A personal view from Reform UK Conference

There is a great summary and reflection piece of Reform UK conference from Nicholas Hillman OBE over on HEPI. Having spent another couple of days wandering around the Birmingham NEC, my own main observation is that Reform is starting to look less like a protest movement and more like a political party preparing for the possibility that it might actually have to govern.

(And not just because I counted only one - one! - Union Jack suit this time around).

Last year, my main criticism was the apparent lack of serious policy thought on higher education. In its absence was a slightly carnivalesque atmosphere: exuberant, irreverent and deliberately outside the conventions of respectable Westminster politics. I wrote about Union Jack-clad tractors, sequinned jumpsuits, bacon butties and plenty of anger at the establishment… but relatively little detail about what Reform would actually do with the institutions of Government if it got hold of them.

From protest to policy

This year, something had shifted. The Policy Hub, sitting right in the epicentre of the venue, was pretty symbolic of that. It moved the message from "look how angry we are with the political establishment" (circa 2025), to "look what we would do if you put us in charge of it." And it was collaborative - delegates were welcomed to give their ideas and input into the policy development.

In fact, the entire conference was organised around "The First 100 Days" - blasted across lanyards -  of a Reform Government. There was a dedicated Business Day for the first time. Policy sessions were busy. And rather than simply diagnosing what Reform thinks is wrong with Britain, considerably more attention was being given to what its politicians would actually do about it.

It was a noticeable pivot from flamboyant protest towards serious policy - or, perhaps more accurately, towards wanting to be taken seriously as a policymaking party. Even the Led By Donkeys-style “Burnham’s Inconvenience Store” skit was attracting little attention whenever I walked by.

Perhaps none of this is surprising. Reform's electoral ambition has grown and so too has the pressure to move beyond diagnoses of national decline and towards something resembling a programme for Government. Protest politics has the luxury of telling you what is broken. Prospective governing parties eventually have to explain what happens at 9am Monday morning in No. 10.

And you could see that transition in the personnel as much as the presentation. A striking amount of stage time was occupied by people who have already spent considerable time inside No. 10 - the political establishment Reform was created to disrupt. There seemed to be far more former Conservative Ministers and senior political figures than last time. And they replaced the angry anti-establishment campaigners and the 2025 first-time local councillors who unexpected found themselves with elected office and a microphone shoved in their face after a round of pyrotechnics. The conversations seemed shaped by people who have run Government departments, sat around Cabinet tables, and occupied serious positions of office.

So that changes the proposition. Whatever you think of Reform's politics, former Ministers know what Government looks like from the inside. They know the machinery, the constraints and, crucially, the questions a party needs to be able to answer if it expects to govern.

And this sense of a party consciously positioning itself for power extended beyond Westminster. Jordan Bardella was among the international guests at the conference. Bardella is President of France's National Rally, which has spent years attempting its own transition from insurgent populism towards presenting itself as a credible party of Government. Reform appeared on the same journey.

Where did all the sequins go?

Of course, there is the elephant in the room explanation for the change in tone. This year Reform has Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain positioning itself to its right, alongside various other parties, campaigns, and organisations competing for overlapping political territory. The British right is increasingly fragmented, so some of the more radical energy now has somewhere else to go.

That potentially creates space - and an electoral incentive - for Reform to moderate the presentation of its politics without necessarily moderating the politics themselves. Some of the people who want something more radical can now go elsewhere. Reform, meanwhile, needs to persuade a much broader group of voters that putting it into Government would not represent an enormous leap into the unknown.

There were also more subtle attempts to claim seriousness, too. Zia Yusuf mocked politicians who “talk about crisps on TikTok”, contrasting them with himself, who wouldn't ever be involved in such banal stunts. Of course there is a small irony in that Reform's own rise was powered in no small part by mastering precisely the sort of direct, informal, highly shareable social-media politics that bypassed the conventions of Westminster. Farage talking straight to a phone camera with a quick take on the issue of the day was part of the appeal - pint in hand.

The message may have been that pub drinks are allowed as political props but pub snacks are not? Either way, the distinction Yusuf was attempting to draw was an attempt to redraw the boundary around who gets to look serious. The informality that once helped Reform demonstrate that it wasn't like established parties is becoming less useful when it needs to demonstrate that it could replace them.

There was still plenty of populist theatre, of course, as is tradition with all political party conferences. But the balance was different to last year. The tribute to the late Ann Widdecombe, for example, was sombre, affectionate and touching. Given the circumstances of her murder - and the continuing investigation into its motivation by Counter Terrorism Police -  it would have been remarkably easy for a populist political conference to turn her death into another political attack or rallying cry. They didn't.

This was another clear indication that Reform is acquiring some of the characteristics of the conventional political institutions it has traditionally defined itself against. Political parties don't just have policies. They acquire histories, elder statespeople, rituals, loyalties and collective memories. A populist could have taken this moment to politicise Widdecombe's death. An established political party respectfully commemorated her. As touchingly as this was, it was a decision made. Reform is still a young party, but this behaviour felt like one expecting to be around for a while.

The Andy Burnham effect?

Reform also arrived in Birmingham in a rather different political environment from 12 months ago. It had lost its polling lead after a difficult summer, while Labour was enjoying what has been described as a "Burnham bounce". Burnham is potentially a more complicated opponent for Reform than the Labour Party it spent years defining itself against. Against Starmer, Reform could relatively easily occupy the emotional territory of frustration: establishment versus outsider; managerialism versus disruption; Westminster versus everyone else.

