Could the Tories’ downfall be Reform’s big chance?

The Reform party, under its leader Richard Tice, invented Trussonomics before Liz Truss – launching an economic recovery plan in June which claimed to explain ‘how to grow our way out of crisis’.

The core policy idea will be familiar to anyone who has followed the disastrous aftermath of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget – a huge stimulus, largely delivered through unfunded tax cuts and higher anticipated borrowing.

Tice has so far been too modest to claim his rightful status as John the Baptist to Truss’s Jesus – which is hardly surprising given that she is being crucified right now. Yet the collapse of her vision of what was ultimately to have been a more lightly-taxed country with a smaller, nimbler state sector nonetheless creates some political room for his party, which emerged from the dying embers of the Brexit party after the UK had left the EU.

During most of the catastrophic Truss premiership, Reform’s poll ratings have refused to budge from a typical 2 or 3 per cent, despite the enormous number of disenchanted former Conservatives in play.