There was a business-like manner in Nigel Farage’s response to the news that net migration was more than 900,000 in 2023. Speaking this morning at a Mayfair press conference, Farage was almost flat in his reply on the ‘horrendous’ figures. He insisted that the Tories would ‘never be forgiven’ for presiding over a nine-fold increase in the ‘tens of thousands’ target promised by David Cameron in 2010. As for Labour, he was similarly withering about the government’s decision to hike the asylum budget by 36 per cent to £5.8 billion.
But after the business, came the pleasure. Farage took great delight in revealing that – after months of growing grassroots support – Reform has at last hit the 100,000 membership mark. That distinction was reserved for Andrea Jenkyns, the former Tory MP who today announced her defection from the Conservatives. She will now be the Reform candidate for the Greater Lincolnshire mayoralty next May. ‘I didn’t leave the Conservative Party,’ she said ‘the Conservative Party left me.’ As Farage gleefully noted, this has been a defection long time coming: Jenkyns famously put his face on her Tory election leaflets.
Today’s event was not so much about immigration – as one lobby hack noted afterwards ‘we knew exactly what Nigel would say.’ Instead it was really about a general update on the health of Reform. One aide notes that ‘it [the party] could have died after July.’ As chairman Zia Yusuf noted, political parties usually see a drop off in membership in the aftermath of an election. But Reform has instead seen the opposite, in spite of the last four months being a period in which its leadership has concentrated largely on professionalisation. ‘I’m focusing on the Paddy Ashdown model’, said Farage – a reference to his plan to focus on local council wards as a precursor to success at a national level.
The focus of Reform for the next six months is on the English county council elections: Farage and his aides are eyeing up gains in Essex, Lincolnshire and the East of England. The atmosphere at today’s conference indicates they are hopeful of fulfilling that goal.
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