STOP REFORM UK

Reform UK in 2025

Elite Leadership and Funding:

  • The party’s leadership, including Farage, Richard Tice, and Zia Yusuf, comes from business backgrounds, with many holding significant wealth. Farage, for example, earns over £1 million annually through various business ventures and media roles. 
  • A significant portion of Reform’s funding comes from multimillionaire donors with ties to sectors like finance, property, technology, oil and gas. This reflects the party’s pro-business agenda, which includes tax cuts for corporations and a reduction of public spending. 


Party Ownership Structure

  • While legally Reform UK is no longer owned by Farage, he still controls the party, and members have very little power in the day-to-day running of it. Reform UK, formerly the Brexit Party, is now a private company, Reform 2025 Limited.
  • The structural issues and the difficulty for members to challenge Farage’s leadership make it unclear how much real change has been achieved. Nigel Farage retains control as a “guarantor” alongside Yusuf, making it difficult for members to replace him. The mechanisms for removing Farage, including a vote by MPs or a petition from members, are impractical due to the party’s small size and scattered membership. 
  • The party lacks a committee structure, centralizing power in Farage’s hands. To fully democratize, significant legal changes would be required, but Farage seems unwilling to relinquish control, fearing the infighting that plagued UKIP.
  • Membership rights are limited to voting on policies at party conferences and removing the leader if 50% of members write to the party.

(Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oas3ymSszfI, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0r8q99vx1ko.amp)


Reform Party Infrastructure and Membership

  • The creation of over 300 branches, with plans to reach 500, suggests that they are not just focusing on national headlines. Reform is focusing on building teams, raising money, finding good political candidates and building a presence in local communities. They are focusing on hyper-local issues to help them to build credibility and trust, which might help counterbalance the perception that they are a fringe party. 
  • The growth of their membership to over 200,000, surpassing the Conservative Party’s own membership, is also a notable sign of their expanding grassroots presence.

(Sources: https://bylinetimes.com/2025/02/05/nigel-farage-is-a-political-fraud-who-must-be-exposed-as-an-nhs-privatising-putin-apologist-says-tuc-leader/, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/nigel-farage-reform-uk-conservative-party-boris-johnson-nhs-b2695001.html)


Reform UK Elected Representatives


Challenges:

  • Sustaining Momentum: The party faces challenges in translating its popularity into electoral success, particularly with a fragmented right-wing vote due to the Conservatives’ competing interests and a possible new UK far-right party.
  • Funding and Resources: Reform UK lacks the deep pockets of the major parties, relying on donations from wealthy individuals like Musk and newly appointed party treasurer Nick Candy. However, new regulations to restrict foreign political donations might complicate this. 
  • The party has a distinct lack of women involved. 
  • Zia Yusuf’s appointment created a backlash against his Muslim identity amoung some Reform supporters which highlights a potential cultural and ideological divide within the party. This could be a significant stumbling block as Reform tries to balance its appeal to the populist right with the need for broader electoral legitimacy. The issue of Muslim identity within a party that may position itself as representing a form of British nationalism could create tensions, particularly if Reform is seen as catering to nativist or exclusionary ideologies.
  • As Reform UK secured a foothold in Parliament, it faced significant internal challenges. The party’s vetting process had been inadequate, allowing unsuitable individuals to stand for election, which severely damaged its image. The selection of candidates had been chaotic, with many of its announced candidates being swapped or dropped just before polling day due to their racist, sexist, and antisemitic views on social media platforms, which led to public embarrassment for the party. 


Key Policy Areas:

  1. Immigration: Reform UK has made immigration a central focus, calling for a dramatic reduction in net migration. They propose halting visas for non-essential workers and sending asylum seekers to other EU countries. The party’s manifesto includes inflammatory rhetoric about immigration, multiculturalism, and “woke ideology,” with pledges to stop immigration and halt the boats. This is positioned as a defence of “British culture” but often borders on xenophobia, with a strong anti-immigrant and Islamophobic undercurrent. 
  2. Economic Policies:
  • Reform’s economic platform promises deep cuts to government spending, reduced taxes for businesses, and deregulation. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that such proposals could result in severe cuts to public services, harming the working class it claims to represent. 
  • Farage’s praise for the disastrous budget of Liz Truss in 2022 is indicative of his alignment with neoliberal economic policies that prioritize corporate interests over public welfare. 
  • Immigration and Labor Market: The party focuses on reducing immigration, particularly non-essential workers, and aims to send asylum seekers to other European nations, despite concerns about potential labor shortages. 
  • Bank of England and Quantitative Easing: The party is highly critical of the Bank of England’s monetary policy, proposing to end interest payments on reserves and even banning Quantitative Easing (QE), a policy introduced during the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. This has led to polarized reactions from economists. 
  1. Environmental Policy: Reform UK opposes net-zero carbon emission policies, which it argues place unnecessary financial burdens on businesses and consumers.
  2. Anti-progressive policies: Reform’s platform also includes rolling back progressive policies related to equality, diversity, and public services aimed at supporting vulnerable communities. 


Viability of Policies:

Economists have raised doubts about the feasibility of many of Reform UK’s economic plans:

  • Cuts to Public Spending: Many experts are skeptical of Reform UK’s economic proposals, particularly their unrealistic savings claims from cuts to government spending and monetary policy changes. 
  • Claims on QE: The proposed changes to QE and the Bank of England’s policies are considered unrealistic by some financial experts. While they might save money, these proposals could undermine the central bank’s ability to manage the economy. 
  • Reform UK’s policies have sparked heated debate, especially around the issue of immigration, with concerns that reducing migration could hurt the UK’s critical sectors, including health and social care. 
  • Some of their more radical economic positions, like dismantling QE, have been criticized for potentially destabilizing financial markets. 


(Sources: Bloomberg article, HOPE not hate State of Hate 2025)