‘Forsaken Tory voters flocking to join Reform UK’

Richard Tice is sitting on the top floor of a tower block that looms over the Thames, opposite the tower in Millbank that houses Boris Johnson’s office. Mr Tice has a flat there. A few hundred yards away is the Palace of Westminster, swathed in the evening mist.

Power appears to be within touching distance. And for Mr Tice and his party, Reform UK, the idea is not so far-fetched, with a yawning gap opening on the Right of British politics as the Conservatives lurch to the Left after the disastrous “Trussonomics” experiment.

Reform UK emerged from the ashes of the Brexit Party, which had lost its way after Mr Tice and his co-leader, Nigel Farage, stood down hundreds of candidates to give the Tories a clear run at the 2019 general election.

Now it is back in the hunt for votes after Tory MPS forced out Mr Johnson and then replaced his successor, Liz Truss, with Rishi Sunak. In the fortnight since Ms Truss’s resignation, 4,534 people signed up to join his party. Mr Tice suspects a large number of them are former Tory party members trying to find a political home and has set up a hotline so that they can make contact.

He describes the number joining since Truss’s downfall as “extraordinary”, adding: “It’s a sign of people’s fury and anger because they know that there’s been an establishment coup.

“The establishment has taken back control from the people who asked [it] to take back control from Brussels. And it’s utterly appalling.”

Reform UK’S appeal is straightforward. It is a party standing against the mainstream politicians who run the country.

“Reform UK is a party that believes that this is a great country that is full of potential that is being wasted because we are badly managed by politicians and civil servants,” he said.

“We’re badly governed by institutions. [There’s] the cronyism of the House of Lords, the bias of the BBC, the incompetence of some of the quangos. You can tell by the mood of the nation at the moment. People are despairing. People are cross. People are losing hope in so many ways.”

As well as picking off disaffected Conservative supporters, Reform UK aims to channel the wider rage that led to the vote to leave the European Union in 2016.

Mr Tice said: “Brexit was about a plea from the country for change, a recognition that something was going badly wrong. Then Boris Johnson was given this huge majority to get Brexit done. And all that has happened is that Brexit has been done very badly, so far. It’s a great platform of opportunity. We can still make it a huge, wonderful, powerful success and take our rightful place at the top table of the world. But at the moment, it’s like everything. It’s a wasted opportunity.”

Tice, 58, a millionaire businessman who made his fortune in commercial and residential property, was in the running to be a Conservative candidate in the London mayoral election in 2018 but wasn’t selected. He insisted his rejection was not behind his enthusiastic courting of Tory supporters.

He said: “We’ve got common-sense policies. That’s why people are joining us. People are leaving other parties in droves.”

Reform’s policy platform is something of a work in progress. Its website offers policies on three key areas: the economy, public sector and institutions. But Mrtice has some other ideas.

He would lift the threshold at which people pay 20 per cent income tax from £12,500 to £20,000, taking six million people out of the tax band altogether.

His other big idea is to support small businesses by lifting the corporation tax threshold to £100,000, thus removing the burden from a million firms.

Meeting the £50billion

‘People are angry because they know there has been an establishment coup’

cost of this would be “very simple”: cutting wasteful government spending.

Mr Tice would order “every council, every quango, every government department” to save £5 in every £100 spent.

That would come with a threat: “And if you don’t, you’re fired. That’s what we do in business. And guess what? It works. You save £5 in a hundred for the government [and it is] £50 billion.”

When I asked for examples of wasteful spending to cut, he was less clear.

“Just the other day, one department spent £250,000 on a wellness app. I mean, give us a break.” It might take a lot of cuts to apps to get to £50billion, I suggest.

Elsewhere, he wants the Home Office to work harder to tackle illegal immigration on the south coast of England and get some of the 5.3million people receiving out-of-work benefits back to work.

He also wants a separate Office for Veteran Affairs to help former members of the Armed Forces back into work in senior leadership positions.