I thought it might be interesting to have a separate thread on Reform UK. They've been making headlines of late with membership overtaking the Conservatives, strong polling, regional conferences, support from Musk and then the expression from Musk that Farage wasn't the person to lead them and how might Musk engineer a replacement for Farage.
So what's the news today?
From a paper keen on Reform UK, the Daily Express
Quote:
Nigel Farage breaks silence after 12 Reform councillors quit over Elon Musk
Nigel Farage has addressed the claims he is "autocratic", "disloyal", and "not up to the job" made by 12 Reform UK councillors who announced plans to resign on Friday.
The councillors' decision was reported by the Guardian as Mr Farage was attending Reform's event in Surrey.
The resignations came after a public spat between Mr Farage and Elon Musk, who had planned to donate around £80 million to Reform before then suggesting the party should have a new leader.
Mr Farage told the BBC that the 12 councillors - all from Derbyshire - were part of a "rogue branch" of the party.
He said: "We had a rogue branch putting people up and I think you'll find, in many cases, there will have to be by-elections because they were not legitimately put forward," Farage told the news organisation.
"Apparently one of them shared a Tommy Robinson post a few years ago. We have got no issue with that."
Chairman of Reform UK, Zia Yusuf, posted on X: "The leader of this group of 'councillors' was suspended weeks ago by Reform for: 1) nominating candidates that failed vetting. 2) fraudulently nominating candidates with an invalid DNO certificate.
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https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknew...bb3c8fe7d&ei=7
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An interesting article on its policy shift to the left.
Quote:
Why Farage is turning left
Five years on, Farage is playing a rather different tune. In an interview with PoliticsJOE this week, the Reform leader highlighted his common ground with Corbyn: “Anti-establishment, obviously. A sense that the giant corporates now dominate the world that we live in, that politics is very much in the pockets of the big corporates,” he said after being told of a former Corbyn supporter who now backed Reform.
“My thinking and Corbyn’s does cross over. I mean, Corbyn was a Eurosceptic right from the very start. He thought that what Brussels would do is be good for big banks and big businesses and bad for everybody else. Well, he was pretty much right.”
Farage – an astute political entrepreneur – has spotted a gap in the political market. In an age of anger, there are votes to be won from railing against big business. “In some ways, my economic narrative against the global corporatists is quite left wing,” he told the New Statesman last year...
The unfilled space in British politics has long been for a party that is both socially conservative and economically populist (“fund the NHS and hang the paedos” as it is sometimes known). In recent weeks there have been signs that Reform is seeking to occupy this territory.
The party has called for the renationalisation of Thames Water and championed domestic steel production (Lee Anderson has urged the UK to “copy China”). Its manifesto argued for a “new model that brings 50 per cent of each [national] utility into public ownership”.
Labour MPs – 86 of who have Reform in second place – have observed this shift and are troubled by it. “Farage senses Labour has left a vacuum in northern working-class communities,” one told me. “In order to take those seats he is reorienting his economic strategy.”
There are limits to Reform’s leftist turn. In some respects the party’s pitch remains classically Thatcherite – championing lower taxes and lower spending. This is not least due to its membership. As a recent poll by Queen Mary University of London and Sussex University found, 56 per cent of Reform members believe that the government should cut taxes and spend less on public services (compared to 44 per cent of Conservative members).
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https://www.newstatesman.com/politic...s-turning-left