Reform should ditch Richard Tice before it’s too late

The Reform Party has claimed that the Rochdale by-election was not ‘free and fair’. Their leader, Richard Tice, said that his party had suffered intimidation on the campaign trail including ‘vile racist abuse’. It was certainly an ugly election battle, one dominated by the conflict in Gaza – and, because of that focus, George Galloway of the Workers Party triumphed. But say what you like about ‘Gaza George’, but he has one crucial commodity for a politician that Tice lacks: charisma.

Galloway, of course, one participated in the most ‘cringeworthy’ moment in the history of reality TV – as voted by British viewers – when he pretended to be a cat in an episode of Celebrity Big Brother. That would have finished many a career, but George has in him as many political comebacks as a cat has lives.  

Unlike Galloway, Tice is light on such charisma and it’s holding back Reform. There was much chatter last month when the party took 13 per cent of the vote in the Wellingborough by-election and 10 per cent of the vote in Kingswood. ‘Reform UK celebrates best-ever by-election result’, was the headline on Sky News. True, it was the ‘best-ever’ result but given the state of Labour and the Tories that’s not saying much.

Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden was correct in assessing the Reform performances in Wellingborough and Kingswood as ‘disappointing’. They should be winning these seats, not patting themselves on the back for reaching double figures. Holden referenced the 2014 by-elections in Clacton and Rochester, both won by Reform’s predecessor, the Nigel Farage-led Ukip, with majorities of 42 per cent and 59 per cent respectively.

When I was interviewed by Tice on his Talk TV show, Sunday Sermon, last year, we discussed Europe’s migrant crisis and were in broad agreement that neither Britain nor the EU were up to the challenge. Tice was well-informed and articulate; these are attributes every politician needs, but a leader also requires charisma and Tice hasn’t got it.

Tice comes across as what he is; a privately-educated, wealthy man from Surrey. Nigel Farage, of course, has a similar background (the only difference that his Home County is Kent), but he has charisma. He’s also got guile, skilfully cultivating the image of ‘the bloke from the pub’, fag in one hand, pint in the other. This strikes a chord with voters from Dagenham to Darlington. Tice is too middle-class to do the same: he is the sort of chap who looks as if he prefers a glass of chardonnay to a pint of stout.

Reform should be capitalising on the anger and disaffection of the British electorate. It’s been rampant for years. As polls and focus groups continually show, voters want something done about mass immigration and the cost-of-living crisis. They’ve given up on the Tories and a great many have no confidence in Labour.

This leaves a huge vacuum in British politics, but Reform isn’t filling it. Contrast the party’s failure with the success of the National Rally in France. As in Britain, immigration and the economy are the main preoccupations of the French electorate. Emmanuel Macron has had seven years to address these issues but he’s done miserably on both counts, just as the Socialists and the centre-right Republicans did before him when they were in power.

Consequently, voters are flocking to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally; some do so with a ‘well-we’ve-tried-everyone-else-so-we-might-as-well-try-her’ shrug, and others because they are attracted by Le Pen’s right-hand man, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella. He was elected president of the party in November 2022 and is now the most popular political figure in France. Everywhere Bardella goes, men and women thrust their phones in his face and ask for a selfie with him. Bardella is a handsome man but so is Tice, more so than Farage. Their popularity is not about looks, it’s something intangible, hard to define.

When Bardella visited the annual Agricultural fair in Paris last week, it created what the Parisien newspaper described as ‘Bardellamania’. Like Boris Johnson (before he messed it up), Bardella is held in such affection by his supporters they greet him by his first name.

What Bardella has, that Johnson lacked as a politician, is authenticity.  He’s genuinely working class, raised by a single (Italian immigrant) mum on a housing estate in Seine-Saint-Denis, the impoverished suburb north of Paris. When he talks about the challenge of making ends meet each month, of trying to get a doctor’s appointment – or the loss of identity felt by many working class families because of mass immigration – he draws on his own experience. But it’s his charisma that counts above all else.

Politics is a cruel game and there’s nothing crueller than a leader who has the brains and the ambition, but not the charisma: Iain Duncan Smith and Ed Miliband can testify to that. So, too, can Tice. As long as he remains leader, the Reform Party will remain also-rans.