Standing outside the “Freedom Hall”, waiting to hear Reform UK leader Nigel Farage’s delayed speech, a 17-year-old supporter moans that he is “getting texts” from his Mum, “worrying” and asking what time he’d be home. “I’ve got to drive back to Derby,” he said.
ABBA’s Dancing Queen plays. Union Jacks are everywhere. A man dressed as the late Medieval King, Richard the Lionheart, wanders around talking about “saving the country”. The party’s many young Gen Z supporters are dressed in smart suits, huddled together, looking more serious, organised and holding fewer alcoholic beverages than last year.
Young people may not flock to Reform UK when it comes to voting in the same numbers that they do to the Greens or Labour, but the party now polls at around 17 per cent among Gen Z’s 18- to 24-year-olds, which is roughly double the peak of youth support ever managed by Farage’s previous parties, Ukip and the Brexit Party. Polling shows that Reform UK does particularly well with young men, while young women are more likely to go Green.
Nathan Robins, a 20-year-old apprentice mechanic from Braintree in Essex, was elected as a Reform district councillor in the brutal local May elections which hastened Sir Keir Starmer’s downfall. As we wait for Farage, he says that starting work and “paying taxes” young made him get “serious” about how his money was being spent. Nathan says he was drawn to Reform by “policies of cutting immigration and ending ‘benefits Britain’,” because he knows there is “no such thing as free money”.
And yet, free money is currently the source of Reform’s woes.
23-year-old Councillor Sean Brackstone in Birmingham (Photo: Scarlet Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)In Birmingham, Farage’s party were feeling the effects, not as you might expect, of too many pre-midday pints, but of the rapid cycle of events spurred by yet more allegations about the party’s finances. When I asked one Gen Z party member, who did not want to be named, about the Channel 4 News sting appearing to show Farage, with his aides, discussing the mechanics of getting money from an overseas donor he told me: “I don’t want to talk about it on mic… But obviously it’s a bad look.” Nigel Farage has said he “frankly wasn’t listening” during a conversation, and denies any wrongdoing.
This conference was supposed to be a reset. Reform arrived in Birmingham not only at a bigger conference venue at the NEC, but as a bigger party – their number of representatives in Westminster, Holyrood, the Senedd and local councils across the country significantly expanded. This three-day bonanza was intended for Reform to make their policy pitch for “the first 100 days” (wording which is displayed on almost every available surface) of government and convince the British people that, even though their leader had spent the summer fighting a by-election against a man dressed as a bin in Clacton-on-Sea amid an investigation into whether he should have declared a £5m donation from an offshore crypto-billionaire, they were serious about government.
But because of the Channel 4 News story, everything – even the appearance of 30-year-old Gen Z French National Rally politician Jordan Bardella and his vow to accept returned boats of migrants should he and Reform both end up in charge – was overshadowed.
Reform’s younger members are subdued; they really did want to talk policy: immigration, housing and the personal tax allowance. And yet, at an event held on the housing crisis by the right-wing think-tank the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), most of the chairs are empty, suggesting that their fellow attendees aren’t so interested in the detail.
25-year-old Jessaline Caine is dressed in a red suit. She grew up in foster care and says she was drawn to Reform because it “elevates” young people to positions of power and “rewards them for hard work”. It was growing up in care, which, Jessaline says, “is not a great place for anyone” and, specifically, “seeing Nigel Farage on TV speaking about the sexual abuse of girls in Rotherham”, which “switched” Jessaline “onto politics” a few years ago.
Jessaline believes her generation is “more right-wing” than the generations above – Millennials and Gen X – because of “wokeness”. For instance, she says she was recently “told off” for using the word “diva” on Instagram because it “is a word created by Black women.”
“Why can’t we say what we want to say? Why can’t we do what we want to do? Why are we restricted and regulated all the time? We feel we want to feel free to do things,” Jessaline says.
Agree with them or not, the party’s young members and politicians are serious, smart and organised. They want jobs in politics. They have been politicised by being born in an era where there is high government debt, house price inflation and relatively low wages in comparison to housing costs.
This three-day bonanza was intended for Reform to make their policy pitch for ‘the first 100 days’ (Photo: Temilade Adelaja/Reuters)The ones I meet are not from wealthy backgrounds; many grew up in social or privately rented homes. Contrast their behaviour with that of older members pictured in images which appear to show them assaulting hecklers during Farage’s speech by pulling hair, grabbing and even using walking sticks to strike those they disagree with.
Reform’s grassroots regional organising of young people is not to be underestimated. They offer discounted memberships to the under-25s and are building community hubs. They have also launched Students for Reform, a dedicated wing of the party aimed at challenging “woke leftist ideologies”. At a drinks reception in the evening, members of this caucus gather together for a selfie with GB News host Matt Goodwin and mill around, intently discussing the day.
23-year-old councillor Sean Brackstone wears a blue suit, complementing the Reform-teal-hued carpet. He was also elected to represent his ward in the London Borough of Bexley, which neighbours Essex, this May. It was ULEZ (which Sean decries as a Labour policy) which politicised him. “I work on the railways, and I have a van, so I was heavily against it,” he says, “it made me look into politics.”
Sean says he is “open-minded” and will “have a debate with anyone”. His priority is “clamping down on immigration”, and he is particularly concerned about young people not being able to “afford houses”, which he puts down to “more people” living in Britain.
There is a sense of quiet frustration amongst Reform’s younger members who, though they want to toe the party line, do not want to be seen as members of a party beset by “scandal after scandal”, as one person who wished to remain anonymous told me.
As both illegal migration and small boat arrival figures fall, Farage is going to need to do some proper politics. To find other policy propositions, which Reform’s economic spokesperson Robert Jenrick tried to do with an offer to cut the personal tax allowance shortly before the conference closed and many people had gone home.
Reform’s younger members are serious about politics, and they want to be taken seriously. They are worried about the future of Britain, about their futures. They are not pictured pulling the hair of hecklers, and they don’t want to talk about “dodgy” donations. They mean it when they say they want “change”. They are organised and loyal, but if a chaotic circus continues to congregate around their leader, he may just find that they start to put their faith in someone else.
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