Harry Yorke, the Sunday Times’s Deputy Political Editor, has been on the campaign trail with Nigel Farage and Richard Tice and thinks he’s rumbled their dastardly plan – to take over the Conservative Party after they’ve reduced it to a smoking ruin after the election. Or is it just that they hope Reform will replace the Tories over the course of the next Parliament?
Here’s how it begins:
It is 4.30pm on Friday and along Skegness high street a large crowd is gathering outside Indulgence, an ice cream parlour.
Here, in the country’s biggest Brexit-supporting seat, Richard Tice, the leader of Reform UK, is seeking to overturn a 25,000 majority, replace the local Conservative MP and turn the right of British politics on its head.
It is not Tice, a former Tory donor and successful businessman, who people are craning their necks to catch a glimpse of, though. Most do not know his name, although a handful recognise his face from TV.
As Tice sets to work, making introductions and distributing leaflets, the man pulling in the crowds emerges, sporting his customary tweed jacket and mustard corduroy trousers.
Nigel Farage has arrived, surrounded by bodyguards, aides, cameras and broadcast journalists. It is abundantly clear to all who is really calling the shots.
As the pair make their way up the street towards the working men’s club, the commotion around Farage grows louder. Three young men, inexplicably dressed in pink hi-vis jackets, begin chanting his name and ask for a photograph, as Tice trails behind making further introductions to locals.
Minutes later, a middle-aged couple ask Farage for a picture. Tice dutifully snaps away.
Farage is undoubtedly a hit here, which is why it is perplexing — and frustrating — for some party figures that he has chosen not to stand in this election.
Instead it is Tice, a man who has sunk £1 million of his own money into rebuilding Reform from its old Brexit Party incarnation, who is the figurehead.
Sipping an alcohol-free Guinness 0.0 at the Stump and Candle pub in nearby Boston, Tice insists he is not only unfazed by Farage’s continued pulling power but actively welcomes it.
“I want as many people talking about us, for whatever reasons,” he says. “And the fastest way to do that is taking the benefit from the fact that Nigel is the best known politician, I think equally with Boris, in the country, and would be recognised as much. That is a huge opportunity.”
It goes on like this at length before finally arriving at the headline news.
The biggest question of all, however, is what Farage wants to do after polling day. For months now, a growing band of Conservative MPs have been agitating openly for him to be admitted to the party; even Rishi Sunak now says he “respects” him.
Close friends of Farage believe his real plan is to wait for the Tories to implode, and in the aftermath arrive as a saviour in waiting. “He doesn’t want to be the person who puts the bullet in the back of their heads, why be seen to alienate Conservative voters?” said one, while a second, a senior Tory, said: “Our party needs to be able to come back with people like Nigel, where we basically go back to be that authentic Thatcherite party — his natural home.”
Tice says he wants to destroy and replace the Conservative Party, but when asked if he feels the same, Farage says: “I certainly don’t have any trust for them or any love for them.” So does he want to change it? “I want to reshape the centre-right, whatever that means.”
Asked directly if his friends are right and he wants to join the Tories, he adds: “Why do you think I called it Reform? Because of what happened in Canada — the 1992-93 precedent in Canada, where Reform comes from the outside, because the Canadian Conservatives had become social democrats like our mob here. It took them time, it took them two elections, they became the biggest party on the centre-right. They then absorbed what was left of the Conservative Party into them and rebranded.”
I suggest this sounds a lot like he’s floating a merger. “More like a takeover, dear boy,” he replies, grinning like a Cheshire Cat.
Worth reading in full.
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Farage was right not to contest a seat. He is much better working for Reform to attract publicity for their manifesto.
The Tories have made it clear they will not work with Reform and made it clear they do not want right leaning Tories either.
Whic ever Party win, there will be months of recess in which NF can go to America to support Trump.
Agreed. He’s better as “free-floating Farage” ….. floating like a butterfly over the whole country and (hopefully) stinging like a bee.
The Tories cheated in Thanet, where McKinley “won” …. with several ballot boxes going mysteriously missing for several hours and a Tory Election Agent given a 9 month suspended sentence for breaking electoral law. They’d do the same again.
Gosh…. there are no flies on Harry Yorke
Ultimately the Tories, even if they narrowly win in a hung Parliament (which I am positive will happen) need to go back to basics. Trying to be Corbyn for the last 5 years has been disastrous, being Nick Clegg for the 10 prior to that was arguably worse. The only good period they had was when they had an actual Tory leader and they hated her so parachuted Sunak in against their own rules.
If Farage moved to them, I’d wish him well but I would not vote for them. They completely and utterly, forever no matter what, lost my vote when they knifed Truss. I don’t care about sodding cake, I care about my wage packet, I care about what my granddaughter is being taught, I care about the fact the Met, BBC, the Police, the Government, the Post Office can no longer be trusted.
I’m voting Reform because we need real people not robots. I want policies that benefit people not companies. I want institutions that do not do dances, call each other “they” and bend knees to terrorists.
Will we all be like Robert The Bruce in the end ,
I actually thought Bozo was going to save us & look what happened , can’t see a way out of it ! IABATO as John Ward says 
“They knifed Truss”, you say??? That imbecile knifed the country and was rightly booted out before she could do even more damage.
I thought Farage was taking the mickey when he said that, implying that the Tory party will be insignificant after the election.
Farage would be totally wasted as an MP. He is a marketing man through and through and unlike Johnson would not let a woman determine his policies for him.
Takeover a party with a party – business as usual.
Well yes but parties do differ from one another, in recent times very little. If Reform continue with their current set of policies, they at least offer some mainstream alternative to left wing parties, and they render the Conservative Party pointless. Or perhaps the point of the Conservative Party is to pretend convincingly enough that they are conservative to capture the conservative vote, but mainly implement left wing policies. Lots of Tories where I live don’t seem to have noticed the Tory party is not conservative, they just see some soundbites and put their “X” against them.
Different party, same system. If system-says-no, does it matter what party it is?
What do you mean by “system”? Who makes the decisions and speaks for this “system”?
The Globalist lackies I guess.
A collection of groups and people we don’t vote for that tend to have greater influence over those we do vote for. Those we are permitted to vote for have no obligation to represent us and can therefore work to benefit Other Interests. It’s just putting on a show to give the illusion of legitimacy where none should exist.
Well yes but a party of government may choose to deviate from that path, though of course they would have to face the consequences – probably what happened to Truss.
Normal service was quickly resumed.
Sadly
Courage, skill and patience (from the citizens and the government) are required to take a different path, and ideally persuading other nations to do the same
Doubt I will live to see it
Funny how Farage has finally found the stones to say what Tommy Robinson, Katie Hopkins, Anne Marie Waters and Gerard Batten from UKIP who Farage pushed the last ladder away from them. He was too concerned abut making UKIP more ‘respectable’ then address these time bombs that they and people like Mark Steyn were warning about for decades.
Yes, Nigel once boasted that he had single-handedly destroyed Nick Griffin and the British National Party.
The Reformatives? Or the Conformatives?
And after only 9 years in power, the “Rebranded Tories of Canada” were replaced by the Nightmare Globalist Despot Trudeau.