BY ANDREW MILNE
Evyatar David, 24, has now been held over 700 days in a tunnel below Gaza, his cousin, Tamar Eshet, told a packed fringe meeting at Reform UK’s national conference. Eyatar was abducted by Hamas on 7 October 2023 whilst fleeing the Nova Festival. Deputy leader, Richard Tice MP, introduced Tamar Eshet and showed a video released by Hamas. In it a severely emaciated Evyatar David took up a shovel and explained he was digging his own grave.
This incident spoke volumes about Reform UK. The other parties cavil and scrape but Richard Tice swore afresh to stand by our ally Israel.
The two-day Reform UK conference at Birmingham NEC last weekend was full of stark contrasts. Laughter one minute, shock – and speaking for myself – a few tears, the next. Blimey, I thought, shaking hands with Tamar Eshet, I’ve only been here an hour and I’m already an emotional wreck. The youthful demographics were a far cry from the choleric-cardigan brigade I had expected.
Barrow town councillor, 18-year old Sienna Churcher, told delegates how she and her friends feared to walk the streets following assaults. She carries a pepper-spray and studies self-defence. HMO – Houses of Multiple Occupancy – abound in her town. Watching Richard Tice explain the madness of local government mis-finance I turned to the guy beside me and whispered, ‘What is an ESG?’ A new sort of electroencephalograph? Turned out he was 27. ESG means Environmental, Social, and Governance – another blob tool aimed at crippling British business. Taking a break, I sat with an elderly Sikh who outlined his defection from the Labour Party. An ageing punk rocker with a magnificent quiff bowled past me in a wheelchair. But it was the murmurations of the young swooping around the conference that we remarked on.
This should come as no surprise, according to Darren Grimes, Reform UK’s leader of Durham County Council. Grimes pointed out the last two governments failed young people. It is the young who are hit by the grooming gangs. It’s the young who can’t get on the housing ladder. Think it through – the young, the minus-billions-dollar-babies generation, face horrendous tax bills in years to come as they pay off government loans. Debt interest payments amount to £105 billion this year. Paying for Net Zero will bankrupt Britain if the current madness persists. As girls tumble around jiu-jitsu mats and boys kick-box their way out of toxic emasculation, only one party believes in them.
Delegates riffed on the enthusiastic buzz about the place, comparable to a Tony Robbins mega-seminar I went to 30 years ago. I’d just gone self-employed. Prophetically it was called, ‘Unleash The Power Within.’ The atmosphere of can-do capability was exactly the same.
Nevertheless, mainstream media later sneered that the resignation of ‘Three Roofs Rayner’ had overshadowed the conference. Far from it. As chairman, Dr David Bull, announced the news, the whole hall cheered. It was if Red Ange had personally decided to do Reform UK a big favour in an attempt to embarrass her boss. Clearly the two can’t stand each other. News of the resignation broke just before lunchtime. Farage moved his speech up to 1 o’clock. Amidst much cheering at the government’s obvious distress including the departure of David Lammy – a big bonus for Israel sympathisers – delegates reckoned their dynamism was already tipping the Labour Titanic into a fatal capsize. If Three Roofs clings on to Hove, it looks like Reform is taking the rest of Albion.
How will you do it? Mainstream media ask. How save farming? How save the countryside? Cut taxes? Stop the boats? Get undocumented misogynists off the streets? What about a beefed up army, prosperity and tax cuts?
Tough questions, sure, but the answer lies in the practicality of that second word ‘Will.’ Having the WILL to do it is the answer – I learnt that from Tony Robbins. Labour doesn’t have it, Tories lost it and the Liberals don’t understand the question.
The two guiding principles of Reform UK are one: Put the national interest first. Two: Bring back Freedom of Speech. For too long too many have been too afraid to speak out. Graham Linehan’s arrest at Heathrow underlined this. We are being arrested for what we think and say. Lucy Connolly took the stage on day two to a standing ovation. Lucy was sentenced to 31 months in jail – for a tweet. Other repression is more subtle. Farmers To Action wants to attend every party political conference. Only Reform UK said, yes, come on it. FTA duly bellied up with a Class Arion 640 tractor enabling assembled squires to chat with delegates. If we are not even free to discuss how are we to arrive at solutions? Get out and shout out is the message.
The British Association for Shooting and Conservation certainly thinks so along with the Angling Trust – Farage is a fisherman. The Prosperity Institute, First Group, Heathrow Airport and the NFU were also there. Smart money is increasingly on Reform UK forming the next government. But I think it patronising to try and double guess the electorate’s intentions. However weekend polls showed Reform UK hitting a new high of 35 per cent, with Labour on 20 and Tories at 17.
The impetus is driven by a broad appeal covering all ages, classes and creeds. Laila Cunningham, Westminster councillor, entrepreneur and one-time Senior Crown Prosecutor, described her Egyptian parents insisting on integration and becoming British. Reform’s cop-and-crime supremo, Colin Sutton, the ex-murder detective, said officers are forced to police an ideology over crime – a case of tweets not streets. The chairman, Dr David Bull, served as a hospital doctor typifying the wealth of experience now informing policy development.
In a more homely exchange Sarah Pochin, MP for Runcorn and Helsby, was asked about being a woman MP among men. She described walking past Lee Anderson’s office and seeing him struggling to iron a shirt. ‘Give me that,’ she said, seizing the iron. ‘You start with the sleeves first,’ she told Reform’s chief whip. To spell out the analogy: Reform UK is not a product of the Westminster Bubble but a popular movement sprung from calloused hands, countryside and coast, red-wall tenements and suburban-semis. Yet it claps as one with a strength and diversity no DEI wokesta can ever hope to equal.
Will all this actually translate into the transfer of power so many yearn for? The answer lies in that first first meeting. Two Israeli officials expressed surprise. Every single question was broadly similar: How can we help Israel? Used to being browbeaten and shouted down, the two women from the embassy had been unsure what to expect. ‘We were not prepared for the warmth and the reception that we received here this morning,’ said deputy-ambassador Daniela Grudsky, clearly moved.
Israel has a secret army of sympathisers – former kibbutz volunteers – as I was – and people of faith who seek the paths once trodden by Moses, Christ and the apostles. Israel faces an existential crisis decimal points worse than our own. ‘We felt scared to speak out, but not anymore,’ one woman said at the meeting. ‘We don’t want to see our country taken from us and we don’t want to see Israel lose either.’
It is this Secret Army, breaking covert, that holds the key to Britain’s future. In one of the talks a couple sitting next to me kept whispering. Turning to tell them to shut up, I stopped. These people have been told to shut up long enough.
Andy Milne is a writer based in the west of England. His book, Children of the Resurrection is available on Amazon.