PopCon Director, Mark Littlewood, gives his thoughts on the Reform UK Conference 

Many of the PopCon team were at the NEC over the weekend at Reform’s annual conference.

Our fringe meeting – an in-depth conversation with David Starkey – was packed with hundreds in attendance (despite it clashing with Nigel Farage’s hastily rearranged speech).

In meeting and chatting to a wide range of delegates there was certainly a genuine interest in – and appetite for – PopCon’s ideas.

What I was trying to get a feel for was whether Reform is “the real deal”. Could they win an election and, if they do, could they provide the change the country so desperately needs?

First, viability. My main takeaway from the conference was its scale. Reform might be a young party with limited representation in the Commons, but it sure knows how to put on a major event. The gathering was huge – about 6,000 people in attendance overall. I don’t know how many will attend the Conservative conference next month in Manchester but I suspect it won’t reach that number.

Unsurprisingly, given the opinion polls and the recent local by-elections, morale amongst Reform activists didn’t merely seem high, it seemed supernova. But they also seemed grounded. They genuinely expect to win the next election but they don’t in any way take that for granted. Most seem to agree that governing will be no easy task and they are already trying to get their heads round what they’ll need to do from day one if Nigel Farage does indeed enter Number 10 in 2029 (or perhaps earlier if this government collapses as Farage now says he thinks is eminently possible).

Barring some sort of bizarre black swan event, I think we can safely say that Reform is here to stay. Perhaps they will retain their current standing in the polls, perhaps they will dip a bit, perhaps they will climb still higher. But I don’t see any prospect of putting Reform out of business. They are going to be a very meaningful electoral force for the foreseeable future and it is not fanciful to imagine they will win the next election outright.

Secondly, would a Reform government work? A lot of the chats I was involved in were about whether a hypothetical Farage administration would be a bit like Trump 1.0 or more like Trump 2.0. In his second period in office, the President approached power with a clearly worked out plan. His first term in office flet more like he was making it up as he went along

This, I think, is still to be determined. Sure, they don’t yet have a whole raft of detailed, stress-tested policies but the next election could be nearly four years away. A range of think tanks are now actively engaging with Reform – they’ll be no shortage of ideas to work with.

For the Conservatives, there is an enormous dilemma. Jacob Rees-Mogg was at the Reform conference spreading his message that the Tories and Reform should find a way of working together. Nadine Dorries, a recent recruit to Reform’s ranks, also voiced this view.

But the main feeling I picked up from Reform activists was that they thought they could win an election outright and that any association with the Conservatives would badly taint their “people’s army” brand.

For my part, I am going to continue to spread the core PopCon message that Britain needs a full restoration of its constitution as a prerequisite to wider change. Since we were established about eighteen months ago, that concept has gained considerable momentum across the centre-right (and even gathered some support on the centre-left). If we can get people to agree on the central policy platform of a new government, I think the precise nature of the vehicle to deliver electoral victory will naturally fall into place.

Keep the flag of freedom flying!