Part glam rock concert, part American sales rally, Nigel Farage’s Reform party conference drew a crowd of 4,000. That’s even more than Hereford F.C. draws for a home match.
The morning queue stretched to the car park of the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre. It consisted of lots of middle-aged blokes but not exclusively so. Most were white.
There were fewer Barbours and tomato-coloured corduroys than old Ukip. A few baseball caps but only one Panama hat.
Mr Farage himself spoke at the end of an afternoon of lustily-cheered speeches. The best of these came from ginny-voiced Rupert Lowe (MP for Great Yarmouth), who got away with quoting Socrates and Tacitus.
He received roars of approval when he proposed scrapping diversity-related jobs in the public sector, getting rid of 20mph speed limits and defunding ‘the monopolistic and malign BBC’.
Nigel Farage spoke at the end of an afternoon of lustily-cheered speeches at the Reform Conference, writes QUENTIN LETTS
Mr Farage walking out on stage to deliver his speech at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre. He reminded me of Moses stepping over beached sprats and sea-weeded rocks on the bed of the parted Red Sea
The BBC really was not popular. Lee Anderson (MP for Ashfield) produced a TV licence reminder he had received. ‘What should I do with it?’ he asked with ripe innocence. Four thousand voices chanted ‘Rip It Up! Rip It Up!’
He tore it in four and the crowd screamed and ululated, delight gargling in their throats like warm goat blood in the gullets of Amazonian tribespeople.
Half an hour late, suntanned Nigel finally entered via one of the public entrances and slowly strolled through the masses.
But for the thumping Eminem rap music, it reminded me of my childhood Bible and an illustration of Moses stepping over beached sprats and sea-weeded rocks on the bed of the parted Red Sea.
Mr Farage sashayed up to the stage – it is a strangely mincing gait – and his first act was to fumble in his jacket pocket and extract a pair of new spectacles. ‘D’ya like them?’ he asked. ‘I bought them myself.’ The words ‘unlike that freeloader Starmer’ did not need to be said.
During the election, most of Reform’s fire was aimed at the Conservatives. Now it is at Labour. Perma-tanned compere David Bull – shades of the late Leslie Crowther but minus his raw butchness – was first to have a stab at the new government by criticising Rachel Reeves’ moves against pensioners.
Other speakers had a go at ‘Loony Lammy’ at the foreign office and ‘mad’ Ed Miliband and his Net Zero ideas.
Well, they’re in government now, so this was inevitable. But who created that enormous majority for them? Er, Reform, by splitting the right-wing vote.
Repeatedly we heard that Reform was going to win the 2029 general election and that Nigel Farage would be installed in Downing Street. This won fervid applause every time. But no one broached the subject of an electoral pact with the Tories. If they don’t do that, it seems most unlikely the Left can be ejected.
But what a blast the zeal-jammed Reformites had, all the same. Ann Widdecombe stomped to the front of the stage and pinked away like a backfiring Margaret Rutherford.
Ant Middleton, TV presenter and former commando, delivered a windy motivational speech but won a big cheer by saying British values were based on Christianity. Richard Tice MP, deputy leader, was introduced as ‘the thinking woman’s crumpet’ and sighed that it was ‘such fun!’.
The only dud was the party’s chairman, Zia Yusuf, smooth as peanut butter.
Mr Farage leaving the stage after his speech. We repeatedly heard at the conference that Reform was going to win the 2029 general election and that he would be installed in Downing Street
The only dud was the party’s chairman, Zia Yusuf, smooth as peanut butter
As for Mr Farage’s speech, it was partly about the party’s ownership structure and the creation of branches. ‘Never thought I’d say this but we’ve got to be more like the Lib Dems,’ he said.
He meant it only in terms of organisation.
Ideologically, the dithery ninnies who attended the Lib Dems’ conference earlier this week were chiefly interested in stopping other people doing things. At Labour’s conference tomorrow there will be business schmoozers and vested interests.
The Tories’ conference in a week’s time will be lucky, in box-office terms, to match a midweek 2nd XI county cricket game.
This Reform gig was quite different, in size and tone. And not, so far as I could see, a single lobbyist.