Issue ten | ‘The People’s Army’ continues to march, but does it understand how to expand?
This was my second Reform Party Conference, following an introduction last year including entertainment from The Jackson 5, beers in the main conference hall by 10:30am, and more members of the public at a political conference than I had ever seen before. It felt like a movement in the making – ‘The People’s Army’ as Farage regularly brands his base building at great speed.
This year I was not sure what to expect. Would the party demonstrate a growing professionalism and build credibility with the business community? Would it deliver against its mission to ensure the public at large understood the direction of travel for the party’s first potential 100 days in power? How much policy substance actually sits behind the Reform UK brand, and how much of it focuses on topics outside of immigration?
Reform’s first 100 days in power
The theme of this year’s conference was ‘The First 100 Days’, with each party spokesperson tasked with announcing a target they are committed to achieving after this period in government. Commitments included “stopping the boats within 100 days of a Reform government”, “cutting energy bills by £250 a year”, and an aim to produce more UK-based nurses and doctors. Meanwhile, Robert Jenrick announced he would increase the tax-free personal allowance to £15,000.
Outside of the main hall announcements, the fringe scene gave a more detailed sense of both Reform’s future prospects and their developing policy agenda. While there has been much discussion on Reform’s recent poll decline, Ipsos’ August 26 polling suggested there was still much for the party to be optimistic about. Immigration still polls as the leading issue of importance to the public with 42% of respondents stating this, versus 32% for the economy, 20% for NHS/hospitals and 13% for housing. While Burnham is currently preferred to Nigel Farage as Prime Minister and has a strong lead over the Reform leader on categories such as who is seen ‘to be more in touch with ordinary people’ and ‘being an honest person’, in other more pragmatic, less emotionally driven areas such as which leader is seen to have ‘the right plans for Britain’ and ‘gets the big decisions right’, Burnham’s lead over Farage is substantially smaller. Burnham will need to improve on these ‘head over heart’ areas to strengthen his chances of securing power ahead of the next General Election.
As for policy, the fringe agenda included appearances from Danny Kruger MP, who leads Reform’s preparations for government. These include thinking on the structure of government, with a much-reduced overall civil service, a new ‘Office for the Prime Minister’ with a powerful political chief of staff which sets direction across government departments and monitors progress, and the erasure of the Cabinet Office which will be “obsolete” under the new system. Policy development and delivery will sit solely with Departments. The need to restore the 1985 Armstrong Principle that there can be no distinction between the ‘elected’ and ‘permanent’ government sits at the heart of proposals, with the civil service acting as a staff to inform UK Government and then implement their decisions.
New hires in the civil service will be attracted by the possibility of higher salaries and shorter-term contracts rather than the more traditional allure of a long-term role and secure pension plan. Reform will also produce draft legislation ahead of the election on a range of topics, and as Farage also announced in his main speech, will look to expand the parliamentary timetable to include sittings on Thursdays and Fridays. For more detail on Reform’s thinking in this space, see Danny Kruger’s piece here.
Outside of Government structure, there was early thinking on transport on show at the solo fringe with Chris Green MP emerging as a potential dedicated spokesperson for the sector. The current state of Britain’s high streets was the focus of several events. Reform’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, discussed the decline of Britain’s town centres as a visible symbol of the failure of both this Labour and previous Conservative Governments. As was the case last year, the party strongly focused on the need to remove the net zero agenda – described by Farage as the ‘net zero lunacy’. At one fringe, Tice described the detrimental impact environmental policies were having from a cost perspective on a brewery in his constituency – the wares of which were on offer at the fringe. Developed business case studies like these will likely be at the heart of the Reform campaigning content in the years to come.
Outside of these notable exceptions, the vast majority of policy discussion at the Reform Party Conference focused on the topic that drives the majority of their current support – immigration. Whether the discussion focuses on housing, skills, health or women’s rights, the party seamlessly connects the discussion to the current impact of migration. This was most evident in the main hall speeches, which very effectively roused the packed auditorium crowd.
Building relationships with business
By the evening of Day 1, the conference was overshadowed by the breaking of the Channel 4 undercover investigation showing former Reform senior aide Dan Jukes and Nigel Farage discussing the logistics of accepting funds from a foreign donor via his British based son.
At the time the news broke, over 20 tables of Business Day Dinner guests were sitting down to an evening of big band entertainment alongside Reform Party stakeholders. However, among the inevitable chatter on the breaking news, the Business Day Dinner represented an opportunity to build early valuable relationships with senior Reform stakeholders. While there have been mixed reviews of the Business Day itself, I felt that the conference overall presented strong opportunity to be introduced to senior stakeholders in a relaxed, informal setting – opportunities which are perhaps harder to achieve at the Labour or Conservative Party Conferences to the same extent. Are these detailed policy discussions? No. Do they achieve valuable relationship building results for clients – I would argue yes. Are Reform looking for inspiration to develop their policy agenda? Most definitely yes. The real question will be whether the substantive policy discussions with the business community will come as a second step. However, to gain these, businesses need to build personal rapport with a party that prioritises strong interpersonal relationships arguably above others across the spectrum.
The People’s Army – can it continue expanding?
Reflections on this conference would not be complete without discussing the Reform Party membership. I always like to speak to party members to get a sense of their rationale for joining and what drives them to travel often across the country to attend the conference.
One lady I spoke to on the main conference floor from Bury had been a Conservative Party member alongside her husband for 25 years before joining Reform last year. She had never been to a Conservative Party Conference or any other political party conference before because she did not feel she would be welcome there, whereas at Reform she felt she would be greeted with open arms. I asked her why and she said: “At Reform, we know we can really say what we think about the state of things without being judged. There came a point at our Conservative Association where that just wasn’t the case anymore.” Perhaps there are lessons in that for Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives to consider as her party considers the route to dominance on the right.
However, for all the undoubted passion there is for Farage across the base, other members felt let down by the recent revelations from Channel 4 and did believe a policy platform that focuses on the economy in addition to immigration was fundamental to gaining the keys to Number 10. In order to appeal beyond Farage’s current base, and appeal to wider potential voters, and the business community, the party will need to broaden beyond its safe territory of migration to make strides now in a political landscape that will only further focus this autumn on how our economy is impacting communities up and down the country. Whether Reform can fill that void versus a resurgent Conservative Party and a Labour Party with a new currently popular leader remains to be seen.
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