Written by David Allen
Reform UK is a UK registered political party borne of the temporary but hugely effective The Brexit Party, with an agenda to reform/change/update/refresh/renew (in fact, insert any meaningless word here) politics in the UK, yet despite regular radio appearances and support in the ever-helpful Daily Express, when it comes to collecting real votes, nothing much happens.
So why is this? Is it just a matter of time, or is this party heading the same way as other well-meaning yet ineffective political agents of the past, including the enormously successful UKIP, and the former and very well-known band of heavy hitters, the Social Democrats?
I wanted to take a closer look at what they have to offer and see if there might be a way to break the mould. That something needs to change in our political infrastructure is clearly necessary, when a formerly robust and stable democracy can just vanish overnight to be replaced by nothing less than a dictatorial cabal, something needs to be done? How could this be achieved? Does Reform UK have the right people and the right strategy to make this happen, or is it all just another ego trip for those given a temporary voice before fading into ex politician oblivion with occasional radio and TV opinion?
Before wading into the depths, I want to tell you a story.
The importance of being local
There exists in the southerly sunshine of England a constituency called Tonbridge and Malling. It is in the heart of a blue part of the country and since its formation, and before, has elected a conservative MP with an astonishing majority at each election. The borough council’s 51 seats are dominated by Conservatives and the town division of the County Council, likewise, returning Conservative candidates at every election for a huge majority of the 81 seats in the county as a whole. It is, or perhaps was, the very fortress of conservatism and it didn’t seem to matter how badly the government was doing of how well the opposition fared, it always went Conservative. Even the landslide of 1997 couldn’t dent the Conservative vote there.
I’ve been a keen campaigner since 2012 and candidate since 2016 and stood in the 2021 elections to offer people a choice. Originally that was to have been for Reform UK, because I thought support for them was greater than it turned out to be. When I discovered that there would only be 8 Reform UK candidates out of the 81 county council seats contested, I chose to stand as an independent. As it turned out the result was better than many Reform UK candidates elsewhere.
However, in the Kent County Council elections May 2021 the Tonbridge Division of Kent County Council went Green, and not just Green, Green by some margin. Quite an upset.
Nationally, the Green Party are non-existent, recent utterings from Baroness Jones about national curfews for all men from 18:00 hours every day, should have caused even the wokest of beardies to chuckle nervously, but it made no electoral difference on this occasion. We know that local elections aren’t treated seriously by the electorate, but that’s not changed, and the Conservatives have always won before. We know that the existing councillors were spectacularly anonymous, generally ineffective, and simply voting fodder, but that’s also always been the case, so what changed?
Two things:
- Firstly, the Green party had two councillors in one of the 26 wards in the Tonbridge and Malling administrative area, which is a little different geographically from the Tonbridge and Malling parliamentary constituency, but not by much. They had built a reputation for being available and helpful, which was effectively promoted long before this election was contested. It turns out that if you answer the phone and respond to people, they notice.
- Secondly, they ran an enthusiastic and highly energetic campaign and managed to gather a great deal of the kind of essential support that elections need, particularly the significant number of poster-displays, which are hugely underestimated and extremely valuable. When people who are thinking of supporting a party, see physical evidence of lots of other people showing support it can be convincing and in this case it clearly was. This successfully created a separation in the minds of their voters between local Greens and National Greens. Enough for them to win.
The net effect of the absence of negative sentiment, combined with the general disinterest people show for local elections, and most importantly an extremely well supported and enthusiastic campaign, sealed a spectacular victory, the effect of which, I suspect, will be carried through into the Borough council elections in 2023 for the 7 town wards of the 26 contested. Oddly support for the Greens, outside the town wards themselves, is miniscule.
The point of this little story is that even a parliamentary election is a local election. People will consider different things, of course, but the election itself is simply the summary of 650 elections conducted locally. A strong local campaign is a necessary part of winning elections and even UKIP at its strongest point with around 600 local constituency associations could rarely gain enough active support in each constituency to campaign in the manner needed to win. If the campaign is big enough, strong enough, persistent enough, and with the right candidate I believe that any majority can be overturned, even Tonbridge and Malling.
It is simply a reality that people are reluctant, for a variety of reasons, to do anything practically to support a political campaign. The activist is a rare animal indeed. People also don’t tend to join political parties, so constituency membership is always a fraction of the voting populace. Typically, a parliamentary constituency will have around 70,000 voters, even a major party may only have membership in the hundreds and the willingness to get out there being somewhere between 1 in 50 and 1 in 100, shows how little the ordinary voter cares about who wins. Likewise, many aren’t prepared to declare allegiance with posters, so even if people are minded to cast their vote in your direction, they aren’t prepared to do anything else to secure a victory. This only goes to show how exceptional the Green Party campaign was.
