City slicker Nigel Farage making the political weather after tribute act Keir Starmer’s “island of strangers” speech means it’s beginning to feel in Westminster as if Reform packs not five but 50 or even 500 MPs, groaned a despairing Labour newbie. The hard-right grouplet is behaving like that too. Mel Stride was put up by the Conservatives to denounce as “economically illiterate” a Reform financial wish list. The shadow chancellor is known as “Minor Party Mel” in Reform HQ. Rupert Lowe? The expelled Reform MP who created damaging headlines before the Runcorn by-election and council victories is “Whopert” Lowe because they claim nobody remembers him.
Farage is putting out feelers to create a Reform brains trust, I hear. All jokes on a postcard, please. The buoyed leader recognises, whispered an insider, that the party requires intellectual heft and a broader base. Bandwagon jumpers from Labour and the Lib Dems are top of his dream list. One target name circulating is that of Jeremy Browne, ex-Lib MP and foreign minister in the ConDem coalition. The one-time president of the Les Dawson Appreciation Society is currently head of Canning House, a Latin America talk shop. Stranger things, etc.
Morgan McSweeney is unnerving Reform by putting Labour tanks on their broadcasting lawn. Starmer’s chief of staff requested a meeting with GB News chief Angelos Frangopoulos to discuss ground rules for more government ministers appearing on the right-wing channel. Home Secretary Yvette Copper popped up for the first time after the migration fatwa. Peter Mandelson purred he liked GB News because it amplified Tory-Reform splits. Labour boycotts are a thing of the past. Starmer’s desperate to chat directly to Farage voters.
Attorney-General Richard Hermer returned to his roots fighting cases for trade union solicitors Thompsons. Delivering the firm’s annual lecture, Hermer cited opposition to the Workmen’s Compensation Act 1897 as evidence that critics of better employment laws are invariably wrong. Introducing employer liability for workplace injuries was condemned, he said, by an MP who predicted employees would deliberately mutilate themselves to win awards. Hermer’s powerful justification of this Labour government’s reforms was a victim of unpopular decisions such as the winter fuel farrago overshadowing the good ones like job rights.
Durham pit village lad turned Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds sat with the Sunderland hordes at Coventry for a football Championship play-off. What was that about Starmer and Rachel Reeves needing to be in executive boxes for security?
[See also: How Scotland learned to love Nigel Farage]
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This article appears in the 14 May 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Why George Osborne still runs Britain