Inside Reform's Bid To Get Serious
9 min read
Reform UK’s fag-in-mouth, pint-in-hand public image belies a determined effort to professionalise the insurgent party to maximise its electoral potential, reports Harriet Symonds
Reform UK is riding high in the polls, catching the giant wave sent rolling across the Atlantic from Donald Trump’s America. But its senior leadership know that if it fails to turn the vibes into votes at this May’s local elections, it could be washed up again.
Zia Yusuf, the party’s chairman, has ambitiously predicted that Reform will win between 350 to 400 seats at the next general election. The credibility of such predictions will depend on actual performance at the polling booth, however.
Wisely perhaps, no Reform leader has made a prediction for May’s locals in which there are 1641 seats up for grabs, but given the party has just seven of those up for election at present, it is starting from a low base.
Yusuf is on a mission to professionalise the outfit so it can fully exploit this moment. The last six months have seen a rapid expansion, with more than 400 new branches and an overhaul to its candidate selection processes.
It has also been engaged in overhauling its structures in a move that leaders say will hand more power to members. Up until now, Nigel Farage has owned more than 50 per cent of shares in a so-called limited guarantee company that controlled the party, but, pending sign-off from the Electoral Commission, this will be changed to make Reform UK more in line with other political parties.
The most pressing concern of Yusuf and others, however, is to prevent a repeat of the debacles that marred its general election campaign. Then the party relied on an external company to do all its candidate vetting. Among those waved through was a candidate who praised Hitler’s “brilliant” tactics. All vetting is now being done in-house.
Applicants’ social media and career history have been scrutinised carefully, and character references taken from others in local branches, say insiders. Their values and motivations for standing under the Reform banner have also been questioned as part of a process the party hopes will prove to be far more robust.
“It's broadly an assessment of whether we think this person is an outstanding member of their community that would be a good elected official for their constituents,” says Yusuf.
Many come from business and private sector backgrounds across a range of industries, from tech to farming, a deliberate attempt, say insiders, to cultivate a pool of candidates that could challenge Labour in target seats at the next election.
“I think you do need to run the government like a business and I think the more business experience that we can have as part of the party the better,” explains Tom Allison, Reform branch chairman for Basildon and Billericay and web designer by trade.
We're going to have some pretty cool technology, well ahead of the other parties that is proprietary to us
Naturally enough, Reform has been weeding out and rejecting applicants who do not meet its new standards. A senior figure says they have had “ridiculous numbers” of Conservative councillors interested in defecting but many have failed the vetting stage when it becomes clear that they aren’t joining for the right reasons. “We've actually said no to the majority of them,” they insist.
In response to the growing number of defections, the party claims to have set up a dedicated team to specifically handle these applications.
According to one Reform source, an applicant hoping to stand for them in the upcoming local elections didn’t pass the vetting because he was caught shoplifting at 12, “even though he gave it back”. They conceded that James McMurdock, 38, Reform MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, who was convicted of assault at the age of 19 would fail the vetting in place now. Even Farage might not have made it, they say.
Those that pass vetting are offered to attend one of the training days taking place across the country, known as the ‘Centre of Excellence’, funded by HQ and tasked with turning the party’s candidates into expert campaigners.
“It's teaching them how to knock on doors effectively, how to conduct yourself, how to think strategically about how to get data on where your voters are, how to engage them effectively, and then how to get them to turnout for Reform on polling day,” says Yusuf.
HQ is offering candidates tech support, bespoke emailing and messaging, as well as a digital marketing strategy. On gathering voter data, they hint that its methods will be more advanced than other parties and trying to follow in the footsteps of Dominic Cummings' data strategy in the VoteLeave campaign: “We're going to have some pretty cool technology, well ahead of the other parties that is proprietary to us.”
You can’t treat them like Goldman Sachs lackeys. It was never going to work
According to the Reform party chairman, almost 1,000 people have attended the training since it was launched.
“It's a proper ground-up introduction to campaigning,” says Allison. “There’s an introductory presentation, workshop and collaborative exercise. You get a task, and then you go away into separate rooms, and then you present at the end, all that good stuff.”
Candidates are also taught “the secret formula” for winning elections, according to Joseph Boam, North West Leicestershire branch chairman and multiple business owner. “I know for a fact the party used it in multiple by-elections, and I believe they've won all the ones they've used it in,” he says without disclosing the mystery ingredients.