Another highly material factor is existing office. If your party or group already hold office as Parish, Town, Borough, Unitary authority, London and other city assemblies, or County councillors, the chance of further electoral victory is increased. As a councillor you have the ear of people, media and organisations that the ordinary citizen does not. Also, your party’s councillors are obliged to turn out and campaign in elections other than their own. After all they’re being paid. One failing by the Tories in this recent Tonbridge Division election was that they took their victory for granted, ran a lacklustre campaign with two uninspiring candidates that failed to use their privileged position when they were in office.
Another example of how important the ground campaign is, as seen by experienced campaigners, was the general election of 2015. It was so important to the Conservative party to win the seat of South Thanet and to beat the UKIP leader Nigel Farage that their officers engaged in criminal electoral activity by bussing in hundreds of people from elsewhere to boost the physical campaign on the ground. The successful Conservative candidate Craig Mackinlay was charged along with the election agent Nathan Gray and the Conservative party employee Marion Little. The cheating worked and Mackinlay won by less than 3000 votes. He and Gray were acquitted, and Little was convicted with a 9-month suspended sentence for electoral fraud.
Two interesting asides to this incident are, firstly that Mackinlay kept his victory and his seat despite proven criminal activity, and he himself was a founding member of UKIP and a former deputy leader.
However, the point is that local effort wins elections, it makes enough of a difference to be regarded as essential and without it, any of it, campaigns will fail. For the established parties, some seats are very safe, but for newbies and opposition, everything is an uphill struggle.
Reform UK has no party outside Richard Tice’s office. No constituency associations, no local organisations of any kind, no sitting councillors where UKIP had thousands. It is inconceivable that in an FPTP election they could achieve enough electoral support to win seats when UKIP couldn’t, the Social Democrats couldn’t and even a longstanding party with very good local organisations in a few places, the LibDems, can’t. It is highly conceivable that, as happened with the UKIP candidate in the Brecon and Radnor by-election 2019, they’ll be beaten by the Monster Raving Loony Party sometime, somewhere, and there’s nowhere to go after that.
[Part 2 will be published here tomorrow.]
Photo by Paul Albertella 
I, with eight others,( later ten in all after a by election win) won County Council seats for UKIP in a rural County. This was achieved through hard work, not just leafleting,but knocking on doors first and then handing over a leaflet to reinforce the chat. My colleagues confirmed their similar and successful strategies. We were very fortunate to gain the the services of a researcher/advisor to guide, encourage and steer us through the mire of party politics. Without Nicola we would have floundered and sunk without her wise and intelligent persuasion and her management skills when disagreement occurred. With the exception of one former Tory councillor we were clueless concerning the back stabbing and very hostile main parties attitude and how they conspired together to discredit our every move.
As it was we received no help from UKIP HQ despite our many requests for policy guidance, training or any contact from the well paid organisers, Nationally and Regional. There was no doubt that we were resented by the main parties.
However any new party needs an all encompassing network, national and district, with local candidates, not like the turncoats that were parachuted in by HQ to gain favourable seats and then defect back to their former parties, ( remember Campbell-Bannerman.) Self seeking individuals with questionable loyalties gained top table seats which resulted in fall outs and where power superseded practical and effective leadership. The coal face workers were on their own to formulate policy.
We were successful and many motions ably put forward by our more intelligent councillors although defeated by the main parties collaborating together were later reintroduced by a party and passed with no credit to us.
So called local newspapers, owned by a national concern would only publish or report on our mistakes and were openly hostile to us in general. All in all we were too
nice- too gentlemanly, believing that by ensuring a 100% attendance at committees and meetings and presenting well researched questions would satisfy the faith of the electorate. Needless to say, we were trounced at the next election, as was UKIP nationally, mainly through the referendum result, when voters obviously felt that the job was done.
Money is useful for the National effort, advertising etc but there is no substitute I feel for face to face contact with voters, both on the doorsteps and in the street. A shop/office in a prominent position in towns is a 24 hr, seven days a week icon for passers by with banners, posters etc to constantly remind voters of core messages. A cup of tea and knowledgeable people manning the shop is worth its weight in gold.
The Reform Party is more or less unknown to ordinary voters and relies on surveys and one man leadership. They need Nicola.
