22 October 2025

Wine and mussels in Reform’s boozy heartland

Every political movement has its scene. I found Nigel Farage’s in Belgravia

Here’s a game. Close your eyes and transport yourself to the spiritual opposite of an east London natural wine bar – a place free from the clutches of crudo and za’atar yoghurt, where no one has even heard of yuzu. Too slow. It’s called Boisdale of Belgravia. It has a walk-in humidor, a menu full of lobster and caviar, a smoking terrace, white tablecloths and a wine list printed on a menu larger than my torso. I look around: Claret, soda bread, venison. I am here for lunch – and to find out how Reform UK likes to kick back and network at the same time.

I arrive and am immediately struck with a vision of Boisdale’s interior designer marching into a Farrow & Ball, slamming his fist on the counter and demanding all the red paint they have. And then some. This, in concert with the dark carpets and mahogany wood finishes, gives one the feeling that they are eating lunch in the womb of a large cow – or perhaps a pig. It is quite comfortable, actually.

Every political movement has its attendant scene (that word!) – a smattering of restaurants and bars, a postcode, a dress code and an origin story. New Labour was truly born in 1994 at Granita on Islington Green, over a dinner between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. We would have called it modern British cuisine back then. The Tory wets plotted their failed coup against Margaret Thatcher at the Gay Hussar in Soho, now a branch of Noble Rot. The same restaurant was long the HQ of the intellectual left. Nick Clegg and George Osborne dinner-partied in W11. If my movement ever gets off the ground, expect to hear a lot more about Terroni’s deli on Clerkenwell Road.

And so, Boisdale is Reform’s answer to that question. In doubt? I have proof in the form of Nigel Farage, who arrived just moments before me and was quickly whisked away to a private room. With a donor, perhaps? Or a possible Tory defector? Does David Frost like venison? Boisdale has been the office-away-from-office for Farage’s ilk for years, my lunch companion – a senior Reform figure – tells me, brandishing a G&T. Farage’s security guard walks past; they nod at each other. I am an interloper in the home of the right-wing renegade raconteurs. And then I inspect the Caledonian menu (the proprietor, Ranald Macdonald, is the son of the 24th chief of Clanranald): Orkney scallops, Dumfries haggis, cullen skink – a thick fish soup. You can almost taste the tartan.

Eating at Boisdale is at once an elitist activity – because it’s in Belgravia – and déclassé, because American tourists like it here. I suppose this, in many ways, speaks to something deeper in the soul of Reform: a party for the so-called left-behinds, run from cigar-stained private rooms in west London; elite populists beloved by New World Republicans. And it isn’t just Boisdale: 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair is the preferred club of the new old right of Great Britain; Scott’s Seafood Bar – is the secret to Reform simply that they all love expensive fish? – is a favourite locale too. If you want to spot a more clandestine rendezvous, head south of the river to the Vauxhall Tea House.

But here I am, in their number-one destination, eating mussels and sharing a bottle of wimpy Cabernet Sauvignon (that’s on me) on a Tuesday afternoon. I glance over to the private room – door still closed – and consider whether Farage is designing his next steps to total hegemony behind it. And then I wonder where the Tories are eating these days – does anyone know? If Kemi Badenoch Deliveroo-ing a steak to her office is the closest thing the party has to a manifest scene, then we need no further evidence of the death of that Conservative movement. Politics is supposed to be convivial.

After lunch, we hop on Lime bikes and cruise through the back streets of Westminster on our way to the Marquis of Granby just off Smith Square. This pub has long been a hangout for the righter-than-right – the wonks at the Adam Smith Institute, the TaxPayers’ Alliance; once a Vote Leave haunt, with Farage’s gang still keeping the lights on now. I’m drunk on fish and Cabernet Sauvignon and look around: is this all Reform Town now?