Nigel Farage has offered more questions than answers in a promising but perilous year for Reform
Given he decided to announce his new Cabinet on the first day of Chinese New Year, one suspects that Nigel Farage was searching for the Mandate of Heaven. Any Han Emperor would recognise the divine benefits to be accrued from coinciding the start of two new cycles, political and lunar. Perhaps he has read his Great Learning: “only after the family is ordered can the state be governed; only after the state is governed can all-under-heaven be at peace.”
It is, apparently, set to be a year of disruption and intensity
This is particularly true given this year is the Year of the Fire Horse. It is, apparently, set to be a year of disruption and intensity. Since fire amplifies the horse’s natural independence, energy, and volatility, Fire Horse years are seen as times of change, upheaval, and bold action.
There was little upheaval predicted today. Reform don’t have enough depth for there to be a shocking omission, nor for there to be much jockeying for roles — beyond, that is Chancellor. Richard Tice and Zia Yusuf had reportedly been eyeing up the position, as had new arrival Robert Jenrick.
In the end it was the new boy from Newark that won out, as revealed in a rare leak in the Telegraph yesterday. A punchy campaigner (expect to see plenty of videos of him in pubs), Jenrick will doubtless relish the opportunity of taking the fight to Rachel Reeves and whoever is actually running the Treasury, although it does leave Reeves and whoever is actually running the Treasury the obvious comeback that they are cleaning up Jenrick’s mess, and that his new party may soon create another.
Despite that mess, economic credibility is one of the few remaining Tory advantages over Reform. Jenrick has Cabinet experience, and served for a year and a half under Theresa May as exchequer secretary, so his appointment is a natural move to to signal competence to the electorate. It may also have been a decision made with half an eye on the bond markets, given Reform economic plans are currently so confused. Jenrick will make his first speech tomorrow to the City of London out lining the party’s economic approach, and he will likely be relishing a more serious brief. Given Jenrick’s campaigning skill and energy and the continued low profile of Mel Stride, the Tories may soon find their strongest flank is looking dangerously weak.
Yusuf, who has taken a central role in Reform’s announcements on migration, has instead been given the Shadow Home Secretary role. There are inherent advantages for any right-wing party aiming to lower migration to appoint an ethnic minority to the role (particularly given , as we have seen from the Tories. As we have seen from the Tories, it is not alone enough. Given that last year, Yusuf and Farage unveiled “Operation Restoring Justice”, a hardline immigration plan aiming to deport all illegal immigrants over five years — including measures to suspend international human rights treaties like the 1951 Refugee Convention to speed up removals — he may recognise it too. There is also a personal element — Yusuf is known to viscerally hate the Tories, and will likely see the opportunity of hammering governments past and present.
Tice, meanwhile, has been given a beefed-up brief merging the business, trade & energy portfolios — something resembling the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy which was broken up in 2023, although also including housing. Tice has long been the driving force behind Reform’s anti-Net Zero position, and as a former businessman has taken the lead of Reform’s business engagement programme. The Department is, according to Nigel Farage, modelled closely on the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs of post-war West Germany, particularly as shaped by Ludwig Erhard as a development-oriented super-ministry coordinating industrial recovery, trade and energy. Whether it will deliver our own Wirtschaftswunder, we wait to see.
Suella Braverman’s brief was also announced; Skills and Education. Braverman boasted of her role in helping establish one of the first free schools, the Michaela school. She also announced that under a Reform government, social and gender transitioning will be banned in all schools; on universities, concerned that “too many have been sold a lie”, she issued a warning to universities that Reform is “putting them on notice”, Reform will aim to have 50 per cent of people going “into the trades”. Equalities Minister was a surprise inclusion in her brief. Many expected Reform to simply not bother with the position. “One day one of a Reform government”, she said, “We will get rid of the equalities department and scrap the equalities minister, repeal the equality act.”
Lee Anderson continues as Chief Whip and Danny Kruger continues running Reform’s preparations for government. In the front row sat jobless Sarah Pochin and Andrew Rosindell, whilst the positions of Foreign and Defence Secretaries are also yet to be announced. Neither is likely to be given either position; yet in Reform with the stature for the Foreign Secretary brief, whoever they are minded and able to appoint at this stage would probably be a stop-gap — the sort of placeholder figure who fills the slot without convincing anyone they would hold the brief in a real government. Defence Secretary, meanwhile, is the coveted junior ministership amongst Conservative MPs, and is a convenient dangling thread for potential defectors to unwind — if only in their minds.
This cabinet, of course, remains half-empty. Farage has long spoken of the need to bring in outside experts into government via the Lords; yet months on, even after a Cabinet announcement, these outsiders are still to be named, leaving a cloud of uncertainty — not just about who will staff a Reform ministry (voters do not care who the Secretary of State for Culture, Media or Sport), but of Reform’s ability to recruit talent from outside of Tory defectors and the “tiny orbit of media figures and commentariat”.
There is, of course, no getting around the fact that there will be those who say there are too many former Tories in this Cabinet. For months now, Westminster journalists have asked ad nauseam how Farage can claim Reform is radically different from the Tories when his party takes on so many former Tories. Given the polls, the answer is “easily”. It should be remembered that the Mandate of Heaven was measured by the loyalty of the masses, not the whispers of court eunuchs.
The question is whether being full of Tories is more of a problem for Reform than being accused of being a one-man band, which is the counterfactual argument opponents would be making had they not taken on Tory defectors. Had they spurned Jenrick, Braverman, Kruger etc, they would not have been able to announce their Cabinet today — or it would be so full of nonentities that it would make an embarrassing spectacle of Reform’s lack of substantive talent.
In contemporary Chinese astrology, Fire Horse years are seen as opportunity-laden but high-risk — times to pursue ambitious projects, but watch for impulsive mistakes. To quote Zhou Enlai; “too early to tell.”