Derek……Hear, hear, hear, and hear. I echo your thoughts entirely, but you did your best like we all did who stood as candidates at elections for UKIP, and you’re right the guidance or support from HQ was lacking and patchy, and much of the time the good work we were doing locally was undone by someone further up the chain saying something silly. However most people with any sense knew or was aware what UKIP primarily stood for, but there were indeed many policies in the 2015 manifesto which outshone the Conservative manifesto but the media just glazed over it as it didn’t suit their narrative. The electorate are indeed very fickle and most of activists within the party knew that the job was far from done after the Referendum UKIP represented true conservative ideals in my opinion, but unfortunately the party was hijacked by several leaders post Farage which subsequently led to its downfall which was a lost opportunity. However with Reform UK, post Brexit the majority of the electorate plus registered supporters/activists of that party like me had difficulty in understanding what it stood for any longer. And nothing much has changed with regard to this..
oh and I haven’t yet forgiven David Allen for cashing in his chips in the UKIP leadership contest in favour of hopeless Henry Boulton who turned out to be a “wrongun”
I was actually intending to vote for David, I don’t know how close the end vote was, but Bolton won, perhaps on Allenstein conceded votes
Bolton won by a country mile I am afraid. I made the mistake of voting for him as well, which I now bitterly regret. In hindsight I don’t think UKIP would have been the failure it became had someone like Suzanne Evans who I voted for in a previous leadership election, had been elected. I think it would have gone from strength to strength, and would have been be up there now challenging for votes and seats on councils and in parliament. In many ways she was similar to Farage in that she was able manipulate the media and had the required charisma to lead a political party such as UKIP. Another missed opportunity………
Be fair, I couldn’t have won, but did pick the winner. As it happens, I think UKIP would be in a very different place now had Henry remained leader. For example I don’t think the Brexit party would have existed as Henry and Nigel were very much on the same.page and don’t forget that Nigel openly backed Henry in his campaign. Wrong un is the wrong term, he didn’t have much time to make an impact but had already been received well.on the MSM. Having said that he contributed to his downfall also. It’s just a shame that UKIP went on to self destruct.
Most people find politics boring and don’t believe joining a political party will make any difference.
Some people think voting wont make any difference.
The liberal Left don’t find politics boring nor are they hesitant about joining a political party or engaging in activism. The progress of their agenda over the last 50 years speaks for itself.
”Voting”? There’s optimism!
I am politically incompetent and useless.. But getting into the attention of massed customers is something else. And in my opinion, the entire wisdom and passed down experience of political activists can be boiled down into ” Bullying “..
Our customers are better than that. Even the dozy 16 to 21 year olds. Everybody is a communist when they leacve the apron strings, but they listen and try to understand and politicians cannot cope with that But they want to know . And understand. And accept .
In spite of many brilliant posters, flyers, leaflets and speeches . I believe It was something else that won the referendum.
We agreed and were one.and daily we learned more. And we were bullied more and the obvious happened.
TG Spokes…..I don’t know what you personally did to get the Referendum result that we wanted over the line in 2016, but the UKIP branch in Tonbridge and Malling where I live not only delivered 47,000 leaflets to residential addresses across the Borough, but held Saturday street stalls including a straw poll every week for five months in Tonbridge, West Malling and Edenbridge, which was hell of a commitment and we had the assistance of up to 15 to 20 UKIP activists each time including some that would not normally help out, and yes we did form an alliance with the local Conservatives who whilst they did not involve themselves in leaflet deliveries and street stalls, assisted us in canvassing at the doorstep. I don’t care what you say, but the delivery of leaflets has a very limited impact at elections/referendums, and are won by canvassing at the doorstep. It seems from your posts over the past year that you have little idea how to organise an effective campaign, so it is not entirely surprising that you take the view that you do. If you want someone to vote for you, then they have to see the whites of your eye at their doorstep, but that doesn’t mean bullying or arguing with them This is why both the Conservative Party and Labour are so good at winning elections, and sometimes also the Liberal Democrats…..
First Colin, I’ve been a suporter since 1992 when i bought 50 of the little gold badges and distributed them to any of my managers who wanted them. ( I retired in 92 ) Second , I don’t think there’s anybody in the country left who still knows how to organise anything.( Computers and wild committees have done their bit ) I suspect that even the Civil Service have lost some of it.. I have had to do a lot of it over the years since my first effort in 1957 andmany companies since..Third,Yes I’ve done all the usual for activists. Even a little paperwork.( Not too much, I admit ) and Fourth, I have been trying for getting on for 6 or 7 years now toOffer advice etc including an offer of a big contributor. But nothing ever reaches its destination. I can only assume people are actually terrified of anyone who has ever achieved anything. I got through to Gersrd Batten but then the people with political ideas mucked that up as well. So, I may not have your experience , we are all different and important in differing ways. But it’s foolish to miss a trick.
