Nigel’s next target: Reform has Labour in its sights

At this weekend’s Reform conference in Birmingham, the opening speech will be given by a man who wasn’t even a member of the party until four months ago. James McMurdock stood in what was once a Tory safe seat. Against the odds and after three recounts, he won, and is now Reform’s accidental member of parliament.

 The day after the general election, Reform leader Nigel Farage held his celebratory press conference alongside fellow seat-winners Lee Anderson, Richard Tice and Rupert Lowe, announcing their new gang of four. Half an hour later, from a Westminster pub, they learned that they would be five – after McMurdock, a supposed ‘paper candidate’, was declared the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock. ‘It was the first time I’d heard James’s name,’ admits one party insider. ‘The only reason I’d hear about a candidate is because they were in trouble, so therefore this was someone that wasn’t a bad news story.’

McMurdock’s rise says a lot about where Reform’s success has come from – and where the party is going. He is a 38-year-old Essex banker who signed up to the party on a whim after concluding he liked what it was saying on tax and the £25 membership fee was worth it to ‘teach the [main] parties a bit of a lesson’. A few weeks later, Rishi Sunak called the snap election and Reform emailed possible candidates, asking for another £25 to be vetted. McMurdock complied.

He was interviewed over Zoom, he says, by ‘a Scottish chap’ who was in a car and pressed him on his stance on green issues. ‘I told him that listening to the Reform energy policy is like listening to your granddad give advice. Not especially exciting, but probably good advice,’ he says.