Joe Shalam

Joe Shalam is a director at the Centre for Social Justice

Is Reform brave enough to be a pro-family party?

Nigel Farage told Radio 4 this week that he had ‘made a mistake’ in trying to pursue pro-family policies, concluding that this is simply ‘impossible in modern Britain’. The Reform leader might be forgiven for thinking so. The moment Reform moved into this territory with a pledge to end the two-child limit (among working British families it was later clarified), the politics curdled. Britain has, in practice, built a ‘hostile environment’ for family life Voters have long suspected any proposed softening of the cap introduced in 2017, and quite rightly on the grounds of fairness. But still more so at a time when welfare budgets are running away and working Britain is creaking under the weight of the largest tax burden since the 1940s.

Can Farage prove that Reform is more than a protest?

The next election will not be won on immigration. Britain has already made up its mind. Voters want it controlled and reduced, full stop. That is why Nigel Farage’s party is head and shoulders clear in the polls. But if Reform’s pledge on immigration has been sold to the British public, the real question, as the party closes a boisterous conference this weekend, is what next? None of these ideas are extreme. Many voters when polled see them as simple common sense After all, while the party’s answer to long-ignored demands for border control is the right starting point, it cannot be the whole story. A credible party of government needs to show how it will mend the social fabric of broken Britain and improve people’s everyday lives.