Reform UK discussion

[35B]

I’ve also noted the lack of media scrutiny of Farage’s contrary positions on Lucy Connolly and Fayaz Khan.

Thank goodness - it would just reinforce the hard of thinking's support for her by making them think that all others are like Khan.

 

[weeklycommuter]

Reform UK continue to fall down on their selection of candidates, including their candidate for the Mayor of Hampshire and the Solent election which was originally scheduled for May 2026 but has been postponed to May 2028. When a candidate makes a statement which is clearly not acceptable it is sensible to drop them and find another candidate.

Reform's Richard Tice refuses to comment on 'go home' post

Labour called on Reform to sack the mayoral candidate Chris Parry for his comment on social media.

www.bbc.co.uk

Reform's Tice refuses to comment on 'go home' post
Reform UK's deputy leader Richard Tice refused to criticise one of the party's mayoral candidates who said deputy prime minister David Lammy should "go home" to the Caribbean.
Chris Parry, who is set to stand in Hampshire and the Solent in 2028, posted on X in February that Mr Lammy's "loyalty lies" in the Caribbean.
Lammy was born in London to Guyanese parents and Parry previously told the BBC the story is "confected…with people not taking the time to read the original tweets".
"I'm not familiar with what was said," Tice said. "At the end of the day, David Lammy, he's a Cabinet minister. Whether we think he's doing a good job or a bad job is just part of politics."
"That's day-to-day life and he will, I'm sure, continue to claim he's doing a great job. We challenge him," Mr Tice told reporters at a press conference in Westminster on Tuesday.
After Parry's comment was read out to him, Tice declined to respond further, saying only: "I've given an answer."
Labour said on Monday that there is no "context" that can excuse "telling a black British man from London to 'go home to the Caribbean"'.
Lammy referred to the comment in a post last week, as he urged Reform's leader Nigel Farage to "stamp out" hate in his party.
He wrote: "I will never be cowed by racism.
"But I will call it what it is. Nigel Farage, you need to clean up your party and stamp out this 1950s-style hate."

 

[brad465]

Not sure this is a win for Reform; while Zahawi was a "big hitter" in the Tories, he is a proper establishment politician, which goes against a lot of Reform UK's appeal, and has a fair bit of baggage to go with it:

Former Tory Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi defects to Reform UK

Zahawi is the latest former Conservative MP to join Nigel Farage's party, as a Tory source claims he had approached Kemi Badenoch seeking a nomination for the Lords.

www.bbc.co.uk

Former Conservative chancellor Nadhim Zahawi has defected to Reform UK.
Party leader Nigel Farage announced the move at a press conference on Monday.
Zahawi was chancellor for two months under Boris Johnson and served as a government minister from 2018 to 2023.
He said he felt the UK had reached a "dark and dangerous" moment, which was why the UK needed "a glorious revolution".
In a speech to Reform supporters, Zahawi said issues with free speech "on X or even just down the pub", and anyone trying to earn a living "without getting ground into the dirt" by taxes were reasons for his move.
Zahawi is the most senior of the former Conservative MPs to have joined Reform UK.
As well as his two months as chancellor at the end of Boris Johnson's time as prime minister, he was education secretary, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and chairman of the Conservative Party.
He was sacked from that last position by Rishi Sunak in January 2023 after the prime minister's independent ethics adviser found that he had broken ministerial rules by failing to disclose that his tax affairs were under investigation by HMRC.
He was a candidate to succeed Johnson as prime minister in 2022 but only attracted the support of 25 of his colleagues and was eliminated in the first round of the leadership contest which Liz Truss won.

 

[sor]

"turquoise tories" slogan remaining undefeated. I assume this is Farage's way of "professionalising" the party - so that (if they should win) he won't need to give ministerial positions to those who are better suited to be pub bores

Though one has to wonder when the tipping point is reached and Reform can't credibly claim to be an anti-establishment party, running against the "uniparty" anymore. Arguably they never were - with the leader crying about temporarily losing his Coutts bank account, that's as establishment as it gets

 

[SuspectUsual]

Not sure this is a win for Reform; while Zahawi was a "big hitter" in the Tories, he is a proper establishment politician, which goes against a lot of Reform UK's appeal, and has a fair bit of baggage to go with it:

Former Tory Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi defects to Reform UK

Zahawi is the latest former Conservative MP to join Nigel Farage's party, as a Tory source claims he had approached Kemi Badenoch seeking a nomination for the Lords.

www.bbc.co.uk

Zahawi sure has plenty of brass neck. A tax avoider who used legal threats to try and shut down reporting of his tax avoidance using his first speech on a Reform platform to bang on about freedom of speech and taxation

You couldn’t make it up

 

[OhNoAPacer]

Maybe Reform have offered to pay the heating bill for his stables.