“The most important thing to get them started on is learning the nuts and bolts of ground campaigning because that's ultimately going to be the thing that moves the needle for us the most,” explains Yusuf.
On the training day, candidates are also advised to go campaigning in pairs to keep safe but are not being offered media training until after they win. It is understood that the party’s former communications chief, Gawain Towler, offered to lead a media training course for candidates but was turned down by the party. Towler was fired from Reform shortly after Yusuf’s arrival as chairman and one of his first acts to professionalise the party.
Some efforts at professionalisation have been dropped: the party attempted organising weekly performance reviews with local branch chairmen, but it never got off the ground, according to one Reform source. As the roles are all unpaid and voluntary, the idea was quickly scrapped. “You can’t treat them like Goldman Sachs lackeys. It was never going to work”, says the insider.
Yusuf is treating the party “like a start-up” say insiders who claim he is writing a company handbook in the drive to set standards. “Zia’s driving all that with a very robust, rapid approach,” claims another senior Reform figure.
But one insider says a consequence of the push to professionalise means that it’s now “make one mistake and you’re out” for staff. The ruthlessness may be at odds with its more cavalier public image but is perhaps a sign of how seriously the party is taking the prospect of power.
We’re definitely not going to be working with think tanks
No longer stuck in a shared office space, Reform’s HQ is now based out of Millbank Tower, once home to New Labour. The office’s drab beige walls have been brightened up by the blue logo – one MP describes the space as “smart and cool”.
The party has been on a hiring spree since the election but recently axed a handful of staff. One insider predicts that some of the newer hires “won’t be able to hack it when things get tough,” adding: “They’ve had it so easy since the election.”
This might also explain the party’s decision to bring back John Gill, a press officer from the old UKIP days. He is thought to be an experienced but level-headed figure who will be invaluable to steady the ship as Reform continues to expand.
Unlike other political parties, senior figures are committed to producing policy in-house instead of turning to think tanks.
“We’re definitely not going to be working with think tanks”, says one senior figure, who explains this is one of the reasons other parties fail in government because it makes their policy disjointed. “It's a way for lobbyists to infect policy.”
“We'll take stuff that think tanks publish, but policy is going to be done in-house,” they insist. However, there are rumours that the party has been considering setting up its own think tank but discussions have not yet progressed past the early stages.
The party already has a policy unit in place but is keeping tight-lipped about any names involved. “ It's going to be people from industry, the brightest and best people from the world of technology, people from the world of construction and house building and medicine and people who have worked in the NHS”, says a senior Reform figure.
Reform says they want to “put British interests first” in the same way that Trump and Elon Musk are doing in the United States – Farage is even signalling his desire for Britain to have its own DOGE, the government efficiency department run by Musk. There are concerns by some senior figures that if or when Reform enters No 10, attempts to push their agenda through could be met with resistance from what Yusuf has described as “a woke, super left civil service and supreme court”.
Thinking ahead to how they deliver its agenda, the party is already recruiting the expertise and knowledge to get around this obstacle. “The people who we are turning to initially for policy are brilliant constitutional lawyers and people who have had experience in taking on the blob,” the senior figure adds.
Reform promises its policy will be informed by “common sense”, but its current policy offering is relatively thin. Other than committing to scrap inheritance tax and introducing a windfall tax on renewables, they have yet to come out with much else.
The party’s first major policy to scrap “net stupid zero” – as Richard Tice calls it – has had blowback from Conservatives who have branded it “clueless”, “more left than a German roundabout” and “anti-capitalist”.
Unlike the Tories and Labour, the five Reform MPs do not hold their own shadow cabinet to make decisions. But one of the quintet describes their more relaxed approach to decision-making as “agile and smart”.
The party is in no rush to commit to policy at this early stage, with the next general election still four years away. “It's hard to know exactly what prescription is going to be required by the time we win the election and Nigel's the Prime Minister”, says Yusuf.
For all the talk of forming the next government, Reform UK still has a mountain to climb. Crucially, in 2029, Trump will be on his way out of office, and Labour will have had four years to push through its agenda. There’s no doubt Reform is readying itself for power, but the success or failure of both Trump and Labour will determine if Reform can seize power or if it has missed the moment.
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