Road to Reform: is Richard Tice’s party a threat to the Tories?

When I meet Richard Tice, the leader of the Reform party, in St Ermin’s Hotel in Westminster, he is sporting an upside-down Union Jack lapel badge on an otherwise immaculate navy suit, looking like the quintessential Tory he hopes to displace. There was a time when the Tories were complacent about challengers on their right. When David Cameron became Tory leader, he dismissed complaints that he was not Conservative enough. Who else would his critics vote for? Would they really join the ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’ of Ukip? In the end, Nigel Farage was an opponent supremely capable of stealing his voters and turning British politics upside down. Is Tice the next threat?

It doesn’t take long for him to start holding forth about the shenanigans at No. 10. ‘The whole cabal had no fear of this virus — at the same time as trying to terrify the nation and impose draconian restrictions,’ he says. As a staunch critic of lockdown measures, he is especially angry. ‘It totally vindicates those of us who feel that the collateral damage of lockdown will be far, far worse than the cure that lockdowns were supposed to provide.’

The main driver of Reform’s new sign-ups, says Tice, is public disgust over partygate. ‘We’re talking hundreds of new members in a week, owing to the complete fury with the behaviour of the Prime Minister and the people around him.’ And, he says, anger at the net-zero agenda which is estimated to cost more than £40 billion a year when it gets going in a few years’ time. In a return to the Brexit playbook, he wants a referendum on net-zero policy — which might sound odd, given that this is a government policy rather than a constitutional change. But Tice says net zero demands a conversation of its own.