Fake anti-establishmentism

Two Thirds of Reform’s Wales Shadow Cabinet Are Ex-Tories

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Article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage campaigning in Wales. Credit: Reform UK / YouTube

Welsh Reform labelled a “retirement home for failed Conservatives”.

The majority of Reform UK’s shadow cabinet in Wales is made up of former Conservative Party politicians, including its leader, chief whip, and shadow economy minister, DeSmog can reveal.

Nigel Farage’s radical right-wing party – which campaigns against climate policies and supports dramatically increased fossil fuel production – became the second largest group in the Senedd following elections on 7 May.

Reform has presented itself as an outsider force and an alternative to the established parties.

However, DeSmog’s analysis finds that almost two thirds (64.2 percent) of Reform’s shadow cabinet posts in Wales are held by individuals who have previously served or stood for the Tories.

That amounts to nine out of Reform’s 14 shadow cabinet members, and includes Reform’s leader in Wales, Dan Thomas, who was Conservative leader of Barnet Council in London before defecting to Farage’s party in June last year. 

It also includes the party’s chief whip, Llŷr Powell, a former Tory council candidate, and shadow economy minister Jason O’Connell, a former Tory councillor.

In total, 12 of Reform’s 34 Senedd members are former Conservative politicians – amounting to 35 percent of the party’s representation in the assembly.

A spokesperson for the Wales Green Party said: “In the election campaign, Reform presented themselves as an insurgent anti-establishment party, but it’s looking more like they’re just a retirement home for failed Conservatives.”

Reform’s central party is also replete with ex-Tories. Six of Reform’s eight members of UK Parliament defected from the Conservatives, five while they were serving MPs. This includes Robert Jenrick, a former Tory minister and Reform’s current economic spokesperson, and former Conservative home secretary Suella Braverman, both of whom defected in January. 

Of the remaining two – Farage and his deputy Richard Tice – the latter is a former Tory party member and donor.

In Scotland, at least four of Reform’s members of the Scottish Parliament are former Tory politicians, including Max Bannerman in the Highlands and Islands, Thomas Kerr and Kim Schmulian in Glasgow, and Graham Simpson in Central Scot and Lothians West. 

Reform’s biggest donor, Thailand-based crypto and jet fuel billionaire Christopher Harborne, was previously a donor to the Conservative Party, giving £1.5 million between 2018 and 2022.

Harborne has donated £22 million to Reform, and gave Farage a £5 million gift in 2024 prior to him reclaiming the Reform leadership and standing for Parliament. Farage did not declare this sum when he was elected as an MP, and it is now the subject of a parliamentary standards investigation.

The Roster

Llŷr Powell, Reform’s chief whip and business manager in Wales, was a Conservative Party candidate for local government in 2022, and supported Kemi Badenoch for Tory leader the same year.

Powell, who was Reform’s unsuccessful candidate in the October 2025 Caerphilly Senedd by-election, used to work for Nathan Gill, the party’s former Welsh leader. Gill is currently serving a 10 and a half year prison sentence for accepting bribes from an agent of the Russian government during his time as a Member of European Parliament (MEP) for the Brexit Party (Reform’s forerunner).

Powell has said he didn’t work for Gill when he committed these offences, and had no knowledge of his crimes, but has refused to say the exact dates when he served under Farage’s former MEP.

James Evans, Reform’s shadow minister for health, prevention and sport, was elected as the Senedd member for Brecon and Radnorshire in 2021 as a Conservative. Before that, he served in Welsh local government as a Tory.

Laura Anne Jones, Reform’s shadow minister for food, farming and rural affairs, was previously a Conservative Senedd member for South Wales East.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Welsh leader Dan Thomas campaigning in Wales.

Credit: Reform UK / YouTube

Sarah Cooper-Lesadd, the party’s shadow minister for children, young people and skills, was a Conservative candidate for Coventry East in the 2024 general election. From 2022 to 2024 she was also a parliamentary assistant to Vicky Ford, Tory MP for Chelmsford.

Louise Emery, Reform’s shadow minister for culture, tourism and hospitality, was elected in 2017 and 2022 as a Conservative councillor in Conwy.

Francesca O’Brien, shadow minister for local government, housing and planning, was a Tory councillor for the Mumbles elected in 2017.

Adrian Mason, Reform’s shadow Counsel General and shadow minister for the constitution, was a Tory council candidate in Wales in 2017.

Jason O’Connell, shadow minister for economy and transport, was briefly a Welsh Conservative councillor in 2018, having been elected as an independent.

Outside of the shadow cabinet, Reform Welsh Senedd members Iain McIntosh and Tom Montgomery were elected to local government in Wales as Conservatives in 2022, while Stephen Senior stood as a Tory in 2022 and 2023.

Reform was approached for comment.

Article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog.