 

[contrex]

Maybe Reform have offered to pay the heating bill for his stables.

I suspect they already use what the horses produce as raw material for policies.

 

[BAFRA77]

Not sure how having an Iraqi-born refugee defecting to their party will sit with a sizable contingent of the Reform supporter base...

 

[contrex]

Not sure how having an Iraqi-born refugee defecting to their party will sit with a sizable contingent of the Reform supporter base...

They must have a considerable degree of cognitive impairment to support Reform in the first place. They'll swallow it.

 

[Gloster]

Not sure how having an Iraqi-born refugee defecting to their party will sit with a sizable contingent of the Reform supporter base...

It does seem that Reform’s leadership can overlook skin colour and origin if they are rich. That appears to be all part of their business model.

I have just heard a clip on the radio (Radio 3 lunchtime bulletin) of him appealing to voters on the basis that nothing works. Um…who‘s party had the job of getting it to work for fourteen years?

 

[contrex]

It does seem that Reform’s leadership can overlook skin colour and origin if they are rich.

Exactly like my late father, who swore in the early 1960s that he would move out of our road in south London when 'they' moved into it, and, ten years later, sold our house to a 'very nice Nigerian chap' to turn into flats. Around that time I found out from my sister that he called my fiancée, the daughter of senior doctors, 'that Jewess', so it seemed his lately-found tolerance had limits.

 

[YorkshireBear]

Hard to know if this is why he left or not but amusing none the less.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0lxn75gw1do BBC HomepageSkip to contentAccessibility HelpSign inNotificationsMore menuSearch BBCPoliticsParliamentsBrexitTories say Zahawi peerage request turned down before defection to Reform UK

Former Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi has become the latest senior Conservative to defect to Reform UK, as Tories claim the move came after he was rebuffed for a peerage.
Zahawi, who is a former MP, said he felt the UK had reached a "dark and dangerous" moment, and the country needed "a glorious revolution", as he outlined why he was joining Nigel Farage's party.
However, Conservative chairman Kevin Hollinrake said the move came after he made "a number of approaches" to party leader Kemi Badenoch, pressing his case to be nominated for the House of Lords, but was rejected.
Farage unveiled Zahawi's defection at a press conference on Monday, one of around 20 former Tory MPs to join the party.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68999222
Zahawi was chancellor for two months under Boris Johnson and served as a minister from 2018 to 2023, making him the most senior former Tory to join Reform so far.
Speaking in a pre-recorded video before walking out on stage at the press conference, former minister Zahawi said Britain was "broken".
He said: "Nothing works, there is no growth, there is crime on our streets, and there is an avalanche of illegal migration that anywhere else in the world would be a national emergency."
He added: "I've made my mind up that the team that will deliver for this nation will be the team that Nigel will put together and that's why I've decided that I'm joining Reform."
Answering questions from journalists, Zahawi said Badenoch had the "baggage of a defunct brand", before Farage said elections in Scotland, Wales and English councils this May would be the point where the Conservatives "cease to be a national party".
But Hollinrake suggested Zahawi's thwarted "personal ambition" was linked to his decision to defect, telling the BBC he had been unsuccessfully pressing his case for a Conservative peerage with "people very close to Kemi".
The party chair said conversations had taken place in recent weeks, adding: "It seems strange to change his perspective only a few weeks down the road from those conversations taking place."
He said: "Our position was very clear, Kemi's position was very, very clear - we want to make sure the people we elevate to the House of Lords are the right people, who make the right contribution and, indeed, have the right back story.
"We were very concerned Nadhim's past problems with his tax affairs, which led to his dismissal in the past from a role in the party.
"It was quite clear that we didn't feel Nadhim was the right person to be elevated to the House of Lords."
A source close to Zahawi said: "Nadhim did not beg for a peerage as they claim - Kemi called him for advice on how to save the party and he decided to join the only party he feels can save Britain."
Earlier, a Conservative spokesman said Reform was "fast becoming the party of has-been politicians looking for their next gravy train".

