It was too big to be ignored, even by the BBC. Last Friday’s rally of thousands of supporters in Birmingham showed the sheer strength of Reform’s surge. The party is to contest every vacant seat in the forthcoming council elections, a slew of candidates has been announced for the Mayorals and already a win for Reform is being touted by the pundits in the Runcorn by-election. In poll after poll Reform is either top or joint top or just behind Labour. The Tories are nowhere.
Venues for conferences are huge and even if there are some seats left empty the crowd is quite visibly bigger than anything the other parties manage or have managed for a long time. Even in Scotland the Reform trend is upward and is now at its highest ever.
If the result in the ballot box anywhere near matches the polls then on May 1st it will be impossible to think of Reform as a mere protest party and civil servants might start wondering about the advent of a Reform government with Nigel Farage walking along Downing Street the morning after the next General Election.
Reform's surge is too big to be ignored - the sunny uplands beckon - Ann Widdecombe
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Nevertheless, no matter how spectacular the results in what is now a little over a month’s time, that will be merely the beginning. Perhaps, as Churchill might have said, the end of the beginning but the path to power thereafter will be one long challenge before we arrive at the beginning of the end.
So what do we need to do? We need policy and a team of spokesmen who look like a government in waiting.
Neither will be easy. I dug out a copy of the Campaign Guide, a book – there is no other word for it – issued each General Election by the Conservative Party for the elucidation of its candidates and their helpers. This document gave detailed analysis of the policies of the three main parties, of the history of each in each policy field in office, of expenditure and of the Tories’ own aims. Challenged on anything, their candidates had the answers at their finger tips.
It was over 800 pages long.
So, a much larger research department is needed at Reform HQ. That means money and that in turn means donors. In its heyday the Conservative Party’s research department was so large that it would not fit into the huge HQ at Smith Square, but was housed separately in Old Queen Street. Many researchers had Firsts from prestigious Universities, a lot of originality and endless dedication. And of course it was never all theory. The weekly and monthly briefs (of which I still have a pile at home) were about the practical consequences of policies.
Zia Yusuf managed the incredible feat of setting up more than four hundred branches in a matter of a few short months.
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It was then up to the senior politicians to promulgate and promote those policies and, when in Opposition, to criticise the governments. One of the greatest weaknesses of both major parties currently is the abysmal standard of parliamentarian, the result of decades of selecting by quota rather than merit. Reform, starting from scratch, has an excellent opportunity to put together a team of spokesmen who can spend the next four years sounding as if they know what they are talking about precisely because they do! Merit must be the only criterion.
We know we can do what has to be done quickly and effectively. Zia Yusuf managed the incredible feat of setting up more than four hundred branches in a matter of a few short months, in order to achieve the democratising of our party. We have assembled a full slate of council candidates in similarly record time.
Finally, those councillors who are elected for Reform in May will hold the key to the party’s success next time. They need to be active, effective and different to justify the public’s trust in them.
The sunny uplands beckon.
