Reform's big new year rally fails to excel

Reform held its belated ‘New Year Rally’ on Friday night at London’s Excel conference centre – although the crowds did not seem to be quite as large as the party had billed.

Nigel Farage’s mob had briefed a sell-out 2,500 supporters would be flooding the soulless centre at one end of the capital’s unloved cable car ride, but in the event only around half that turned up.

Might that be because the party is increasingly spending its time telling people the capital of the country it has designs on governing in the next few years is a lawless hellhole? Last week Farage said London was “now in the grip of a crime wave run by foreign criminal gangs” and that “internationally the reputation of London is collapsing. It’s now being talked about around the world in increasingly disparaging terms”.

Suggested Reading

The strangely close links between Reform and the UAE

Rats in a Sack

Laila Cunningham, last week unveiled as the party’s candidate for mayor of London in 2028, was the star turn at the rally (after Farage himself, of course) and must have terrified anyone who had travelled in from the provinces to attend with her apocalyptic vision of the capital. “We are living in a crime epidemic,” she told supporters, painting a picture of a city where “the police don’t care”, “masked gangs roam the streets” and “I am terrified for my son when he’s out on the street”. No wonder so many stayed away!

Party chair David Bull meanwhile – the entirely sane man who last year claimed the spirit of his dead grandmother travelled in the boot of his car before entering the body of Derek Acorah and being expelled by another phantom who tried to strangle him – kicked off the event by praising London as a “global centre for vaccine research”. This was the same David Bull who last year introduced Aseem Malhotra at the party’s conference as the man who “worked with me to write Reform UK’s health policy”. Malhotra has claimed, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that the Covid vaccine had caused cancer in the royal family.

The Times, which is increasingly cheerleading Farage into government, devoted the best part of two pages to a sparsely-attended rally – more than any day of last year’s Liberal Democrat conference, who have 72 MPs to Reform’s five. It illustrated it with a picture of an “energised supporter with a World Cup England football flag”.

Space, alas, prevented it from mentioning it wasn’t just a Farage fan, but Kieran Mishchuk, Reform UK councillor for Milton Regis on Swale Borough Council. Mishchuk has form for appearing as an ordinary Joe, last year popping up as an unnamed local voxpopped on GB News as to why flags should not be removed from lampposts.