Reform party

Home Nigel Farage, launching Reform’s policies on illegal migrants, said: ‘The only way we’ll stop the boats is by detaining and deporting absolutely anyone who comes via that route.’ A Taliban official in Kabul responded: ‘We are ready and willing to receive and embrace whoever he [Mr Farage] sends us.’ The government sought to appeal against a High Court ruling which temporarily forbade the housing of asylum seekers in the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex. Protests against asylum hotels and counter-protests continued in several places. The government said it would introduce a panel of adjudicators instead of judges to hear migrants’ appeals in the hope of speeding up the asylum

Nigel Farage is adept at riding the currents of British politics. When he named Reform after the Canadian party in 2020, it was a statement of intent. Like Preston Manning in the 1990s, he aimed to displace this country’s main centre-right party and refashion it in his image. But where Manning fell short, handing over the reins to Stephen Harper, Farage aims to go one better by becoming prime minister himself. A keen angler, Farage has spent his few moments of downtime this summer fishing. On one such trip, he took an assembled group of journalists to the English Channel to highlight the small boat crossings. Amid rising discontent, with

On the campaign trail in the Midlands ahead of May’s local elections, a journalist asked Nigel Farage: ‘Do you have a woman problem?’ The twice-married, twice-separated father of four laughed and said: ‘God, yes. I’ve had 40 years of it.’ His response was characteristic of Reform UK’s leader – a determination not to take things too seriously and a tacit acknowledgement that every political cause he has espoused has been more popular with men than women. ‘Around me there’s always been a perception of a laddish culture,’ he says. ‘Ukip was the rugby club on tour.’ In last year’s general election, 58 per cent of Reformvoters were men. Since May,

A close associate of Nigel Farage received phone calls from three civil servants in the past week, asking how they might help Reform UK prepare for government. Officially, mandarins won’t begin talks with the opposition until six months before a general election, which might be nearly four years away. And Reform currently has just four MPs. But behind the scenes, the source reveals: ‘I’m personally getting middle-ranking civil servants in various departments asking if they can help – people who actually understand how to get things done. They don’t want to lose their jobs, but they want to tell us what’s going on.’ MPs may have departed Westminster for recess,

On Monday night, a hundred Reform staff and donors met at a Marylebone pub to toast the local election results. A jubilant Nigel Farage addressed his troops, who ran up a five-figure bill. They had good reason to celebrate. With 30 per cent of the vote, Reform crushed Labour (20 per cent) and the Tories (15 per cent). They won 677 wards, ten councils and a fifth MP in the Runcorn by-election. Certain results were particularly satisfying: in Ed Miliband’s Doncaster North, Reform won more seats than any other party. Three speeches defined Reform’s campaign. First, there was the Birmingham rally at the end of March. Farage arrived on a

It is an irony of Brexit that, since we left the EU, British politics has become more European. The local elections on Thursday will put another nail in the coffin of the two-party system that has dominated the UK for 100 years. Labour and the Conservatives now poll a combined 45 per cent of the vote: half the country want someone different. ‘Welcome to the age of five-party politics,’ says one Tory candidate. Alongside 1,600 council wards up for election, there are four metro mayoralties too. The reintroduction of first-past-the-post means that contests in the west of England, Cambridgeshire and Hull are four-horse races. Ten years ago, Ed Miliband’s ‘35

When MPs and peers were recalled to parliament for an emergency debate on renationalising British Steel, one man was the talk of the terrace: Nigel Farage. Out by the river, a Labour peer congratulated the Reform leader for ‘leading on everything’. After all, Farage had been in Scunthorpe days earlier calling for steel nationalisation.  Since I started covering British politics for The Spectator ten years and six prime ministers ago, there have been plenty of times when an insurgent party appeared to be on the rise. In 2015, the ascent of Ukip contributed to David Cameron’s decision to call a referendum on EU membership. Then in 2019, the success of

I was thinking lately of Robert Kilroy-Silk. For younger readers, and people who were never students or unemployed, a quick refresher course may be needed. From 1986 to 2004 Kilroy-Silk was the presenter of a BBC daytime television programme called Kilroy. It had something of a cult following because of its unintentional hilarity. The live audience was carefully ring-mastered by Kilroy-Silk, who wandered around the studio with a microphone asking people what they thought about various ‘ishoos’ of the day. For some of us the main entertainment came from the fact that there was never quite enough room on the audience banquettes and so we watched for those moments when

A year ago, Reform party aides found themselves in a cramped office in Victoria, London, bickering about chairs. ‘There weren’t enough seats to go around,’ recalls a staffer. These days there are no such issues. Leading in the polls and with five MPs in tow, Nigel Farage’s party has moved to Westminster’s Millbank Tower. This 1960s block peering over the Thames is where Tony Blair’s landslide victories were fought for and won; the new tenants are intent on dismantling most of his legacy as they plot a path to 10 Downing Street. Look at any opinion survey and Reform is hard to dismiss. Having won 14 per cent of the