Burnham’s political appeal is itself regional (something that came up time and time again in my conversations with delegates last year), emotionally communicative and built partly around acknowledging that the political and economic system isn't working properly for many working people. He can talk about places being ignored, institutions failing and the Government needing to respond much more visibly to people's everyday frustrations without asking voters to burn the whole thing down.

Basically Labour - through Burnham - is reclaiming some of the emotional territory on which Reform has thrived. So Reform, no longer the lone player who has to demonstrate competence to represent, not just understand, the everyday man.

Reform now doesn't just need to convince people that it understands why they're angry anymore. It needs to convince them that it knows what to do about it. And what they are going to do is better than what Labour is going to do. Insert the Policy Hub, the Business Day, and the “First 100 Days" framing.

Of course, there is an irony in the two parties moving, in some respects, towards one another. Burnham's answer to populist dissatisfaction is partly to make the mainstream Government feel less technocratic and more responsive. Reform's answer is take an insurgent movement and make it look more like a conventional Government-in-waiting.

I should add here that more professional presentation shouldn’t be mistaken for an entirely sanitised conference. The final day involved uncomfortable reports (with footage) of delegates pulling a protester’s hair, hitting them with mobility aids, and punching them (albeit behaviour Yusuf subsequently condemned).

Higher education turns up

And of course, there was another very noticeable difference - and the point of me going (again). Last year I wrote that higher education was strikingly absent from much of the conversation. So I spent two days beelining towards anyone who would listen to make the case for universities and colleges as employers, skills providers, exporters, civic institutions and anchors of their local economies.

This year, the sector had very visibly turned up. As Nick also observed - lots of colleagues from higher education were in attendance. And it was particularly good to see Professor Malcolm Press, President of Universities UK, engaging directly with the arguments being made rather than leaving the sector to be talked about in its absence.

Press held his own extremely well on a panel with Suella Braverman discussing educational disadvantages among white working class boys. He agreed where there was common ground, challenged where there wasn't, and made the practical case for targeted bursaries and scholarships for underrepresented groups (unexpectedly, that intervention won applause from delegates). There is something very useful for us in that.

Because whether the sector wants to admit it or not, beneath the rhetoric surrounding universities, there are policy problems on which the dividing lines are considerably less straightforward than they appear. Skills shortages, regional inequality, access to opportunity, NHS workforce pressures, productivity and the economic prospects of towns outside London are all issues Reform talks about extensively. They are also issues in which universities and colleges are already deeply embedded.

Last year, I left the Reform UK conference pleased simply to have put higher education into conversations where it had largely been absent. This year, senior sector figures were already standing on the stages having those arguments themselves. I'm not entirely sure whose progress that represents - perhaps both sides'? - although not without complication.

Legitimacy

Now, there is a legitimate concern - and live criticism - that institutional engagement with Reform UK risks conferring legitimacy: that appearing on its stages helps move the party from the political margins into the mainstream, or normalises positions that many within higher education find deeply objectionable. That concern shouldn't simply be waved away with the line that "engagement doesn’t mean endorsement". Who institutions choose to engage with, and on what terms, inevitably carries some symbolic weight.

But absence has consequences, too. Refusing to enter the room doesn't prevent Reform from developing higher education policy, talking about universities, or potentially exercising power over them. It simply means doing so with fewer people present who understand the sector well enough to challenge assumptions, correct misconceptions or explain the consequences of what is being proposed.

Perhaps the change, then, is reciprocal. The higher education sector is having to decide what responsible engagement with Reform looks like as the party becomes a more significant political force. Reform, meanwhile, is having to decide whether being serious about government means exposing its ideas to people who may challenge rather than reinforce them.

I haven't got a comfortable answer to the legitimacy question. But there is a difference between legitimising a political position and recognising the political reality that it exists. Neither requires agreement. But policymaking is rarely improved by only talking to people who already agree with you.

Government-in-waiting?

Now - none of my thoughts and reflections mean that Reform is ready to govern. A Policy Hub doesn't automatically make policies workable, costed, or internally coherent. Former Cabinet Ministers don't automatically resolve the tensions between insurgency and administration. And calling something a "First 100 Days" programme inevitably invites questions about whether it could actually be delivered in the first 100 days.

But I feel that is the Faustian bargain Reform appears willing to make. The more detailed the policy offer becomes, the harder it is to retain the freedoms of a protest movement. Policies can be interrogated. Numbers can be challenged. The sectors expected to implement them can explain what would - and wouldn't - work. And a party asking to be imagined in Government can reasonably expect to be scrutinised as though it might get there.

From my position, that is perhaps the most significant change from last year. Political conferences are acts of theatre, and the role Reform wants to play appears to be changing. The eccentricity that once communicated outsider status becomes less useful when you need voters to picture your politicians behind Government desks. But credibility brings constraints of its own; you cannot simultaneously ask to be treated as a serious prospective Government and expect your proposals to be afforded the latitude of political protest.

Perhaps the most revealing phrase of the conference came from Farage himself when he said “continuity government”. It is an intriguing choice of words for a party built on disruption. Continuity implies institutions that survive the transfer of power, machinery that still needs to function on Monday morning and, ultimately, an acceptance that governing is not simply an act of demolition.

Reform's pitch is increasingly not that it would stand outside the system and rage against it, but that it could take control of it and make it work differently. That is a pitch we all need to pay attention to.