“I went to the Reform conference so you didn’t have to”
Reform UK rolled into Birmingham this week with the swagger of a touring circus and the self-belief of a blockbuster franchise convinced its sequel is going to smash the box office.
At the NEC, buses pulled up like a football away day, spilling out turquoise-shirted fans waving flags and chanting slogans. You could feel the intent: this was no longer a protest party; this was an audition for power.
But scratch the gloss and you find something else: a feverish mash-up of evangelical rally, pantomime, and reality TV spin-off.
A carnival of costumes
Inside, the visual theatre was unavoidable. Union Jack suits strutted past “Make Britain Great Again” caps, with Reform football shirts stretched proudly across bellies that had seen more pubs than pitches. One gentleman sported a Keir Starmer mask complete with floppy hairy ears – cosplay colliding with protest politics. It was political fandom at its most unhinged.
There was no hostility in the air, only a sort of deranged camaraderie. As one member muttered to me: “It’s like church, just without the hymns – unless you count God Save the King at the end.” That summed it up: politics as performance, belief as spectacle.
Jeremy Kyle’s strange turn
Enter Jeremy Kyle, prowling the floor as the surprise host of Reform TV. This wasn’t gravitas – it was daytime television dropped into prime-time politics. Kyle waved his mic like a weapon, pouncing on unsuspecting members with awkward, confrontational questions. One poor soul, asked what Reform meant to him, blurted out a melodramatic line about “restoring Britain” only to discover his hot mic was still on as he fumbled for his pint.
It was pure Kyle: blunt, uncomfortable, compulsively watchable. Reform had borrowed not just his voice but his entire aesthetic – chaos packaged as authenticity.
Farage the showman
Then the main act: Nigel Farage. He strode onstage bathed in American-style lighting, a political P.T. Barnum. He thundered through a Trumpian playlist of promises: illegal migration stopped in a fortnight, stop-and-search unleashed, net zero scrapped.
To prove he was serious, he rolled out a so-called “government preparation department,” fronted by ex-Goldman Sachs banker Zia Yusuf, and basked in the glow of fresh defections like Nadine Dorries. The script was clear: Reform UK isn’t just a pressure group, it’s a government-in-waiting. The vibe? Less Commons chamber, more action sequel: Reform 2 – This Time It’s Personal.
The fringe: conspiracy, martyrdom, and bad pop
On the fringes, things slipped into full surrealism. One delegate insisted lizards secretly run the world – a David Icke fever dream given house room. Lucy Connolly took the main stage to relive her imprisonment for tweets, delivering it with the fervour of a free-speech martyr. Then, without warning, Andrea Jenkyns burst on to sing her new track Insomnia.
The most crazy part was Dr Aseem Malhotra‘s comment on the main stage: “It’s highly likely that the Covid vaccines have been a significant factor in the cancers of members of the royal family.” Then asking the crowd if they have heard any conspiracy theories today.
It was like Glastonbury programmed by GB News: paranoia, grievance and cabaret, thrown into one dizzying spectacle.
The Americanisation of British politics
The production values screamed stateside. Giant projection screens, smoke machines, even pyrotechnics – this wasn’t a political conference, it was a Vegas residency. Reform’s turquoise glow turned the NEC into a stadium show. This is the Americanisation of our politics: fireworks replacing policy detail, spectacle standing in for substance.
The party clearly sees itself not as a movement of grumblers but as Britain’s answer to Trumpism – slick, emotive, weaponising performance as power.
The after-party
And then came the after-party. Two of the Jackson brothers – yes, those Jacksons – took the stage at £25 a head. It quickly dissolved into something between an OAP festival and a defiant political knees-up. Middle-aged hands clapped overhead, lager sloshed, and even the stiffest retirees found themselves swaying and popping hips.
One man summed it up while clutching his pint plastic glass of beer: “It’s not networking, it’s a night out.” Reform, in that moment, wasn’t a political party – just a party.
Building on last year
To their credit, it was slicker than twelve months ago. The branding sharper, the crowd control tighter, the messaging honed. They’ve graduated from amateur agitators to semi-professional impresarios.
But this gloss comes with a risk: once you embrace the circus, the public begins to judge you as entertainers, not statesmen.
Britain or America?
The finale saw Andrea Jenkyns back on stage, belting out the national anthem while the hall rose to its feet. It felt less like ceremony, more like a vow. Next year promises to be cult-like, a movement convinced it is destined to govern.
Walking into the night, neon fading behind me, I wondered: have we crossed the Rubicon? This was Broadway colliding with Westminster. Yes, the policies were wafer-thin, but the passion was undeniable.
The deeper question remains: are we witnessing the rise of a governing force – or a theatre troupe so compelling that we mistake the script for reality?
I went to the Reform conference so you didn’t have to. But if you want to understand the new politics of Britain – gaudy, performative and perilously Americanised – it might just be worth seeing for yourself.