You seem to have an obsession with computers TG. How can an inanimate object mess things up? For sure blame the users and, maybe, incompetent software developers together with the organisations managers but not the tools that have provided enormous benefits to business and others (except the time wasting Facebookers and suchlike) when used properly. I agree that the Civil Service and government in general has become unfit for purpose to the extent of my regarding them as the enemy within.
Yes I’ll go along with the bullying aspect TGS, that’s in the main how parliament works, all politicians in most parties are subject to the whip system which not only results in the Chief Whiff controlling his flock by knowing every bit of dirt and skeletons in their cupboard for voting in parliament, but can also contribute to their downfall when re-election time comes around .
The atmosphere of bullying emanates from the centre and passes through all aspects of relationships with civil servants and most of the establishment and so on into their handling and governing the peasants, but this is allied to the concept of the “elite” handing out the bullets to bully with.
Finally any efforts of ” push back” from “us lot” to be successful can only work with a decent strategy, Admiral Parry mentioned the word and manner of dealing with the cross channel lot.
In essence it’s what Nelson said or something like “it is never wrong to lay your ships alongside the enemy”
That was the word Parry mentioned “strategy”, there is no point in doing anything without a decent, fully thought through and funded strategy.
We should employ a top advertising agency, preferably one who sees all aspects of the dangers this country is in both from this government and from re-setters abroad.
It cannot be done without enthusiasm and enterprise and people who thoroughly know their stuff.
I agree David Allen with all you have said in your article.
I would add that one reason people do not openly support Candidates or Parties, even by displaying posters, is that they are frightened of possibly falling out with their neighbours.
That is rather tragic don’t you think?
I wonder why Greens have seemed to be immune to that. Perhaps because it is a somewhat vague label which, until recently left the person wearing it, able to agree to almost anything!
Pauline I don’t think people see the Greens are political in the sense of party politics.
I’ve no idea who and what the Greens are, but they have never been in or near POWER in this country at least, I’m not sure there are fortunes to be made for individuals or that they subsist on bungs of vast sums of money, but particularly they are not “the same as all the rest of the legacy parties ” who are guilty of internecine party games and downright conning the electorate regularly over a long period.
The penny only finally dropped for the mass of the grass roots peasants around the time of the Brexit campaign.
But to my mind, the concluding moment was the Obama back of the Q episode where he interfered in our campaign and urged us to stay in the corrupt and dead end EU.
Roger. The pictures in MSM of Bob Geldof and his champagne socialist chums jeering at and giving v signs to our fishermen who sailed up the Thames to Westminster bridge flying their Fishing For Leave flags from their trawlers gave the Leave vote a huge boost.
Yes that too Ceri, and probably other events,
My Obama moment was out in the market place locally where we were canvassing and sticking on those marvellous stickers, there was a perceptible buzz at the bare faced perfidity of the man who was so obviously trying to ensure that we stayed in our post colonial lock up and didn’t want to allow our Commonwealth supported entity to queer his (the USA’s) exclusive pitch amongst the worlds oceans and stage Thr USA has never really got over the fact that they were just another colony and when push comes to shove, even with the supposed Special Relationship it’s rawness is exposed to our disadvantage.l
I felt some of the knowledgeable public were aghast at the interference of the USA in our affairs, fostered I believe by the solicitations of Cameron and those of his traitorous ilk. And probably evident to this day in the apparent interference in the affairs of the Irish Protocol by Biden.
I like this article because it is, for me, getting to the truth about what drives electoral success. ‘Community’ is the word that matters most. The present scandal of Covid is driving people to form communities and those are groups who will do exactly what you are saying will make the difference come elections. Well done David for following through with your aspirations of standing as an Independent candidate and supporting the concept of true Localism, something which is muffled and side-tracked by those who are frightened of the thought.
It took me a long time for the penny to drop but I would only vote for an Independent candidate now, or not at all.
Thank you looking forward to the next one.
I totally agree with you Kim and will only vote Independent too unless UKIP can get their act together.
Whether or not they get their act together or not, voting for a UKIP candidate in the area in which you live, if indeed there was one and there weren’t any Independent candidates to vote for would be the best choice. Reform UK is not the answer, because as David and I know the party doesn’t exist outside of their main office. Up to the point when we stood down there was no local organisation to fall back on, no access to other registered supporters details, and no money available. So we were expected to fight an election totally blind. Going independent was the best thing we did, and in doing so cornered 9% of the vote, a result otherwise we would not have achieved had we stayed.