Board of Reform UK

The three elected positions on the Reform Party Board have been filled predictably enough. But what of the three seats reserved for appointees of Nigel Farage? Zia Yusuf, Paul Nuttall and Andrea Jenkyns are all former Conservatives, if a long time ago in Nuttall’s case. Yusuf and Jenkyns left that party only last year. “My party has left me” never, ever leads to the follow-up question, “Yes, that may have been why you left your old party, but why have you joined this one?”

No such question is being asked of Jenkyns, who was a Minister under, and a fanatical supporter of, the Prime Minister of Net Zero, of very big spending long before Covid-19, of the highest net migration ever, of Stonewall, of the lifting of the requirement that jobs in Britain be advertised first in Britain, of the lockdowns, of the Northern Ireland Protocol, and of the war in Ukraine. Nor of Tim Montgomerie, who was a spear-carrier for that Prime Minister. Nor of Jake Berry, who was a Net Zero enthusiast and a Remain campaigner, and who last year lost to Labour a seat that was now expected to be won by Reform UK.

And nor of Reform’s grandee, Ann Widdecombe, faithful Junior Minister under John Major, Minister of State under Michael Howard as he began the shredding of civil liberties in a bidding war with Tony Blair, Shadow Cabinet stalwart under William Hague, twice cheerleader for the putative Leadership of Ken Clarke, scourge of foxhunting, only Conservative MP to vote with Gordon Brown for 42-day detention without charge, autobiographical praiser of Michael Heseltine for having killed off the British coal industry, avowed opponent of the Assisted Suicide Bill only because it contained insufficient “safeguards”, and opiner only this month that men who had “undergone extensive surgery” should be sent to women’s prisons even though every cell of their mutilated bodies still contained a Y chromosome and they themselves had been socialised as males.