Image source,PA Media
Farage insisted that this latest Tory defection did not mean Reform was becoming the Conservatives 2.0.
He added there were "plenty" of current Conservative MPs asking about joining Reform and some were not being accepted, but he said Zahawi believed "in what we're doing" and also has the necessary "conviction".
As well as his two months as chancellor at the end of Boris Johnson's time as prime minister, Zahawi was education secretary, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and chairman of the Conservative Party.
He was sacked from that last position by Rishi Sunak in January 2023 after the prime minister's independent ethics adviser found that he had broken ministerial rules by failing to disclose that his tax affairs were under investigation by HMRC.
Asked by the BBC about being sacked over his tax affairs, Zahawi said: "The mistake I made was not to be specific about my declarations to the Cabinet Office.
"I absolutely think that politicians should be held to a higher level of accountability but I shouldn't be precluded from doing the right thing by my country."
The Labour Party chair, MP Anna Turley, said Zahawi was "a discredited and disgraced politician" who had previously "repeatedly lambasted his new boss over his divisive and extreme rhetoric".
"This shameless scurry of yet another failed Tory over to Reform will tell people everything they need to know about both of them," she said.
And the Liberal Democrat MP in his old constituency of Stratford-on-Avon, Manuela Perteghella, said: "Reform is becoming a retirement home for disgraced former Conservative ministers."
Zahawi was a candidate to succeed Johnson as prime minister in 2022 but only attracted the support of 25 of his colleagues and was eliminated in the first round of the leadership contest which Liz Truss won.
He was education secretary from September 2021 to July 2022, and his short stint as chancellor of the exchequer came between July and September 2022.
In November 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, he was appointed vaccines minister and oversaw the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine programme for nearly a year.
Born in Iraq in 1967, he could have been sent to fight in the 1980s Iran-Iraq War but instead he and his parents fled Iraq and he grew up in the UK.
Questioned on whether he had concerns about allegations of racism made against his new party leader by more than 30 school peers, claims denied by Farage, Zahawi responded: "If I thought the man sitting next to me had in any way a problem with people of my colour… I wouldn't be sitting next to him."

 

[gg1]

Hard to know if this is why he left or not but amusing none the less.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0lxn75gw1do BBC HomepageSkip to contentAccessibility HelpSign inNotificationsMore menuSearch BBCPoliticsParliamentsBrexitTories say Zahawi peerage request turned down before defection to Reform UK

Shades of another great intellect of our times, Nadine Dorries.

 

[Harpo]

Maybe Zahawi figures that if he can’t be a Lord, he can be a minister in Tice’s cabinet instead?

 

[35B]

Maybe Zahawi figures that if he can’t be a Lord, he can be a minister in Tice’s cabinet instead?

And near the top of any possible Reform list of Lords nominations later this Parliament.

 

[contrex]

And near the top of any possible Reform list of Lords nominations later this Parliament.

Wait, they get to nominate peers?

 

[JamesT]

Wait, they get to nominate peers?

They haven't so far. Nominations are done by the Prime Minister, but convention has been that they also take some from the opposition parties. Reform have argued that their recent electoral successes means they should get some representation in the Lords.

 

[ainsworth74]

Not sure this is a win for Reform; while Zahawi was a "big hitter" in the Tories, he is a proper establishment politician, which goes against a lot of Reform UK's appeal, and has a fair bit of baggage to go with it:

Former Tory Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi defects to Reform UK

Zahawi is the latest former Conservative MP to join Nigel Farage's party, as a Tory source claims he had approached Kemi Badenoch seeking a nomination for the Lords.

www.bbc.co.uk

It's interesting that so many Tories are defecting to Reform and, so far, are not tarring Reform with the brush of a) being the establishment party and b) being the very people that spent fourteen years taking the country to where it now finds itself. Does feel like at some point there will be political hay to be made from pointing out that a great deal of a putative Reform front bench are exactly the same people that we all decisively removed from power in 2024.

 

[SuspectUsual]

I wonder whether YouGov

It's interesting that so many Tories are defecting to Reform and, so far, are not tarring Reform with the brush of a) being the establishment party and b) being the very people that spent fourteen years taking the country to where it now finds itself. Does feel like at some point there will be political hay to be made from pointing out that a great deal of a putative Reform front bench are exactly the same people that we all decisively removed from power in 2024.

But Nigel

But take back are country

But flags

But a large chunk of the population has no intellectual curiosity and will happily believe whatever Reform tell them

 

[Snow1964]

Not sure how having an Iraqi-born refugee defecting to their party will sit with a sizable contingent of the Reform supporter base...

I suspect some of their support base is not too good at joined up thinking, after all they like anti-Europe Farage with his European wife.

