The slow death of Reform

It would be remiss of me if I didn’t pass comment on the news yesterday that Ben Habib has resigned from Reform. Though it’s not really news. Habib was kicked out of the inner circle having failed to win a seat at the general election. That was the end of his influence. You can be elected into Farage’s gang, or buy your way into it, but you can only stay in it so long as you don't complain, accept things as they are, and do as you're told. But that’s untenable for Ben Habib who has been pushing, to no avail, for the party to democratise.

This news, probably not coincidentally, landed on the same day as former MP, Andrea Jenkyns “defecting” to Reform. For Reform it’s a downgrade, but Ms Jenkyns is thick as mince and unlikely to challenge Farage, which is how he likes it. This all seems to confirm that Reform is not going to develop into a serious party and will remain a cult of personality. Leopards can’t change their spots.

This hasn’t gone down well with Habib’s army of supporters who are already expressing doubts about the direction of Reform. Farage seems to be going out of his way to antagonise his natural supporters on the right with a view to sanitising the party. It only adds to the perception that Reform is gradually morphing into a duplicate Tory party.

On the whole, it wasn’t a good day for Farage. He revealed the unpleasant side to his character when asked about Ben Habib’s resignation. He burst into a rendition of “The Sun has got his hat on, hip hip hip hooray”. It’s not a good look to rejoice in the departure of one of the party’s most revered figures. Then, when asked by Sky News if Reform MP, James McMurdock, would have been selected had be been vetted, Farage, declining to answer, threw him under the bus.

Adding to Farage’s woes, Starmer is coming out all guns blazing, attacking the Tory record on immigration, accusing the Conservatives of running an open borders experiment. With Starmer making a renewed play for the Red Wall, and Farage having disowned the “ethno-right, essentially ruling out remigration - and having unceremoniously dumped the one man who could bring intellectual coherence to the party, Reform is left floundering.

With new figures suggesting an influx of nearly a million people last year, Starmer only needs to make marginal adjustments to be tougher than the Tories. This doesn’t leave much room for Olukemi Badenough. There has clearly been a realisation within the Labour party that immigration is the battleground on which the next election will be fought. We may even see a bidding war between all parties to present the most robust policies, making an irrelevance of Farage.

We should also recall that five years is an eternity in politics. Since it’s now abundantly clear that Farage hasn’t changed, and Reform isn’t going to evolve, it seems likely we will see familiar patterns unfolding.

Rupert Lowe is emerging as not just Reform’s most effective MP, but also the most effective MP currently on the right, taking a harder line on immigration than Farage. As such, he runs the risk of stealing the limelight from the great leader, thus his days as a Reform MP could be numbered. I said from the outset that Reform would enter the 2029 election with fewer MPs than it has now - and that’s still a safe bet. James McMurdock may also face the sack if the media keeps digging up his past.

Essentially, we are seeing the Farage paradox in action. The party couldn’t stay in business without him, but they can’t afford to keep him. Wherever he goes, chaos follows. If a rift opens between Lowe and Farage, the party may even break out into civil war and self-destruct before the next election.

Either way, it doesn’t look good. Even without internal wranglings, Reform could even end up being outflanked by Starmer on immigration, while his own activist base peels off and joins the Homeland Party. I’m not the only one who struggles to see what function Reform serves these days.

Farage may believe he’s professionalising the party by alienating hard-liners, but the key reason Reform underperformed at the last election was the absence of a ground game. The hard-liners are the people who would otherwise be pounding the pavements and doing the gruntwork. He may find his ground troops going on strike. Diluting the message is not going to win him any new friends in the media, and it’s not doing much for party morale.

That said, being that Farage has a certain flair for electioneering, it's still possible that Reform could reach new heights, but it will shed any talent it has, and every principle it holds in the process, to become exactly what it seeks to replace. Once again, the so-called revolt-on-the-right will have been defeated by its own leadership.