How Nigel Farage plans to become PM
This conference was the first time Reform UK’s supporters had gathered since the party secured more than four million votes - and five MPs - in July’s election. It was a chance for officials, volunteers and its politicians to celebrate. And celebrate they did.
Day one of the conference culminated in what one Reform source promised would be “the biggest drinking session in British political history.” It featured karaoke from Nigel Farage - hilarious or horrifying depending on your view.
Before that, each of the party’s new MPs spoke to an adoring crowd of four thousand people. The Ashfield MP Lee Anderson got the biggest laughs. Nigel Farage (saving his singing until later) got the biggest cheers.
The speeches weren’t much different from what we heard during the general election a few months earlier. But nobody seemed to notice or care. “We’re playing the hits,” said a senior Reform source.
Subscribe free to our weekly newsletter for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning.
Day two of the conference was more low-profile but far more significant. As delegates nursed their hangovers, they approved a new constitution (a handful of people in the hall opposed it, not that the vote had any real meaning). It means Nigel Farage will, in time, give up his controlling stake in the party, giving members the ability to remove him as leader.
Farage told ITV News that “loopy” and “extremely racist” Reform UK candidates caused his party “enormous damage” at the last election. “And probably rightly so,” he added. For this reason, he wants to “professionalise” the party, setting up local branches, a party board, and crucially, a better vetting process for candidates.
He spoke about his desire to emulate the Liberal Democrats campaigning tactics, and hopes members will leave this conference ready to knock on doors and gather data ahead of next year’s local elections - where in England Farage hopes his party can win hundreds of seats.
That is the first staging post over the next four years as Reform aims to become a party of government. The success - or failure - of the plans to modernise, professionalise and democratise Reform UK will determine whether Nigel Farage achieves his ambition of becoming prime minister.
Have you heard our podcast Talking Politics? Tom, Robert and Anushka dig into the biggest issues dominating the political agenda in every episode…