Reform

Of all the uses to which Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne might put their money, there are few more innocent than giving it to a political party. Neither want, nor expect, preferment, honours or patronage. Both are idealistic by nature and philanthropic by habit. They have all the personal wealth they need to fund their lifestyles, and harbour hopes only for enriching Britain by their actions. I might not agree with all their ideas for how one might make this country stronger, or indeed how best to spend £72 million to improve our governance. But they have shown themselves a good deal shrewder than me in making money, and they should be entitled, within the law, to spend it as they wish.

Kemi Badenoch, headlines my newspaper, ‘prepares Tories for early general election’ with her big reshuffle this week. I do not myself think an early election is the probability. It would be hugely risky. Labour would certainly lose scores of seats to Reform; and the requirement for Andy Burnham to produce an actual manifesto rather than – as at present – a distracting sprinkle of happy thoughts would make his government an easy target for a dangerous Conservative ‘They’re coming for your money’ campaign. Reform are still strong. Better, perhaps, to wait until (as I expect) Nigel Farage loses his mojo, the Greens fail to recover theirs, and Britain begins a slow return to something like the two-party system that first-past-the-post tends to encourage.

If Tolstoy had written about British politics, he might have noted: ‘Happy parties are all alike; every unhappy party is unhappy in its own way.’ Reform UK is beginning to resemble a laboratory test for the idea that every party run by Nigel Farage is unhappy in the same way. Just as in Ukip and the Brexit party, a highly dominant leader exists at the centre of a court, with extreme tensions between loyalist long marchers and arrivistes, between insurgency and respectability, between campaigning and preparing for government. On Monday a new round of bloodletting erupted, when the founder of ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie, who defected to Reform two years ago, was suspended following his public criticism of Farage and the home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf.

The man from Reform had barely sat down at our table at the French bistro when he leant forward conspiratorially and asked: ‘What’s Boris up to?’ The suspicion that Boris Johnson, Britain’s 55th premier, must be up to something is a familiar one. For the first time in several years, however, the question is interesting. And the fact that Reform is raising it gives a small insight into the current state of politics. The query came just hours after Johnson had taken to Instagram to mark the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum, the defining moment of his career and of our politics since. The 17.4 million voters who backed the Leave campaign were right to do so, he said, before going on to hail the freedoms of Brexit.

The loudest man in politics knows when to keep his silence. Nigel Farage held his tongue on Monday as Keir Starmer’s premiership floundered. Aside from a few PFLs – proper f***ing lunches – to celebrate the local election results, the Reform UK leader was already looking to the next challenge. Like a shark, Farage keeps moving forward, into new waters, hungry for more. One ally sums up his approach to politics in a single word: ‘Momentum’. For the past few months, Farage has had one goal: destroying the Tories. The figure ‘1,453’ was the total of gains proudly pumped out on Reform’s Instagram. For Farage, 7 May was the political equivalent of the fall of Constantinople – the point when the Conservatives ceased to be a national party.

Results are pouring in from across the country, in what Nigel Farage is calling ‘the British midterms’. Swathes of council seats across England have turned teal, from Newcastle-under-Lyme to Essex. Both the Liberal Democrats and Greens have made modest gains, with few rays of light outside the capital for the Conservatives. Yet the main action is still to come with results expected later today for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments. Reform UK is expected to make the biggest gains in both while Plaid Cymru and the SNP are confident of taking the respective First Ministerships in Cardiff and Edinburgh.  Discussing all of this on SpectatorTV are Tim Shipman, Noa Hoffman and special guests Lord Glasman, pollsters Scarlett Maguire and Luke Tryl plus STV star Lucy Dunn.