Reform UK Nigel Farage

There is something sulphurous about Zia Yusuf. The deep-set, unblinking eyes; the ardent belief in his own mission; the position as a Rasputin at the court of Tsar Nigel Farage; a fervid, prophetic interloper. When not prowling the streets of Dover, hunting for an aquatic Afghan to harangue, Yusuf seems to spend his time falling out with his Reform colleagues, having rings run around him by the former editor of this magazine on panels, and speaking about new arrivals with an acidity that only a second-generation immigrant can command. Reader, he terrifies me. I’m no great fan of Ben Wallace; the Afghan resettlement cover-up was a national disgrace. But as Stephen Pollard has written, Yusuf’s branding of him as a ‘traitor’ was a step too far: nasty for the sake of being nasty.

https://twitter.com/RupertLowe10/status/2083801359913021951?s=20 Best of Frenemies? Following the Greater Manchester mayoral by-election, Rupert Lowe, Reform MP turned Restore Britain leader, has made a big, open and comprehensive offer to Nigel Farage. In Manchester, Restore Britain received 46, 289 votes and pushed the Conservatives into fifth. Now, Lowe has publicly called on Farage to put ‘personal differences’ aside and unite their efforts to deliver a ‘patriotic government’.

A lazy framing of British party politics portrays Reform UK playing the equivalent role on the right of British politics that the Green Party does on the left, with each outflanking the Conservatives and Labour, their respective rivals on the centre-right and centre-left. It’s lazy in that it takes far too little account of the way in which the traditional distinction between left and right - the size of the state, and how heavily regulated and taxed an economy is - is no longer the main ideological fracture between the different parties. Increasingly, it’s wrong. Whoever gets into government after the next election will only have one shot The evidence comes from Reform's rapidly emrging vision.