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Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
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Continue ReadingTwo Thirds of Reform’s Wales Shadow Cabinet Are Ex-Tories

‘Of course he abused pupils’: ex-Dulwich teacher speaks out about Farage racism claims

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https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2025/dec/28/of-course-he-abused-pupils-ex-dulwich-teacher-speaks-out-about-farage-racism-claims

Nigel Farage in front of a union jack

[Guardian] Exclusive: Chloë Deakin tells how she wrote to Dulwich college master to argue against Farage’s nomination as prefectSun 28 Dec 2025 06.00 GMTShare

It was 1981 and Nigel Farage was turning 17. He was already a figure of some controversy, as would become a lifelong habit, among the younger pupils and staff at Dulwich college in south-east London.

“I remember it was either in a particular English lesson or a particular form period that his name came up,” said Chloë Deakin, then a young English teacher, of a discussion with a class of 11- and 12-year-olds. “There was something about bullying, and he was being referred to, quite specifically, as a bully. And I thought: ‘Who is this boy?’”

Deakin conferred with colleagues in the staff room who corroborated accounts of harassment of fellow pupils and of Farage’s apparent fascination with the far right, including claims that he had been “goose-stepping” on combined cadet force marches.

“But initially I had heard it from boys,” she said. “I was shocked to hear that this Dulwich boy was apparently getting away with this kind of behaviour, at cadet camp etc, and I thought: ‘This is seriously out of order. It’s horrible.’”

Despite the chatter in the playground and staffroom, Farage was put on a draft list of prefects by the headteacher, David Emms, and his deputy, Terry Walsh. There was a meeting where strong views were aired, though Emms and Walsh were of the opinion that Farage was naughty, rather than being a malevolent racist.

“So when I heard that Farage’s name was on the finalised prefect list, I was appalled and that was why I wrote independently to Emms, because I felt strongly about it – I still do,” Deakin recalled.

Photograph of magazine page with black and white photo of schoolboys sitting on grass in a field in front of an army Land Rover and cadets in uniform.
A Dulwich college magazine, the Alleynian, shows members of the combined cadet force including a boy believed to be Nigel Farage seated on the ground (centre, reaching towards his feet). Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

Deakin’s letter of June 1981, first revealed by the Channel 4 journalist Michael Crick in a report in 2013, is uncompromising. She has never spoken before of this episode with the letter – written after Farage’s 17th birthday – emerging only as a result of her having given a copy of it to a senior teacher at the time, as was the practice at the school.

She wrote: “You will recall that at the recent and lengthy meeting about the selection of prefects, the remark by a colleague that Farage was a ‘fascist but that was no reason why he would not make a good prefect’ invoked considerable reaction from members of the [staff] common room.

“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views, and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set that he had to be removed from his lesson …

…

A long article at https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2025/dec/28/of-course-he-abused-pupils-ex-dulwich-teacher-speaks-out-about-farage-racism-claims

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Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.

Continue Reading‘Of course he abused pupils’: ex-Dulwich teacher speaks out about Farage racism claims

The politics of Reform UK—despair wrapped in racism

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Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.

https://socialistworker.co.uk/anti-racism/the-politics-of-reform-uk-despair-wrapped-in-racism/

…

Racism is central to Reform UK, but the party is also entangled with anti‑establishment fakery, climate change denial, transphobia, ­misogyny and ­pro‑­corporate policies.

The anti-establishment fakery was on display last November, when Farage posted on social media, “Big business and big government work together. There is nothing about Sir Keir Starmer that represents change.”Adding to this already vile ­concoction of politics is misogyny and ­transphobia. This was on display at Reform UK’s recent regional conference in Leicester, where Tice opened his speech with a transphobic joke about pronouns. The result is an over-arching package of the politics of division. This is hardly a surprise from a party whose senior members say they look to Marine Le Pen’s fascist National Rally (RN) and the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as inspiration.

Farage likes to paint Reform UK as the insurgent force in British politics. He claims that Reform UK is “very much on the side of the little guy or woman”. Its MPs often denounce the two-party system and ­multinational corporations in favour of “real entrepreneurship”. This language is an attempt to mobilise the historic base of the far right, which has typically built among small ­producers and independent professionals.

But Reform UK is as establishment as it gets. Four out of the five Reform UK MPs—Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, Rupert Lowe and Lee Anderson—are millionaires.

Its policies are a mish-mash of ­pro-corporate proposals. Tax cuts for business, austerity measures totalling £50 billion a year, a massive programme of deregulation, tax relief for private healthcare, abolishing inheritance tax for property under £2 million and      scrapping net zero climate targets.

It’s clear the party stands for putting more money in the pockets of the bosses and the rich.

And it uses climate denial to drive further division. Deputy leader Richard Tice is one of the worst for this. At one point he stated “there is no climate crisis” and claimed “CO2 isn’t a poison. It’s plant food”.

Adding to this already vile ­concoction of politics is misogyny and ­transphobia. This was on display at Reform UK’s recent regional conference in Leicester, where Tice opened his speech with a transphobic joke about pronouns. The result is an over-arching package of the politics of division. This is hardly a surprise from a party whose senior members say they look to Marine Le Pen’s fascist National Rally (RN) and the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as inspiration.

…

https://socialistworker.co.uk/anti-racism/the-politics-of-reform-uk-despair-wrapped-in-racism/

Continue ReadingThe politics of Reform UK—despair wrapped in racism