Brexit party

Right-wing protest politics has just catastrophically over-reached in America, but it is suddenly back in business in Britain. Its dominant figure, Nigel Farage, has a new political start-up and is sounding rather pleased about it. Earlier this week the Electoral Commission finally — after more than eight weeks of humming and hawing — gave him permission to rebrand the mothballed Brexit party as Reform UK. ‘It is excellent news that the Electoral Commission has approved our name change application. The need for Reform in this country is greater than ever,’ tweeted the new Reform UK leader (an unelected post, naturally). Given that the Brexit party has not only been in

Richard Tice is tall and lean, has a hint of Imran Khan around the eyes, and the ladies on reception in the office building where we meet seem to like him. Were Jilly Cooper to write a political novel then he would be its hero rather than anti-hero. Tice was, after all, the clean-cut one in the ‘Bad Boys of Brexit’, a band whose line up was completed by Arron Banks, Andy Wigmore and Nigel Farage. Tice is the chairman of the Farage-led Brexit party, a title he is finding irksome this afternoon as he would much rather by now be chairman of Reform UK, the new identity he and

The terms of the Covid debate have changed markedly since Nigel Farage decided to re-enter the political arena after Boris Johnson’s second English lockdown. Even with multiple vaccines coming on stream, we can still not rule out a third lockdown — but we can be pretty darned sure there won’t be a fourth. It’s not the end of the beginning, but the beginning of the end. So Farage and his chief lieutenant Richard Tice can no longer depend on anti-lockdown fervour alone to give them a flying start, despite the rebellious mood of Tory MPs. Could they, therefore, decide that discretion is the better part of valour and call the whole thing off, especially if there

The idea of a flotilla of little ships crossing the English Channel from France to deposit their beleaguered human cargo safely on our shores was born in this country’s darkest hour during the second world war. To say that the method behind the success of the Dunkirk evacuation 80 years ago has been repurposed for the modern age is something of an understatement. These days the little ships are usually inflatable dinghies packed with desperate young men from Asia and Africa who seek to evade this country’s immigration laws. They land at various points between Dover and Hastings and – if undetected – many head for rendezvous points pre-arranged with