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One of the reasons the main parties are running so scared of Reform in the wake of last week’s elections in England is that the results show how much the party has learned from its past mistakes. This is now a well-oiled election-fighting machine.
Where once the 11th-hour controversy was a feature of any Reform campaign, it was smooth sailing all the way in the 2025 locals. No candidate was exposed as wholly inappropriate for office at the last minute (as happened many times over in July 2024) and no dirty laundry was aired in front of the voting public. Even accusations of carpet bagging against Andrea Jenkyns were quietly diffused in good time to see her elected as mayor of Greater Lincolnshire.
This is not to say that these problems didn’t exist, but just like Labour and the Tories, Reform is now trying its best to keep its disputes behind closed doors.
Political scientist Parveen Akhtar suggests this is in no small part thanks to the work of Zia Yusuf, Reform’s chairman — a man who has made it his mission to professionalise the party. Yusuf has brought in significant constitutional change that grants him the power to revoke membership and take disciplinary measures against candidates. It was Yusuf who led the unceremonious neutralisation of now former Reform MP Rupert Lowe, and Yusuf who put a candidate on every single ballot in these elections. It’s also, however, Yusuf who has been subject to racist abuse from his own members, without a word of support from party leader Nigel Farage.
Akhtar, a specialist in British Muslim politics, highlights what a singular and delicate position Yusuf holds. The child of immigrants is leading a staunchly anti-immigration party into the political mainstream.
You can dismiss last week’s results as “just the locals” but politics is local, grievance is local and, in Britain, decay and decline is decidedly local. Reform is capitalising on what economist Thiemo Fetzer describes as a “geography of loss”. To win back disillusioned voters, the hard work of fixing broken water fountains, reopening boarded-up high streets and funding community services must be the first priority of all political parties. As he notes: “Populism in Britain is not a cultural accident but the political expression of decades of skill-biased, place-biased, and age-biased shocks.”
In a slightly jarring televised phone call yesterday, Keir Starmer and Donald Trump announced their much lauded trade deal. We immediately asked a panel of experts what was in it and what was lacking. Their view is that this is actually quite a good deal for the UK— but also that it isn’t really a “deal”. It’s more of a framework for a deal. Here’s what it means for the car industry — and a why the two sides could be heading for a beef about beef.
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