From late June until early August, the Westminster lobbying industry holds a long series of summer drinks in the gardens and courtyards of SW1. These parties give people who work in public affairs (the polite term for lobbying) a chance to share their plans for the upcoming conference season. This year, lobbyists say the same question was being asked over every Champagne flute: “are you going to Reform?”
“That’s when we decided where we really need to go,” one lobbyist told me, “because it’s quite clear to me that everyone’s taking them very seriously”. A survey by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations last week found that the interest in Reform’s annual conference (which begins today, Friday 5 September) has increased fivefold since 2023, with one in five of the UK’s public affairs professionals planning to attend. From conversations with a range of lobbyists this week, it is clear that the public affairs industry sees Reform as a significant opportunity.
Reform UK has four MPs; in Westminster seats it is no bigger than the Green Party. But in conversations with a range of lobbyists – most of whom asked not to be named, in order to speak freely – I was told that the party’s unusual structure, its polling, its performance in local elections and its control of the political conversation make it second only to the government itself in its importance to the influence industry.
Lobbying works by helping politicians to form ideas and write the policies that will eventually become our laws. Reform is particularly attractive to the public affairs industry because many of its policies are as yet unwritten. A lobbyist in the energy sector told me that while the party’s “direction of travel” on energy policy was clear, “the detail underneath that – I don’t think that detail exists yet. And that’s what’s more interesting for us.”
Others said Reform is the most important party to influence because it has seized control of the political conversation. Several people agreed that the way to get Labour to do something is to get Reform to say they’ll do it. “They are the ones that are driving the narrative at present”, said one. “The decisions [Reform] make around what they want to go public on, do make the political weather, they do make the news,” said another. “And there doesn’t seem to be much pushback from the left.”
The decline of the Conservative Party has also left lobbyists with more time and money to approach Reform. One in-house corporate lobbyist told me the Conservatives “look completely useless” and “have extremely limited influence”. Another agency lobbyist agreed that “the Conservative Party has less influence on either the political weather nationally or in terms of influencing policy in Parliament than it has done for many, many years.”
But this is also a matter of local politics. Public affairs is also the business of ensuring that clients receive planning permission, regulatory approval, or the support of a local MP. Reform was the biggest winner in the May 2025 local elections, and may repeat this performance next year. Agencies are attending because they want to find out who to speak to, and to understand if the rhetoric from Farage and his MPs is matched by the party at ground level.
This is particularly significant in Wales – where, in the Welsh parliament elections this coming May, the party appears likely to rival Plaid Cymru and Welsh Labour. Craig Lawton, associate director of public affairs at Grasshopper Communications in Cardiff, told me: “The number one question I am getting from clients at present is, how do we talk to Reform?” Some of Lawton’s clients see an opportunity to influence policy formation in a party still finding its opinions on many issues. Others are worried that assumptions they’ve made about their business will be overturned by a shift of power in the Senedd. Lawton said Reform are currently eager to hear from the business community, but that they are also impatient to form policy now. “The line I got from Reform was, don’t expect to talk to us after the election, if you didn’t bother to talk to us before.”
There are two types of lobbyist: public affairs agencies, which lobby on behalf of clients, and in-house lobbyists, who are employees of a company or business group. Agencies are more likely to attend this year’s Reform conference, without saying publicly whose interests they represent.
Some businesses, meanwhile, still perceive a reputational risk in being seen to support a party that is advocating mass deportations and prison camps for asylum seekers. “We’ve got clients that are going,” one agency head told me, “but they’re doing that in a very low-key way”. Being at the conference is one thing, but spending big money on sponsorships is another. While there are a few big-name sponsors – perhaps most notably Heathrow Airport, which is sponsoring the business lounge – most of the backers for events at this year’s conference appear to be from areas that are already Reform-adjacent: cryptocurrency, the sport shooting lobby, and Forest, a lobby group funded by tobacco companies that describes itself as the “voice and friend of the smoker”.
Reform is unusual in that it has a paid lobbyist working at the highest level of the party: Gawain Towler, recently elected to the party’s board (and formerly its director of communications), works on a part-time basis for lobbyists Bradshaw Advisory and has founded a “strategic communications” company (which he described to me as “absolutely not lobbying”) with the former Northern Ireland Secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris. In recent months has appeared at events held by other lobbying firms such as PLMR and Northpoint Strategy to discuss Reform’s growing significance.
Towler said he is having to “reconfigure” his work in strategic communications and for Bradshaw Advisory in light of his membership of Reform’s board. “I need to work out where the parameters are”, he told me. “It may be a question of me recusing myself from aspects of the board… but I still have to eat, and the board is not a paid position.”
Towler is not the only person with experience of both Reform and the lobbying sector. Liam Deacon, who was the party’s head of press (in its previous incarnation as the Brexit Party) now works as a senior consultant for lobbying firm Pagefield. However, it is far more common to find former Labour and Conservative staffers in the public affairs agencies of Westminster.
Six months ago, Towler said, a business that approached Reform did so with a certain amount of nose-holding. Now, his phone buzzes – he said he had received five missed calls in the 20 minutes we spoke – with requests to meet. Among the most interested are those in the energy sector, and “people in the crypto space”. City financial firms have also been keen to get in touch, although he said the financial sector tends to “go directly to Richard [Tice]”.
Towler warned that lobbyists may have to take a different approach with Reform. The party’s councillors and members are, he said, “very sceptical of lobbying, because they have been outsiders, and have felt that the whole lobbying business is… there’s a whiff to it.”
As a party, he said, Reform is “wary of multinational big business, because we don’t think it has necessarily been good for our country… I suspect some of the larger operations of this world will be looking at some trepidation at our general approach.”
If Reform continues its current direction in the polls, business may have to come to a new settlement with the party. The unspoken contract established between the businesses community and the current government, which voiced its support for Labour before the last general election, was that little would change. In meetings and in speeches, ministers reassured the business world that stability was their aim, and this was underlined by policies such as the commitment not to change the rate of corporation tax for the entire parliament. Reform, on the other hand, has built its popularity on the promise of disruption. “People aren’t voting for reform up and down the country for things to stay the same”, said Towler. “And so of course, there’s concern amongst significant chunks of the business world. They want to be able to plan 10 years in advance. Well – tough!”
[See also: Nigel Farage, the free speech champion we deserve]
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