Gus Carter Gus Carter

Richard Tice is a rebel without a cause

Reform UK doesn't know what it's for

Reform UK leader Richard Tice protests outside Tory conference (Getty)

The vaccines make you magnetic, didn’t you know? And Covid is a form of biological warfare, released by the Chinese to weaken the West. New 5G technology is melting people’s brains and the Bank of England is owned by the Rothschilds.

I am listening to three delegates from Reform UK’s first party conference, held in parallel to the Tories’ much larger jamboree just down the road. They are outside chaining cigarettes and they’re fired up. At last, they feel they can talk about this stuff without being shut down.

I nod along. I’m not a scientist, I explain, and I don’t really know how central banks work. But why, I ask, aren’t these things being discussed on the Reform conference stage? ‘They’ll just be labelled conspiracy theorists by the fake news media,’ explains one man who travelled from Preston for the event, lighting his third cigarette. ‘We’re still looking for all the evidence’.

Reform is a party that lacks the molten Eurosceptic core of the Farage era

Reform UK is a strange political animal. Remade from the remains of the Brexit Party but shorn of both Brexit and Farage, it seems to know what it’s against more than what it’s for.

They’re certainly against the ‘Con-socialist government’ and its high taxes and freedom-busting lockdowns. And against the ‘rampant communist intersectionalism’ of the liberal elites. But on their conference stage, there’s an odd lack of radicalism.

Dr David Bull, the party’s deputy leader, suggests copying an old New Labour policy: paying for private health care to cut NHS waiting times. ‘We’re actually putting a lot of money in but our outcomes aren’t very good.’ Another party bod explains how a Reform government would cut emissions. ‘But why?’ shouts one exasperated delegate to much nodding under the seedy hotel chandeliers.

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