Is it advantage Tice in the battle to be Farage's chancellor?

Nigel Farage is playing a keep-’em-guessing game when it comes to who will occupy 11 Downing Street in the apocalyptic scenario in which Reform comes to power – and that extends to the candidates themselves.

Despite billing his party as an administration in waiting, and now appearing at all his press conferences behind a ‘preparing for government’ lectern, Farage appears no closer to confirming who his chancellor would be were he to become prime minister.

The two battling behind the scenes to take charge of the nation’s coffers are Richard Tice, the deputy leader, and Zia Yusuf, the hokey-cokeying former chairman who now heads up policy for the party. Yusuf appears to have been in the ascendancy recently, with Farage repeatedly saying his senior appointments need not come from within Parliament.

Farage is unsurprisingly a fan of the US system, where, provided the president can get his cabinet picks confirmed, they can get on with the job pretty much unbothered by such fripperies as oversight for the next four years. The Reform leader confirmed he was leaning this way at a press conference earlier this week when he repeated his view that all MPs, himself presumably excluded, are morons. “They haven’t got a clue what they are doing.” he said, “these people whose only qualification is being a Member of Parliament.”

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That would be music to the ears of Yusuf, who is not thought to be actively seeking a seat. But it might annoy Tice, who feels he deserves a bit more bang for his buck.

In an interview with the Sunday Times’s Decca Aitkenhead earlier this year, Tice was keen to stress the amount of his personal cash he’s pumped into the party (more than £1 million) and said: “There would be no Reform if I hadn’t put my money where my mouth is.” Asked whether he would like to be chancellor, he said Aitkenhead was “astute”. And last year he told the Daily Telegraph: “If you want a country to be run well, you need top people running it. It’s as simple as that.”

Now he appears to have won the backing of another key Reform figure whose personal wealth is keeping the lights on. Nick Candy, the party’s treasurer who gifted £1m of his cash to Reform last month having so far failed to secure the £25-40 million from donors by the time of the general election he pledged, seems to be Team Tice.

At an event at Bloomberg last night at which Tice was the star speaker, Candy was given the closing remarks. The treasurer said: “A lot of chancellors and chancellors-in-waiting have sat in the hot seat at Bloomberg. I wonder whether you might have just seen another one.”

Advantage Tice. But will 11 Downing Street have to be relocated to Dubai, where Tice, along with partner Isabel Oakeshott, spends half his time?