Tories imitating our policies, says Reform UK leader Richard Tice

London: Type “Reform UK” into a search engine and the first question that comes up is “does Reform UK still exist?”

The party that emerged from the ashes of the Brexit Party nearly three years ago – minus leader Nigel Farage – has had little mainstream media coverage.

Yet someone is paying attention because Reform UK has consistently been in fourth place in the opinion polls, at around 6%, just ahead of the Green Party.

Reform’s leader Richard Tice grabbed some headlines at the start of this year when he declared his aim was to wipe out the Conservative Party.

He sounds more even-handed in his disdain, when I ask if he still feels that way.

“The Tories have broken Britain and we believe Labour would bankrupt Britain – and the country has never been in such a terrible state,” he says.

Mr Tice claims that Rishi Sunak’s recent policy shifts on net zero and Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s criticisms of the UN’s refugee convention – not to mention the government’s apparent rethink on HS2 – are a direct result of pressure from Reform.

“Imitation is a great form of flattery and what’s happened is they are terrified of the number of people up and down the country who recognise that we actually stand up for the common sense solutions to the massive challenges that have resulted from Tory mismanagement.”

Reform UK campaigns to scrap the 2050 target for achieving net zero carbon emissions – and Mr Tice says the UK should take the lead on reforming the “outdated” 1951 refugee convention.

“We should say to the UN, as one of the most respected nations in the world, either we amend this or give a clear six month deadline or we are out,” he says.

He has also called for HS2 to be scrapped altogether, branding it a “grotesque waste of taxpayers’ cash”.

But it is the net zero issue – he calls it “net stupid” – that he hopes will get his party noticed.

“The vitriol that I get is far greater on net zero than it ever was on Brexit,” he says.

He has called on Rishi Sunak to hold a referendum net zero – a plea that has fallen on deaf ears.

“Do you know why? Because he’s terrified he’d lose it. And that a referendum on net zero, led by Nigel Farage and myself, would win.”

Nigel Farage is the ghost at the table in any interview with Ricard Tice. The former UKIP leader’s profile has rarely been higher after his battle with the banking industry.

Mr Tice presents a programme on GB News (he was quick to condemn fellow presenter Laurence Fox’s recent comments) which he says gets him recognised by voters.

But he is hardly a household name. Will Mr Farage come out of retirement one final time to lend his profile to the party he founded?

“Nigel and I are great friends, we speak to each other frequently, every week, He is doing a great job at GB News.

“He has said he wouldn’t want to stand again under first-past-the post but any help that he is able to give us, if we move towards PR, fantastic.”

Richard Tice seems convinced that the UK will soon ditch first-past-the-post elections in favour of some form of proportional representation.

Without such a change, he concedes that smaller parties like his will always struggle to get MPs elected to Westminster.

Reform has so far been unable to convert its polling figures into electoral success, performing poorly in May’s local elections.

But Mr Tice emphatically rules out trying to use Reform’s influence in other ways, such as by striking a deal with Conservatives that support its agenda, as Nigel Farage did in 2019 with the Brexit Party.

Mr Farage was cheered by Tory MPs at a gala dinner in Manchester on Sunday, not far from the Tory conference, as he was praised for helping Boris Johnson win the 2019 general election by not contesting more than 300 seats.

Asked about the prospect of a similar deal next year, Mr Tice says: “We are standing 630 candidates in the whole of England, Scotland and Wales. Every single seat. I’ve already got over 400 lined up and there’s a few more hundred going through the process. We are standing everywhere.

“And anybody who thinks we are standing down and doing deals with anybody – they can forget it.”

Reform is holding its party conference in London at the weekend. It will be a modest affair compared with the Tory get-together in Manchester, with 1,100 attendees, but its leader is keen to point out that at £12.50 a ticket is “much better value” than the Tory conference.

He insists Reform is “neither to the left or the right”, although he attacks the party’s bigger rivals from the right, branding Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt “consocialists” who he says are no different to the “socialist Labour Party”.

He also expresses some sympathy for Liz Truss’s “tax cutting, high-growth agenda”, arguing that the short-lived Tory PM’s mistake was not to link it to a plan to “cut wasteful government spending in order to pay for it”.

But his strategy is to attack what he sees as the mainstream political consensus, in the hope of striking a chord with voters – or ex-voters – who have had enough of conventional politicians.

“We’ve got a country that is broken after years and years of promises and manifestos by both main parties and they have let everybody down and it’s time for change, it’s time for something different. We represent that different alternative.”