 

[Class73Electro]

It's interesting that so many Tories are defecting to Reform and, so far, are not tarring Reform with the brush of a) being the establishment party and b) being the very people that spent fourteen years taking the country to where it now finds itself. Does feel like at some point there will be political hay to be made from pointing out that a great deal of a putative Reform front bench are exactly the same people that we all decisively removed from power in 2024.

How many Tories/ex Tories have to join before it becomes the Conservative Party (version 2)?

 

[styles]

It's interesting that so many Tories are defecting to Reform and, so far, are not tarring Reform with the brush of a) being the establishment party and b) being the very people that spent fourteen years taking the country to where it now finds itself. Does feel like at some point there will be political hay to be made from pointing out that a great deal of a putative Reform front bench are exactly the same people that we all decisively removed from power in 2024.

I think that's quite easy for Reform to knock back though. They'll just blame the Conservative party leadership of the day of silencing their views and having to tow the party line. None of the Conservative leaders since 2010 have been particularly 'successful' except perhaps Cameron, who will be praised by Tory->Reform defectors in some small sense for delivering a Brexit referendum.

 

[35B]

They haven't so far. Nominations are done by the Prime Minister, but convention has been that they also take some from the opposition parties. Reform have argued that their recent electoral successes means they should get some representation in the Lords.

And if Reform stay high in the polls, it will be harder to deny them. The likes of Zahawi will be making bets on that happening and their position in the resulting list. And, given past conventions, he'd have to be quite well placed

 

[contrex]

And if Reform stay high in the polls, it will be harder to deny them.

If these poll results are half-way reliable, then the Greens ought to have the same right. Which I wouldn't be unhappy about. 30% for Zack as PM!

 

[Bletchleyite]

If these poll results are half-way reliable, then the Greens ought to have the same right. Which I wouldn't be unhappy about. 30% for Zack as PM!

It's starting to look like a Green-Lib Dem coalition might be a pretty decent way to fend off Reform. Will be interesting to see where things go over the next few years.

 

[JamesT]

If these poll results are half-way reliable, then the Greens ought to have the same right. Which I wouldn't be unhappy about. 30% for Zack as PM!

View attachment 195782

The Greens already have peers in the Lords. Jenny Jones (nominated by the Coalition government), and Natalie Bennett (Theresa May). Reform's only Lord is due to a defection.
(The Greens have also had some others in the past)

 

[35B]

If these poll results are half-way reliable, then the Greens ought to have the same right. Which I wouldn't be unhappy about. 30% for Zack as PM!

View attachment 195782

The Greens do have at least some peers (Jenny Jones' name comes to mind), so the privilege has already been extended to them.

It's starting to look like a Green-Lib Dem coalition might be a pretty decent way to fend off Reform. Will be interesting to see where things go over the next few years.

That prospect would be a strong motivator to the right wing vote (remember "vote Miliband, get Sturgeon").

 

[sor]

Opinion polls weren't considered by parliamentary processes when the Lib Dems were sidelined (where they actually were 3rd by votes but had sit behind the SNP in more ways than one). Why would they be relevant now?

They were told for years that it's just how it is, and they'll need to get more seats.

 

[greatkingrat]

It's starting to look like a Green-Lib Dem coalition might be a pretty decent way to fend off Reform. Will be interesting to see where things go over the next few years.

The problem is most Lib Dem seats are in formerly Conservative areas in the Home Counties. I suspect most of Polanski's policies would go down like a cup of cold sick amongst this demographic.

 

[jon0844]

Social media is constantly bombarding us with posts that say the UK is lost and demanding an election now. It's clear this is because Farage is likely to win now, but every day that passes I expect the moment to begin to pass.

If he took power now, Trump and the Heritage Foundation would work closely with him and they could enact much of the Project 2025 agenda here. We could secure a 'great trade deal' and do all sorts of dodgy deals to the enrichment of Reform.

But if there isn't an election until 2029 (and there won't be) then Trump is likely long dead going by his current health, and hopefully long out of power. The USA, assuming it isn't a total dictatorship by then, will hopefully be on the road to recovery and Farage's key allies finished.

Add in the state of Reform run councils and their reputation will hopefully be ruined. If Labour does get tougher with immigration, that won't help either.

I know I'm wishing on things that may not happen, but I'm trying to be positive. It may help that I am not sure Farage wants to get involved in the daily chores of running a country any more than Boris did. He may want a quick go though, to boost his CV and help his grifting after losing power.