Reform to set up branches nationwide

Reform UK will set up branches around the country to build on election success, Richard Tice has said.

Mr Tice, the chairman of Reform since Nigel Farage returned to lead the party last month, likened the insurgent party to startups including Apple and Microsoft.

Reform won five MPs and more than four million votes, with Mr Tice becoming the MP for Boston and Skegness while Mr Farage was elected in Clacton.

Pledging to continue to squeeze the Tory vote, Mr Tice revealed Reform would formalise local groups across the country, in a similar way to Conservative Party associations.

He said: “We’re going to have Reform branches around the country,] go forward as a start up, fine-tuning everything, learning and growing and constantly improving, all of the things that Nigel said yesterday.

“We’re going to grow just like any startup in the corporate world. The equivalent would be Apple or any of the tech startups that have grown and grown. Microsoft was founded in a garage, for goodness’ sake.”

Pledge to professionalise Reform

Mr Farage has promised he would “professionalise” Reform after a number of rows involving its candidates and derogatory comments.

The now-MP for Clacton came back to front-line politics at the start of June, shortly after Rishi Sunak called the general election, and vowed to put his party under “much stricter control”.

On a visit to a football club in Thurrock with James McMurdock, Reform’s new MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, Mr Farage said he was “ruling out for now” any prospect of his party and him joining the Conservatives.

He was responding to comments by Sir Edward Leigh, a veteran Tory MP whose 41 years in the Commons mean he is now the Father of the House after Thursday’s election.

Sir Edward only became Father of the House by around 15 minutes because he was sworn in around 20 places before Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader and now-independent MP for Islington North, who was first elected in the same year as him.

On Saturday Sir Edward urged his party to welcome all five Reform MPs into the Conservative fold and do more to appeal to its voters.

But speaking to The Telegraph, Mr Farage said: “This is what is so funny. You’ve got the Father of the House saying Nigel Farage is a terribly nice chap, Suella Braverman saying the same thing, and William Hague and David Cameron saying I’m the devil.

“That really sums up the split that exists within the Conservative Party. The psychodrama that is played out over the past few years will continue. They hate each other. They will be self-obsessed. They won’t provide a decent opposition.

“And all the while they are busy fighting with themselves we are going to do our own thing; restructure, reorganise, professionalise, democratise and get ready for the next election.”

Asked if he would rule out him and his party joining the Conservatives, he said: “It’s not on my wish list, let me tell you. I think they are a pretty awful lot, entirely self-centred.

Something is fundamentally wrong

“It’s all about them. It’s not really about their communities or country. We are ploughing our own furrow. We’ve had a good start.”

Asked again if he would rule it out: “I will rule it out for now, of course. I’m ruling it out.”

Mr Farage also urged reform of the electoral system as he claimed proportional representation would have given his party 97 MPs instead of five.

He said: “The fact that for every Reform MP there are 800,000 voters, and for every Labour MP there are 30,000 voters suggests there is something very badly and fundamentally wrong.

“A Labour Party that gets a third of the national vote and two-thirds of the seats is an absolute joke. These results will reinforce in people’s minds that we need [electoral] reform.”

Mr Farage said his party would provide “real opposition” with five MPs and “build a mass movement for real change” leading up to the next election, at which he believes he will be a serious candidate for prime minister.