Reform comes to London

Outside the hall, a campaign bus has frosted over. “LEE ANDERSON YOUR NO NONSENCE [sic] MP,” reads printed lettering on one of the windows. Inside, hundreds of paying Reform UK members, mostly white and over 50, are taking their seats. Everyone's bathed in blue light, the kind given off by fish tanks or used to deter people from injecting drugs in bathrooms. From behind the AV team, I can see the teleprompter warming up as a voice echoes over the crowd. “Happy new year! I can still just about say that, can’t I? A very warm welcome to Sandown Park for our south east regional conference.” 

Last month, 26 years after he first entered politics, Nigel Farage won ‘Newcomer of the Year’ at The Spectator’s parliamentary awards ceremony. Receiving his prize he promised the crowd that they were “about to witness a political revolution the likes of which we have not seen since Labour after the first world war”. We’ll never know what Ramsay MacDonald would’ve made of this comparison, but people understood what Farage meant; his politics have been gradually normalised.

Now Reform UK has five MPs and is hosting well-attended regional events like this one, in Esher on the leafy limits of Greater London. In the last general election, Reform managed to come second in four of the capital’s constituencies, mostly outside Zone 3. And although the Greens gained more votes in the capital, Reform claimed the largest positive vote swing of any party (7.3 points). 

Following a general election that saw the party attract more votes than the Liberal Democrats, Reform has had a turbulent start to the year. Encouraged by the recent election of his friend and ally Donald Trump, Farage closed out 2024 with a trip to the president-elect’s Florida Mar-a-Lago estate with luxury property mogul Nick Candy (the pair are holding a £25,000-a-head fundraiser in central London next month). On their trip, the two met with Elon Musk, now co-leading the incoming administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. There’s since been speculation that Musk could donate as much as $100m (£78m) to Reform, an injection of funds that would change the politics of the country, and an eventuality that Labour has been strangely reluctant to block with new laws controlling political donations. 

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However, 2025 has already seen tensions flare between Farage and his potential benefactor over far-right activist Tommy Robinson. Musk has been elevating Robinson on his platform, X — the preferred news source for many attendees here today — and has recently seized on the ​​grooming gang scandal, a horrifying story that’s been in the public eye for over a decade, leading to multiple public inquiries and prosecutions. In 2018, Robinson interfered with the trial of a sexual grooming gang in Leeds and was jailed for nine months. He’s now back in prison for contempt of court. Despite having supporters that are sympathetic to Robinson, Farage won’t let him in the party, leading Musk to break with Farage and call for him to be replaced as leader. Regardless, talk of Pakistani men abusing young white girls is all over the conference room today.