[Youngian]

Will Reform's rise spur more people to the polling station at the next GE to make a tactical vote? Reformers are too bound up in their own hubris and bubble to understand how loathed Farage is by those who don't support him.

Now they have Jenrick to repel people who don't mind Farage and might vote Reform.

[Bones McCoy]

It will be interesting to see how the likes of Lee Anderson react to being pushed down the Reform pecking order by the recent arrivals from the Tory Part. Anderson already gets over looked for TV appearances with Zia Yusuf and Laila Cunningham getting the gigs ahead of him.

It's all news as drama, Farage or his advisers know this.

Witness how each new defector has been top of the pops for days or a week.
Then the news cycle moves on.

Jenrick may think he's headed for a nice Deputy PM post.
A few things there:
* He combines the charisma of JD Vance, the likeability of JD Vance and the competence of JD Vance.
* Dubai Dickie, 30p Lee and Danny "Dunning" Kruger will all claim seniority (and all have better alliterative nicknames for their Sun reading followers).
* The next defection will push him down the queue like a cheap PEZ dispenser.

These defectors have a glaring weakness.
They're all from the Johnson's jolly band - and none of them can show us the 40 hospitals.

[Bones McCoy]

Party that opposes "invaders with different values" welcomes its 25th invader with different values.

[Abernathy]

Party that opposes "invaders with different values" welcomes its 25th invader with different values.

Well, not really. Jenrick & Farage share precisely the same values.

[Abernathy]

This is good. On the money.

So Reform UK, founded on the principle of not being the Conservatives, has responded to that challenge by absorbing another Conservative. Not quietly. Not awkwardly. Full unveiling, podium, photographers, the lot.
Half the membership are saying “Enough already, we didn’t join Tory Party Mk II” while the other half are applauding “experience”, which in plain English means he’s already been in charge when things went wrong. Even better, the party’s own policy chief doesn’t bother turning up, which is always a reassuring sign of unity.
Meanwhile Nigel Farage cracks jokes about forgiveness like a man trying to keep the peace at a family do after inviting the cousin everyone fell out with. And everyone pretends it’s fine.
The name does most of the work here. REFORM is an anagram of FORMER, and in this case it’s painfully accurate. Former Tories, rearranged, presented as something new, while the grassroots are left wondering when “change” became a spelling exercise.
They didn’t smash the system. They just switched the label and hoped nobody read it.

[Andy McDandy]

They're saying that the problem with the Tories was they didn't go far enough. Only ReFuck will give them the free rein they need to "sort out" the country. Which inevitably means coming up with a model, then cutting off the bits of society that don't fit.

[RedSparrows]

They're saying that the problem with the Tories was they didn't go far enough. Only ReFuck will give them the free rein they need to "sort out" the country. Which inevitably means coming up with a model, then cutting off the bits of society that don't fit.

This is the basic bullshit at the heart of Reform.

'The country needs change!'
'yeah!'
'Change like Thatcherism 2.0, no limits!'
'uh'
'YOU VOTED FOR IT, LOL'

[davidjay]

With my usual pessimism regarding the electorate, I think that right now it doesn't matter who joins Reform and what they say and do - there are far too many people whose sole political idea is that Farage is right.

[Abernathy]

Well we’ve got three years to dispel that ridiculous notion.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Reform UK’s London mayor candidate condemned for burqa stop and search remarks
Laila Cunningham accused of endangering Muslims after saying it ‘has to be assumed’ people hiding their face for a criminal reason

Ah, the famous Muslim woman crimewave.

[Youngian]

Well it is panto season

[satnav]

I'm going to make a prediction that the Labour politician who is going to jump into bed with Reform this week will be David Blunkett. If you see some of the articles he has written for the Telegraph over the last year they all seem to lean towards Reform. He has called for the suspension of the ECHR to stop the boats, he has called for a crackdown on benefits and he has opposed the government's policies on net zero.

[Youngian]

Blunkett has too much history and emotional attachment to Labour unless he’s gone totally ga ga.

[Abernathy]

Nah. Blunkett joining Reform would be like Martin Luther King joining the Ku Klux Klan.

[satnav]

Since quitting frontline politics Blunkett has acquired some very expensive tastes. He spent several years living at the Cavendish Hotel in Baslow where rooms are around £500 a night. To fund such tastes he has done a lot of work for both the Telegraph and for Murdoch. He is clearly easily bought.

[Youngian]

He spent several years living at the Cavendish Hotel in Baslow where rooms are around £500 a night.

"Nothings too good for the workers and Labour has lost touch with the working class," Oswald Blunkett explained.

[Youngian]

I wrote this tongue in cheek response to a story about Reform in Lincolnshire only to get Likes from Reform supporters. Putting the grim into Grimsby.

There's towns in Lincs like Grimsby that have not only achieved the Reform dream of net zero immigration but have succeeded it with net emigration. Its also over 95 percent white Christian. Grimsby is the utopia that Reform want the whole of the UK to be like.