Reform’s Cheshire Cat troublemaker basks in Taylor Swift-like atmosphere

The NEC in Birmingham had been done up like the set of a WWE wrestling event circa 2002, which, given the combative splash the party has already made in Parliament, was perhaps appropriate.

Nigel Farage promised that this would represent Reform UK’s “coming of age”; and quite some age it looked like. Nothing sums up the paradoxes – and potential political power of Reform – quite like watching older ladies from the Home Counties with immaculate white coiffures being guided to their seats by shiny suited lads from ex-industrial towns, and then watching them politely pump their fists and cheer to the pulsating music that announced the conference’s start.

Unlike the other party gatherings which invariably feel like a group of management consultants committing cultic suicide in a student union, the atmosphere here was more Taylor Swift Eras. Although one suspects Sir Keir won’t have been trying to get his little trotters on a ticket to this particular party.

Pleasingly, the bar had a four-drink limit, a testament to the quality of the attendees. “Say goodbye to juggling your pint and say hello to hands-free beer lanyards”, one advertisement promised.

Instead of the usual warm-up acts of business leaders and professionally aggrieved members of the public that pepper the other conferences, Friday’s line-up was more Strictly: Ann Widdecombe and Ant Middleton from SAS: Who Dares Wins delighted the crowd. Widders got a particularly big cheer for calling Sir Keir a “King Cnut”.

They’d even brought along the Reform battle bus – despite having previously admitted parts of it were held together by glue. This seemed to be reserved for MPs, party bigwigs, Noughties pop star Holly Valance and the comedian Jim Davidson, who danced and waved at the crowds. So far, it still seemed more panto than professionalism.

After lunch, we were treated to more warm-ups – the gang of five again demonstrating the party’s breadth. Rupert Lowe, the Great Yarmouth MP, quoted Socrates and Tacitus and referenced the South Sea Bubble, while Lee Anderson performatively ripped up a BBC licence fee demand on stage.

Richard Tice was introduced as “the Nigel Havers of the Right-wing” and “the thinking woman’s crumpet” by the compère, the aptly named David Bull. At one point, Tice’s microphone sputtered out. “That’s the establishment cutting me off there, they don’t like what I’m saying,” he chuckled. It was pure Alan Partridge.

Most speakers invoked panto heroes and villains. Cheers for Mrs Thatcher and the Second World War generation; deafening boos for Blair, Brown, Mandelson and the donor at the heart of the glasses-for-passes scandal. “Shame on you, Lord Alli!” yelled David Bull. “Booooooo,” yelled the crowd.

But the man they were all waiting for was, of course, Farage. We were treated to a PowerPoint collage of Nige through the ages; child, schoolboy, banker, MEP and now MP. The man himself entered the hall to Eminem’s Without Me and opened with a visual gag about Sir Keir’s glasses which got a huge laugh.

His speech finished with the launch of hundreds of oversized balloons onto the stage, which Farage kicked and tapped into the crowd, grinning his Faragiest grin; part Cheshire Cat, part dentist who enjoys his work a little too much. The sort of smile that might be the last thing you ever see.

Whether he will make good on his promise to professionalise the party remains to be seen. Still, the buoyancy, buzz and slight Wild West sense that anything could happen suggest that Reform is on its way to causing plenty more trouble yet.