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.