In a bright blue suit on a sunny day at Staffordshire County Showground, Ann Widdecombe is whipping up the Reform faithful. The crowd, who have come out to attend the party’s West Midlands summer rally, is dressed for the occasion in turquoise ties, suits and dresses.
“Why the heck,” Widdecombe is saying, “should we be told what to do by the World Economic Forum?” A chorus of boos from the crowd. “By the World Health Organisation?” More boos, the volume rising. “By… quangos?!” The boos crescendo.
“The first thing we must do is take a scythe through the quangos!” roars Widdecombe, a former Conservative prisons and employment minister, and now Reform’s immigration and justice spokesperson. “Save a lot of money and save a lot of stupidity at the same time!”
In 2015 and 2019, support for Ukip and latterly the Brexit Party dwindled in the run-up to polling day. But Reform, which began this year’s election campaign polling at around 10 per cent, has enjoyed a surge of support, particularly since Nigel Farage announced he would stand as the party’s candidate in Clacton. Reform is now polling at about 17 per cent. In a few surveys it is neck-and-neck with the Tories. Farage’s outfit is only predicted to win between 5 and 7 seats, owing to the inefficient spread of its votes, but the party is aiming higher.
“Nobody thinks any longer that we’re right at the bottom of the heap with the Greens and Lib Dems,” Widdecombe tells the turquoise sea. Look how far the party has come, she says. “If we can do that in four short weeks, think what we can do in four years.”
In 2029, we are told, Reform will become the governing party. “And by gum, when we are His Majesty’s Government, what a splendid, different, wonderful country it will be.” The crowd, who are mostly white and old, erupts in ecstasy.
It’s time for questions. For reasons that remain unclear, one former teacher recounts that the headteacher he worked under was Jewish, left-wing and had adopted two African boys. “The first thing we have to get rid of—and Reform will get rid of—is indoctrination in our schools,” Widdecombe says in response.
Once Reform has got rid of indoctrination, its manifesto says it will ban “transgender ideology” in schools, scrap the net zero target and introduce tax cuts for small businesses. It will also freeze “non-essential” migration and “pick up illegal migrants out of boats and take them back to France”.
There’s no explanation of how it will get France to accept this. A woman wearing a rosette stands up. “Ann, as a candidate, I’m always asked: ‘how are we going to stop the boats?’ Can you tell me?” She looks helpless, but Widdecombe is indignant: “I don’t know where you were earlier. Probably at the bar.”
There are a few young people scattered about, excitedly discussing Reform’s TikTok presence. Some polls say Reform is doing better than the Conservative party with voters under 24. An 18-year-old called Jack finished his A-levels two days ago. He’s wearing a Union Jack tie. “Couldn’t get away with this anywhere else,” he tells me. A lot of his friends support Reform. They’re “common sense people”, he says. He hasn’t personally experienced woke indoctrination at school, but he’s wary of it.
A former Conservative voter says he’s amazed that for once he’s agreeing with politicians. It seems like almost everyone here is an ex-Tory: unlike Ukip and the Brexit Party, which took anti-establishment votes from all sides, Reform’s success is due almost entirely to Tory defectors, furious at what they see as the party’s fundamental weakness on immigration and left-wing economic agenda. A civil servant in his twenties says he was part of the Conservative party for 10 years but can’t support it anymore. He’s wearing a Make America Great Again hat, and he has brought a Sharpie. “I was hoping Nigel might come and sign it.”
After Widdecombe, Michael Riley, the candidate for Stafford, speaks. He warns us about the number of crimes committed by foreign nationals. You can’t actually get the data on how prevalent it is, but you can look at the ethnicity count and extrapolate from there, he says. “They are heavily involved in violence, drugs, rapes. Those are the types of foreign nationals in our prisons.”
Now “Seven Nation Army” by the White Stripes blares, and Lee Anderson, the star attraction and Reform’s only MP, gets on stage. “Right, that’s enough of that rubbish,” he says as the music ends. He speaks like a disgruntled old relative. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen—hope I’ve not misgendered anybody here, the sirens will start…”
Anderson is playing the hits. He used to be in an “abusive relationship” with Labour, back when he was a Labour councillor in Ashfield. He wants his country back: “All the time people are apologising for our history, our heritage and our culture. And I’m telling you now, you’ve got nothing to apologise for.”
In February, Anderson accused London's mayor, Sadiq Khan, of being “controlled by Islamists”—comments that got him kicked out of the Tory party. “Is Mayor Khan in the building?” he asks the crowd. The booing climaxes.
“We live in a country where people daren’t say anything,” Anderson goes on. “You upset somebody on Twitter or Facebook and the boys in blue will come knocking round.” The Daily Mirror, he says, labelled him the worst man in Britain. “I was very proud of that award. I just pipped Prince Andrew to first place.”
But he got in real hot water, he says, when members of the Traveller community arrived. “Are there any Travellers here?” he asks apprehensively. A woman raises her hand, as a joke. “Come round and tarmac my drive!”
Anderson, a former coal miner and long-time member of the Labour party, was suspended from his Labour branch after using boulders to block Travellers from setting up camp. He tells it a bit differently here, though. “I just went...” he says and flashes two fingers up to the delighted crowd. “God, the Guardian’s going to have a field day with me.”
He tells a long story about being on a minibus with Diane Abbott. “Diane was paying no attention. She was there with a colouring book and a can of Foster’s.” Raucous laughter. “Sorry Diane. Good friend of mine.”
There’s the usual stuff about immigration, Albania, Rwanda, genuine and not genuine asylum seekers. “Integration!” someone interjects. “Integration,” Anderson nods. “That’s absolutely correct.”
As the rally draws to a close, some 20 candidates who are present take to the stage. A woman in a strapless black top and electric turquoise miniskirt starts singing Queen’s “I Want to Break Free”, with lightly altered lyrics. “God knows, God knows we’ve all had enough,” she sings, as the elderly candidates shuffle in the back.
On my way back to Stafford station, my Uber driver, who is from Poland, asks me if I’ve been to the rally. He picked up a man with a turquoise badge earlier who kept ranting about Muslims and immigrants—and gave him one star.
