September 26, 2024 - 7:00am
“The ravens really are leaving the tower” was the Spectator’s assessment on Tuesday night of the departure of Reform UK’s veteran spin doctor, Gawain Towler. Having served Nigel Farage’s previous vehicles Ukip and the Brexit Party, Towler was this week fired after 20 years of service — much to the sorrow of Westminster journalists, to whom he had become a familiar and respected figure.
Though Reform has not yet specified the reason for the sacking, it would appear to be part of the party’s strategy to “professionalise” its operation, which would include vetting candidates more thoroughly after several scandals in the run-up to July’s general election. There are also plans to develop branch associations and hire regional directors around the country, though no significant shifts in policy have been announced since the election.
Leading this revamp is Zia Yusuf, a 37-year-old businessman who was appointed Reform’s chairman a week after July’s vote. The previous month, he had become the party’s single biggest donor after providing a reported £200,000 in funding. Later in June, Yusuf came to wider attention when he addressed several thousand Reform supporters at a rally in Birmingham, giving a speech extolling the importance of “British values” and referring to his parents’ background as migrants to the UK from Sri Lanka. He has been tipped, including by Farage himself, as a future party leader.
With Reform’s membership exceeding 85,000 this week, Yusuf’s mission is to develop a modern, sophisticated party which can build on its present tally of five MPs. Earlier this month, the multi-millionaire entrepreneur explained that Farage “knows what I’ve achieved in business in terms of scaling a startup to grow 1000s of per cent in a short number of years”. Farage last week relinquished ownership of Reform, claiming that he would be “handing the big decisions over to the members” — including allowing them to draw up the party’s constitution.
A former Conservative member, Yusuf is conscious of the risks that can befall large parties. When I interviewed him after the Birmingham rally in June, he told me that Reform would not be as vulnerable to infighting as the ever-fractious Tories because “this party is very clear about what it stands for.”
As for what Reform “stands for”, many party supporters would have been under the impression that Towler’s approach to politics and vision for Reform were largely in line with Farage’s, combining old-fashioned Euroscepticism with a focus on reaching “left-behind” voters across the UK. While he is now out of the team, the communications strategist instructed his social media followers yesterday: “Don’t leave Reform, there is so much to do.” A party source backed up this stance, informing me on Wednesday that Towler is “100% onside. He’s just not inside anymore.” A former Reform staffer, who has worked for the party within the last year, told me that “Gawain was excellent at leading a guerrilla operation, but that just doesn’t work for a party in Westminster.”
If Reform really is moving onto bigger things, that will necessitate targeting Labour, having successfully eaten into the Tory vote share. Taking seats off Keir Starmer’s party is a stated aim of Farage and Yusuf, and the latter has been notably outspoken for a party chairman, accusing the Government of “inciting” this summer’s riots and “sow[ing]” division among the British people”. Challenging a party with over 400 seats, while Reform has just five, will take extensive work on the ground, and Yusuf told me in June that the process would be akin to his experience working with tech start-ups: “sometimes difficult, but very exciting”.
Towler, for his part, appeared to be on board with this new strategy. When I spoke to him last week, shortly before Reform’s annual conference on Friday — again in Birmingham — and before he was fired from his role, he praised Yusuf’s “professionalisation” drive. “We’re just getting our shit together,” he said, “so we can be worthy of the millions of votes we think we can get.”
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SubscribePrivate schoolboy, LSE economics grad, and ex-Goldman Sachs. Yep he’ll do for a man of the people. Made his money pandering to the v rich too and worth a penny. That won’t be lost on King of the Grift Nige.
Heck of a task to sift and filter out the bigots and racial reflex types from candidatures. Whilst many Reform supporters may not suffer overtly from these traits those most likely to ‘front’ almost always do and will, because that’s how they’ll attract support. It’s a cul de sac for Reform they won’t get out of. And then there’s the actual policy and practical solutions offering. That won’t last 5mins under proper scrutiny because these folks aren’t about solutions, they are about amplifying rage and quietly protecting the v rich.
“…they are about amplifying rage…” Well, mission accomplished in your case it would seem.
Spoken like somebody who has seen a pattern in life and will stick to it through thick and thin. Just throw in a few words like ‘bigots’ and ‘fas*i*ts’ and there is no reason to think. Reminds me of the time when the Mayor of London was speaking and people were shouting questions at him – “Just a few fas*is*s”, he said.
I don’t actually use the ‘fas*i*sts’ term. Overused and poorly defined. Check back on prior posts if you want. The other descriptors I stand by.
So his immigrant parents, a doctor and a nurse got their son into a fee paying school. He started his own company and after 10 years sold it for millions. Why am I supposed to dislike him?
After 14 years of Tory lies and incompetence and the current horrifying authoritarian and sleazy Labour I will stick with Reform.
Whether you personally dislike or like up to you. But ‘man of the people’ he ain’t given his educational and work background. Suspect as a result a considerable gap between his true level of understanding of our country’s problems, beyond a reflex about immigration.
Try looking at the social status educational backgrounds of key members of the Labour Party!
