Keys in the fruit bowl – is Reform that sort of party?

Nigel Farage rallied through the press conference despite looking a little worse for wear
Nigel Farage rallied through the press conference despite looking a little worse for wear - HOLLIE ADAMS/REUTERS

“You should have been at the Reform Christmas party last night,” Nigel Farage told assembled journalists at the party’s press conference on Thursday morning. His face the colour of day-old porridge, it was clear he’d been there, quite probably to the bitter end.

Why they were having their Christmas bash on Nov 27 might raise some questions; perhaps it’s still going on. Certainly the bags under Nige’s eyes suggested that it hadn’t ended too long ago.

Things were a little flat to start with, as we were treated to the equivalent experience of being trapped in the smoking area with a random bore as Zia Yusuf, the Reform UK chairman, gave a rambling introduction about the changes to the party’s constitution. However, the arrival of Nige soon livened things up.

With a face the colour of day-old porridge, it was clear Nigel Farage had been at the party till the bitter end
With a face the colour of day-old porridge, it was clear Nigel Farage had been at the party till the bitter end - HOLLIE ADAMS/REUTERS

As with everything, Mr Farage does, not even the hangover could deflate the prevailing sense of end-of-pier campness. He announced that Reform UK had hit its milestone target of 100,000 members and that the lucky soul to have moved it over the line would be rewarded with “a pint with Lee Anderson”.

“Now I fear that was deeply inaccurate,” he chuckled. “The use of the singular strikes me as being very unlikely with Lee.”

Amazingly, that lucky 100,000th member and winner of the Anderson pint just so happened to be… Andrea Jenkyns, the former Conservative MP. What are the chances of that? Jenkyns bounded on stage to announce her defection and quickly took the mood from high-camp to high-cringe.

“Today I’ve joined the party of the brave,” she began. Her delivery was redolent of am-dram; wide eyed, with wild arm gesticulations and the odd slurring of words. Imagine a production of The Importance of Being Earnest, staged in a village hall.

“We need those patriotic bravehearts to be a true voice for the people,” she gushed. It sounded like she might have had that pint already… of wine.

Given that Jenkyns had included a smiling Farage on her campaign leaflets during the general election, was her defection really that much of a surprise, one reporter wondered during the Q&A.

“I always like to push the boundaries and be a bit cheeky,” came Jenkyns’s reply. Reform meetings do sometimes give off the slight air of “keys in the fruit bowl”. Was it that sort of party we’d been invited to?

For all the jollity of the press conference, elsewhere someone was determined to spoil the party.

While Dame Andrea was being ushered back into the nearest Wetherspoons, Ben Habib, Reform’s erstwhile deputy leader, released a video announcing that he’d severed ties with the party, citing artistic differences with Nige and an “undemocratic” party structure.

Here, he joins a long line of high-profile Faragean falling-outs; Farage vs Sked, Farage vs Bloom, Farage vs Kilroy-Silk, Farage vs Evans, Farage vs Carswell, Farage vs the Hamiltons.

Asked about Habib’s resignation, Nige immediately launched into a rendition of “The Sun has got his hat on, hip hip hip hooray”. A reminder that wherever Farage is, there is some corner of a grey and depressing conference suite that will be forever the end of a pier. Music-hall never died, it just went into politics.