Its polling is up, but former Brexit party still lacks crucial support from its talisman Nigel Farage
It was a week in which speculation that Nigel Farage would make a long-awaited return to frontline British politics reached a new level, before Reform UK’s 2024 policy launch.
In the event, dozens of journalists who trooped to a central London hotel on the off chance that the former Ukip leaderwould appear were disappointed. Farage, Reform’s honorary president and its dominant shareholder, was not among the guests alongside the party’s leader, Richard Tice, who mounted an attack on Labour and the Conservatives and dialled up his own anti-immigration rhetoric.