Current PM and the 3 SoS for the most important offices of State are all state schooled. Unlike public schoolboys Yusef and Farage, or vast majority of previous Govt. Means they grew up surrounded and mixing with normal people not the privileged.
Publicschoolophobia! And he’s an evil capitalist to boot.
‘Heck of a task to sift and filter out the bigots and racial reflex types from candidatures.’
What is it about children of Asian immigrants who are successes that irritates you so much, that you can’t even bring yourself to say the name ‘Zia Yusuf’?
Nothing to do with his birth background. Wasn’t mentioned by me but rather by yourself missing the point.
You’re better than this JW. Starting with an ad hom attack. Really.
And are you saying that we should disqualify anyone who was a private schoolboy ? Hardly his fault (if it is a fault), since his parents surely took that decision for him.
And who has been a “man of the people” (man or woman) poltician in recent times ? I’m struggling … but perhaps Boris Johnson for all his faults had the ability to reach people more directly ?
Bojo had the ability to communicate and deploy effective use of comedic bluster. But he was miles off being a man of substance as we all found out. In some ways a tragedy as he was blessed with some unique talents.
Yusef compounds his privileged education with Banking and business for a the v rich elite experience. A man obviously driven at a young age to help the less fortunate…Just pointing it out for you and others.
We get all this twaddle about blobs and etc. Well you couldn’t get more elite establishment than likes of this chap & Farage.
Keep on calling something twaddle (begging the question) doesn’t make it twaddle. The only twaddle is your cut and paste cliched comments full of whataboutery and projection.
Hoc opus, Hic Labor Est.
Underneath the contempt which disfigures your otherwise sound analysis you have landed on some important points.
If Reform is to be effective and move beyond a ethnic or tribalist support base it will need to dispense with the great idea that has bedevilled National Conservatism since Mr Powell’s speech at the Midland Hotel in 1968.
I call it ‘The Wolverhampton Boarding House’ trap. In Mr Powell’s famous anecdote he spoke of an old lady, in a newly diversified part of town, hiding behind the curtains of her now dilapidated inheritance, a grand Edwardian boarding House, hoping that somehow the changes she has seen in her community and nation would reverse. That things would ‘go back to the way they were’. Powell offered no explicit solution to her problems – he merely voiced them.
Of course Mr Powell hinted at his preferred solution – Repatriation. It was perhaps fanciful then, it is certainly fanciful now. Maintaining a ‘white majority’ in Britain would now have to involve the forced Repatriation of non-white British Citizens born here. This of course is completely and rightly beyond the pale, both morally and practically – so what does Reform do about this anxiety which so troubles it’s supporters?
The stalking horses of ‘one-in-one-out’ and ‘integration’ won’t fool anyone. We know what the deeper yearning is – a Britain of ethnic and customary homogeneity. And that, quite frankly, is utterly gone.
Reform must decide if it will be a vehicle for this ‘Tears Idle Tears’ wing of plaintive reaction, or if it will make a fist of ‘Grafting the Wild Olive’ and making our future cohere with our past – which is the true genius of Toryism.
The movement which creates the true conservative coalition, based on values, standards and aspirations for life, is the only sound and possible future for British Conservatism.
This new appointment suggests it may be the latter.
It’s veering a bit away from the Article but as you refer to Powell worth a comment back. Many fail to read the full Rivers of Blood speech. Anyone who does can be of no doubt how r*cist he was. And 55yrs later how wrong too.
But one commonality – Powell failed to explain what he’d have done in post-War Britain to address the labour shortages that led to ex-empire migration. His successors in Reform maintain that deceit.
As regards ‘Conservatism’, I suspect the Conservative party will pull itself together as it’s been in crisis before and come back numerous times. Reform won’t move beyond protest party as it doesn’t have any practical answers and would struggle to agree any too.
With respect to your second paragraph, Mr Powell was actually among the very first to identify the productivity trap that comes with unlimited amounts of cheap and low skilled labour.
He identified it as early as the mid 1960’s. He said it would stifle investment in innovation and labour saving technology. Half a century before the ‘Deliveroo Economy’ we have now.
But that is beside the more important point, which is that there was no actual ‘post-war labour shortage’ but in fact a labour surplus.
This ‘you called we came’ myth has been put about and hammered home to make sense of the immigration of the period which really happened because of anomalies in he citizenship law of 1948.
In matter of fact between 1946 and 1960 almost 2 million people actually left Britain in search of work. Even with this mass emigration, unemployment rates remained stable as the statistics for the period show:
https://escoe-website.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/17145130/Denman-and-Macdonald-LMT-1996-Unemployment-Statistics-from-1881-to-the-present-day.pdf
Yes it’s an interesting period – 50s & 60s – higher growth rates than now, society becoming a bit more equal, yet Britain was drifting into decline too. Powell served in numerous Govt depts. You’ll be hard pressed to find where he’s pushing the innovation and technology in effective practical ways you suggest. He was a free marketeer but the market didn’t function as he hoped. Then when he was Minister of Health he didn’t invest in more training places for nurses and doctors so reliance on overseas recruitment and immigrants increased. I’d contend his rhetoric wasn’t backed up by substance when he held power – a pattern repeated by his political descendants.
