Has Reform managed to win over the City?
Reform UK officials hope that its first-ever Business Day paid dividends at its conference. Maurício Alencar reports on a dramatic 72 hours in Birmingham and asks whether industry chiefs are satisfied with what they’ve heard and seen.
Asked for an umbrella phrase to describe Reform’s economic philosophy, policy guru Dr James Orr responded that the best term was “The New Right”. But it is also, in parts, the “old right” reasserting itself, the Cambridge academic and JD Vance fan mused during a Thursday afternoon event. Not “hyper-Thatcherism”, nor nationalism, but “patriotism” founded upon a “basic love of home”. The New Right is a “recovery of what you might call the politics of hope” and “cultivating the first-person-plural – a sense of we”.
This is not a simple message to get across to industry chiefs paying hundreds of pounds to attend Reform’s first-ever Business Day. It’s even less clear if The New Right is still Reform’s political ideology after Orr left the party – during conference – under a cloud of allegations.
Lobbyists have long struggled to comprehend the party’s economic vision. One source said a group of advisers were once tasked with giving a presentation to City investors with the essay question: “Explain the incoherence of Reform’s economic policy”.
Many financial services representatives at the conference were encouraged by what Robert Jenrick, the party’s economic spokesman, had to say on red tape and tax. Banking delegates were particularly curious to hear what Jenrick had to say about the City after Nigel Farage said at Davos this year he would tax the banks because he didn’t like them.
While he did not completely rule out backing a higher tax on banks and insisted there was no current commitment, sources insisted the party did not support tax hikes. It’s more likely the party will stick to a pledge to end the Bank of England’s remuneration payments on commercial bank reserves.
But Jenrick, who worked as a City lawyer before entering politics, teased an announcement for the financial and professional services sector which will cover deregulation of areas such as capital requirements and ring-fencing. The party is also set to re-write the Britannia Card, its offer to wealthy foreign investors who have left the country. And Reform may not have to worry about banking taxes anyway; sources in the City say the odds are stacked against them as Chancellor John Healey prepares to deliver the Budget.
Channel 4 News investigation alarms business chiefs
Orr, Jenrick and the Reform team’s courtship of businesses was coming together until cracks began to tear open. As industry figures piled into a large hall for dinner with Farage and other top party figures, Channel 4 News started broadcasting their headline-grabbing investigation. The sting operation by undercover activists filmed Orr and Dan Jukes, known as Farage’s closest aide, appearing to arrange a foreign donation through a middle man, complete with boasts about how easy it was to get away with.
Farage held his nerve as he joked about clashes with FTSE 250 executives including Vodafone and Serco. One person at the dinner said, however, he looked less energetic than usual. Meanwhile, officials were scrambling to deal with the consequences of the investigation behind closed doors.
The next day, it was announced that Orr and Jukes would be suspended pending an investigation. Party chairman Lee Anderson told broadcasters they would not return to the top of the party. In a press conference that was supposed to hail Farage’s deal with the French National Rally’s Jordan Bardella to stop small boat crossings, he had to bat away questions about the party’s finances and the alleged behaviour of two top officials. He dismissed it as “loose pub talk” and insisted Reform had not taken cash by illegal means.
Reform UK’s catching up
The investigation left some party officials on edge. A Reform-linked source could not understand why Orr and Jukes would take such huge risks over a proposed £35,000 donation since it had already boosted its reserves mainly through donations from the crypto investors Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne. Another said the issue had not been helpful for a party looking to assert its policies and build relationships with businessmen who feel queasy about handing cash over to Reform.
It has all characterised some of the paradoxes in Reform’s agenda. Farage says Reform is getting unfairly attacked but he is ready to admit that some officials were engaged in potential wrongdoing, pending an investigation. Jenrick says the party will deliver a budget in the first 100 days yet there are still contradictions to its approach on the wealthy and the vulnerable.
Orr says there is an intellectual philosophy behind Reform but his newly-assembled team of around a dozen policy wonks no longer have a boss to lead them. Reform has attacked Healey over not committing to a rise in defence spending yet it does not have a designated spokesman for defence.
The defence of all this has largely been that Reform is still growing, patching over blind spots and attempting to become a more professional organisation. There were hopes that this year’s much larger conference would show a party that looks the part. Many industry figures have spoken positively about the conference. But organisers of some fringe events said their panels got moved to the stage at short notice. Others complained about bureaucracy in booking Reform figures to speak, even after representatives of the party had personally agreed to take part in open discussions.
City chiefs still waiting for meetings
One senior industry group figure, who regularly speaks to government ministers and could become an important ally for Jenrick and Tice, was disappointed to not get any meetings with Reform. This was not a complaint made in isolation and points to the gap between how operators at Reform and the three mainstream parties – Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats – conduct Business Day.
There is still time, however, for engagement to take place outside of the conference. Jenrick is set to embark on a pre-Budget “roadshow” travelling across London and New York to meet finance bosses to talk up Reform’s plans for fiscal rectitude.
All eyeballs in Westminster and the City will then turn to the incoming round of polling results, which will show whether the latest scandal has made any impact. There is also a looming threat of Electoral Commission and Met Police investigations that might mean business chiefs prefer to take a wait and see approach.
Reform has remained top in the polls despite facing intense scrutiny over donations and gifts for the past six months. Should the lead be sustained over Andy Burnham’s Labour in the next three months, there will likely be a new wave of optimism in Reform that Farage can survive the latest row, and that he could become Prime Minister. There are contradictions in every political party’s ideas but the City will want Reform to prove that it is ready for government rather than simply promise that it is.