Another week, another puff-piece for Reform in the Spectator – the Michael Gove-edited magazine which used to be the in-house organ of the Conservative Party but is now getting increasingly Reform-curious.
Last year Gove suggested the Speccie’s centuries-old endorsement of the Tories could be up in the air, saying it was “giving house room to Reform” and that both parties would be held to account by the magazine until either had shown they can be an “effective governing force” (a reminder Lord Gove continues to take the Conservative whip in the House of Lords).
With Farage fanboy James Heale as deputy political editor, though, the magazine is less giving house room to Reform than rivalling the party’s new freesheet – and this week, once again, he was back in action as the dear leader’s stenographer.
Under the unintentionally ironic headline “Nigel Farage: ‘Kemi has had the easiest ride of any Tory leader in my lifetime’’’, Heale travels aboard the Reform leader’s private jet (something he refers to on X, if not in the article as – ugh! – “Air Force Farage”).
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He appears to be impressed that Farage is already at work at 8.30pm – something one might not think that unusual for somebody auditioning to be the next prime minister – and describes two of his passengers, Robert Jenrick and Danny Kruger, as “his two most prized Tory defectors” despite the pair being those Kemi Badenoch was most delighted to see the door hitting them on the way out.
“The recent Tory reshuffle has accelerated the process of the two right-wing parties picking a lane: the Conservatives are once again aiming to win over the affluent south, while Reform focuses on the north and Midlands,” explains Heale – although quite how this squares with Farage landing in almost-as-south-as-it-gets Plymouth, pointing at a statue of Francis Drake and shouting “Drake! My house at school” is unclear. Still, “if class is back in British politics, then Reform knows for whom it speaks,” writes Heale.
Meanwhile, Heale adds that “multiple TV stings have felled some key lieutenants” so “Farage has decided to spurn parliament and tour the country twice a week”. He does not question whether, having spent the summer fighting an unnecessary and expensive by-election to return to that self-same Parliament, he might want to perhaps spend some time in it.
In case any reader is concerned about the standard of Reform councillors after an ITV undercover investigation exposed the racist, misogynistic views of many senior members – no fear!
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“Paul Nuttall, the vice chairman, is running the assessment centres: 300 have passed so far and are going through vetting now, with ‘another 200 who are very, very close’,” reports Heale.
This would be the same Nuttall who, when leader of Ukip, claimed he had been present and “lost close personal friends” at the Hillsborough disaster, that he had a PhD and had played football for Tranmere Rovers. None of these claims turned out to be provable, and Nuttall insisted that he had never made any of them personally – no doubt the reason Heale found no reason to mention them.
“After landing back in London, there is time to pop into a favoured haunt. Farage still enjoys Rothmans cigarettes, quips and pints,” marvels Heale. “‘Generally, in politics,’ he muses at one point, ‘nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems.’” Except in the Spectator, where everything about Reform is just marvellous!
Meanwhile, Heale’s book Shock to the System: The Rise Of Reform UK will be out in February 2027, by which time they will have fallen even further in the polls.
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