than raise awareness of what Farage offers. ‘What people need to understand is Labour are in government. That changes everything,’ says a Reform figure of its approach to opposition.
Ministers insist there is a ceiling on the Reform vote, but they are in no doubt that the threat is real. ‘When Keir says he wants closer ties with Europe but then runs scared of a youth mobility scheme, you just know that is fear of Farage,’ says a Labour insider. Reform’s strategy will be to paint Labour as an out-of-touch metropolitan party of the liberal elite and soak up its working-class vote. Starmer’s proposed outdoor smoking ban is further grist to their mill.
The first-ever meeting of Starmer’s political cabinet (that is, without the civil servants) focused on understanding the problem posed by Reform. Ministers were told that, in effect, Labour won by winning over anti-EU Tory voters appalled by the inability of Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak to turn Brexit into a meaningful agenda. These are all prime Reform voters too.
Some of Labour’s rising stars – the newly elected Josh Simons in Makerfield, for instance – are all too aware that Reform is breathing down their necks. It’s one of the reasons Starmer has this week been willing to ignore howls from the left and praise Giorgia Meloni for her efforts in reducing illegal immigration in Italy. It’s meant to show voters that he’s as serious as she is about tackling the issue.
Labour would prefer to keep bashing the Tories rather than raise awareness of what Farage offers
However, Farage intends to attack Labour on more than just immigration. One obvious point for him will be opposing Starmer’s austerity. To the bafflement of economists, Reform promised to slash tax and splash the cash on the NHS. But a smaller party doesn’t need to worry too much about making fiscal sense. Reform MPs say that the winter fuel allowance furore is already moving voters towards Farage. If Rachel Reeves’s Budget next month is as ‘painful’ as Starmer has warned, more could follow.
Then there’s net zero. Reform figures are keeping a close eye on news of jobs lost or threatened by the so-called green transition. Last week it was announced that Scotland’s last remaining oil refinery, in Grangemouth, is to close. That will lead to 400 job losses. There’s also the recent court decision to axe plans for a Cumbrian coal mine and the closure of two blast furnaces at Port Talbot steelworks, which could all mean 2,500 layoffs.
To Starmer’s left, the unions recognise the risk. Unite’s Sharon Graham is among those warning Labour that ‘the road to net zero cannot be paid for with workers’ jobs’. The GMB’s Gary Smith mocks the optimistic idea of ‘green jobs’, saying they consist of London lobbyists and people counting the dead birds killed by wind turbines.
The trade union rebellion against net zero, from a pro-industrial Labour tradition, is hard to reconcile with Ed Miliband’s promised green revolution. It could make lots of votes for Reform in Scotland, Wales and the Red Wall.
Inevitably, immigration remains Reform’s cause célèbre. The small boat arrivals have not abated since Starmer took office. Labour has made a considerable fuss over its creation of a new command border force, with an experienced police chief announced this week as its head. But it’s unclear what extra powers, if any, the new agency could use. ‘It is the thing that could really blow us up,’ says a Labour aide of the failure to stop the boats. Farage and his party will push any shortcomings on the issue as evidence that Starmer is not on the side of the Leave-voting masses.
Farage’s success this time was down to widespread disappointment with the Tory government. Next time, he hopes, his party will win more votes thanks to an even greater sense of disgruntlement with Labour.
For now, parliament appears to limit Reform’s ambitions – it is hard to make a mark in the House of Commons with only five MPs. Yet campaigning opportunities outside remain strong. The party is already working on candidate selection, to avoid the self-forced errors of the last campaign. The next stop is to win new bases through the locals that will help it build support.
Could that momentum eventually propel Farage into No. 10? The idea sounds far-fetched. When I ask McMurdock what he thinks, however, he replies: ‘I think the chances of Nigel becoming prime minister are better than the chances were of me becoming an MP.’
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