Slight aside and anecdotes not always the best – but my own mother responded to an advert to come to England to train as a Nurse when he was Minister for Health.
Powell’s whole economic critique was that the market wasn’t being allowed to function as it should in the 1960s and 1970s !
You may not agree with everything he says, but I challenge you to read any of his books and speeches and come back here and state that he’s not clear. You may even find some points you agree with – certainly if you were to remove the author’s name and then read them on their own merits. You may also be surprised at some of his views and experiences (for instance, he pointedly refuses to blame the trade unions for large wage demands and potentially contributing to inflation).
People like Powell aren’t really designed for government jobs. They are influencers and shapers, not managers and bureaucrats. Unrealistic to expect them to excel in all roles. Who does ? Similarly Keith Joseph who also did a lot of the preparatory work for Thatcher.
We should actually be grateful we had such people doing some fundamental thinking for themselves. Compare and contrast to the current and previous crew who basically outsourced all their thinking to others.
He was more intellectual than many of his peers. And some contend a great parliamentarian too. Those are attributes.
But his record in Govt is not great and he retained a strong prejudice against those different from himself and stoked racial division. Very significant down marks. However much might one welcome his ‘monetarist’ foresight he was still the man that referred to piccaninnies’ in a major public speech.
Milton Friedman himself said that Powell had a muddled understanding of Free Market Economics.
‘What has happened to Enoch?’ he is said to have remarked when he found out that Mr Powell was trying to separate free movement of capital from its ideological bed-fellow free movement of labour.
More Conservatives should be aware of this, in my opinion.
So Powell didn’t slavishly parrot Friedman and though for himself ! And that’s a problem because … ?
Free movement of capital and free movement of labour are two separate concepts. There is no fundamental reason these should be linked. The fact that the EU has chosen to declare them inseperable doesn’t make then so. Nor mean they should be combined.
In fact I don’t disagree with your contention about the dissonance between his words and his actions. But, in my opinion, that can be attributed to the way in which he ‘worked things out’ in public. He respected his hearers and his electorate – perhaps too much.
However, he does seem latterly to have accepted his political function as the National Sibyl (whom he uncharacteristically confused with ‘The Roman’ in his Midland Hotel speech).
If he was initially unwilling to be cast as the British Cassandra he appears ever so slightly to have enjoyed, or at least assented to the position by the end. The ever-living counterfactual made flesh.
‘What-might-have-been’ is, of course, the conservative lotus flower.
‘Dear as remembered kisses after death/ And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned on lips that are for others’
It is a role and register now surely inhabited by Mr Peter Hitchens, although he vigorously disowns the inheritance.
Reform needs to have experience of managing an economy. At the moment, as the article says, it has shown only that it is good at guerilla war, at attacking those people who already have power. If it continues to get more popular, Reform might get 20 seats at the next election, or even 30 seats but it might take 20 years or more to get to power. A long time.
So, why not target the Welsh Assembly elections in 2026? Wales has a different background. It has been controlled by Labour since the Assembly began and has suffered major decline so that people have seen that the state-control, totalitarian approach has made them poorer and poorer. Wales reduced the age of voting to 16 and Labour found that the new young voters supported Reform. For a new dynamic party, Wales is ripe for the picking. Then Reform would be seen as a government, not a party attacking the existing government.
There is a complicating factor – the language. But it is not as scary as it would seem to the outsider. Just pick some candidates who are Welsh-speaking for the more rural areas because like England, the power lies in the cities. The language is an extra dimension but the quality of people to beat – those already in the Senedd – is really low.
Politicians do not “manage the economy”.
Reform would be well advised to drop this pretence.
In any case, if they’re as far from power as you suggest (I agree), it simply isn’t necessary.
They need to focus on practical, common sense policies and build a team of practical, common sense people. There does seem to be a rather large gap in the market here right now.
All politicians can do is shape the environment for business and regulation. For better or worse. Usually the latter by adding ever greater complexity in their vain and misguided attempts to improve things or make things in some way “more fair”. Or by under-resourcing or undermining necessary regulation and enforcement.
Agreed. The best thing politicians can do is get out of the way and let the economy manage itself.
If the process of professionalising involves kicking out people who may have said things in the distant past which could embarrass them or people who only mostly agree with them, then they are likely to become the Judean Peoples Front who hate the Peoples Front of Judea more than the oppressors.
There are 18 comments here. Why can I only see three?
J Watson’s comment being heavily downvoted. It will return at some point, along wilth all the replies.
Unfortunately both Reform’s leader and chairman are lying about their new constitution. The leadership will still have an iron grip Farage is still basically fascist and is the Duce of a his party. And Il Duce a sempre ragione. His racism is also still there, first blaming the Roma riot on ‘subcontinentals’ (‘I did warn you’) and then suggesting the public were not being told the whole truth about the Southport stabbings. Yousaf should be called ‘Yousaf idiot’.