Nigel Farage sells Reform as a people's movement—but scratch the surface and you find a one-man company with no real internal democracy. In this video, I explain why Reform looks more like a private platform for Farage than a party accountable to members: there is no meaningful debate, no scrutiny, and power is concentrated in one pair of hands. That's not the renewal Britain needs. If you care about democracy, accountability and better government, this matters.
Why would anyone vote for Reform?
Nigel Farage tries to pose as if he's the people's choice, the popular man that you want to put in Downing Street, but the fact is, the Reform Party, as he likes to call it, is totally undemocratic. It's actually a private limited company, and it's controlled by him and his agenda, just like all his previous parties.
There is nothing about Reform that shows any commitment on its part to democracy. Farage clearly doesn't believe in that. Farage only believes in rule by Farage. There is no accountability to the members within his party. It's just Farage's personal platform.
Democracy is all about debate, but Farage is all about dictatorship.
Democracy is all about disagreement, but Farage doesn't like that. Just look at the number of MPs he's already sacked.
Democracy is about being open and willing to hear the opinions of others. But again, Farage isn't about that. He's about imposing his will.
And as a result, power is concentrated in one man's hands in Reform.
There are no policies shaped by the people supporting Reform within its entire platform. There is no scrutiny, no responsibility. All that Reform represents is a slide towards authoritarianism.
So, Reform is not democratic. It's Farage's personal project. just as UKIP and the Brexit Party were before Reform came into existence.
Britain deserves better than a one-man band.
And why would you, in any case, want to vote to reduce democracy when you should instead be demanding more accountability?
You'll get less if you vote for Farage than you will with almost anyone else. So why would you do that?
Please think hard about Reform and don't put all your future in the hands of one man who only wants to serve his own interests.
NB: Please see a comment below on why the changes put in place by Reform in February 2025 do not, in my opinion, change Farage's total control of Reform.
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Previous posts in this series
- Farage vs the vulnerable
- Farage and the NHS
- Farage is for the rich
- Farage vs migrants
- Nigel Farage vs climate change
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Yes he is a snake oil salesman and a person for the few! However democracy is also not Starmer or the Tony Blair Institute (TBI), that seems to have a grip on piss poor policy! Again for the few!
It clearly seems that money rules politics… MC Sweeney, Blair, Farage and Starmer need to answer questions about their beliefs and understanding of democracy! ( Non existent)!.
Where the money comes from and how that, legitimately represents democracy and politics, as should be?
We can focus on the left or right but it simply boils down to control. . That is the crux!
Neil:
“Theoretically government could buy things directly with Treasury Bills rather than doing the silly dance we have at present.”
And in practice?
Why use Treasury Bills when you don’t need to?
It would not be hard to invest in UK infrastructure
.Housing , healthcare and education is the remit of society that can perform and does well…
It seems we are being overwhelmed with nonsensical verbal violence and still doing well!
Thank you Richard.
I don’t worry too much about Reform because it is Farage, and he alone that runs it, as you explain. If he goes down, it goes with him. Also, he follows Trump’s approach and that looks certain to fail in the US despite the puff from Trump. When Trump fails, people will question Reform’s approach which imitates the President’s. That’s two paths to failure I foresee for them and Farage. Despite his lead in the polls, he hasn’t really achieved much in his political career. He usually walks away if things go against him despite appearing to be thick-skinned at times. If the voters still want him to lead the country after another 4 years of shenanigans, then I suppose democracy really would be lost to us. But, while it always remains a possibility, I cannot see it happening.
All of the above – except the last!
Reform is a rusty weed covered siding masquerading as the main line in which the hopes of so many people are hurtling towards the buffer stops at high speed.
But he has recruited some Tory ex-ministers to give him guidance on good governance.
Lee (30p – I’ve tried all the parties) Anderson
Nadine (Boris is my hero) Dorries
Andrea (give ’em the finger) Jenkyns
Dan (we want more theocracy) Kruger
What could possibly go wrong?
I’m waiting for the broadcast where Farage forgets which continent he’s on and wraps himself in the Stars ‘n Stripes.
Chris Hedges supreme – There is a fatal disconnect between a political system that promises democratic equality and freedom while carrying out socioeconomic injustices that result in grotesque income inequality and political stagnation.
Decades in the making, this disconnect has extinguished American democracy. The steady stripping away of economic and political power was ignored by a hyperventilating press that thundered against the barbarians at the gate — Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, ISIS, Vladimir Putin — while ignoring the barbarians in our midst. The slow-motion coup is over. Corporations and the billionaire class have won. There are no institutions, including the press, an electoral system that is little more than legalized bribery, the imperial presidency, the courts or the penal system, that can be defined as democratic. Only the fiction of democracy remains.
The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin in Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism calls our system “inverted totalitarianism.” The façade of democratic institutions and the rhetoric, symbols and iconography of state power have not changed. The Constitution remains a sacred document. The U.S. continues to posit itself as a champion of opportunity, freedom, human rights and civil liberties, even as half the country struggles at subsistence level, militarized police gun down and imprison the poor with impunity, and the primary business of the state is war.
This collective self-delusion masks who we have become — a nation where the citizenry has been stripped of economic and political power and where the brutal militarism we practice overseas is practiced at home.
In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union, economics was subordinate to politics. But under inverted totalitarianism, the reverse is true. There is no attempt, unlike fascism and state socialism, to address the needs of the poor. Rather, the poorer and more vulnerable you are, the more you are exploited, thrust into a hellish debt peonage from which there is no escape. Social services, from education to health care, are anemic, nonexistent or privatized to gouge the impoverished. Further ravaged by 8.5 percent inflation, wages have decelerated sharply since 1979. Jobs often do not offer benefits or security.
Weren’t there a number of changes made to Reform’s governance structure in February? I seem to recall control was transferred to a company limited by guarantee and members were given the right to remove the leader.
I think overall that party’s internal democracy is still problematic but I don’t think Farage still has quite the level of control that he used to (i.e. he can now be removed, albeit the obstacles are quite large)?
This is the situation:
As of February 2025, Nigel Farage has given up his ownership of Reform UK, surrendering his majority shareholding and control of the party to its members. The party, originally established as a private limited company by Farage, is now a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee.
Key details of the change in ownership:
– Transfer of control: Farage officially relinquished his majority shares to transition the party’s ownership to its members. This move was promised in September 2024 and completed in February 2025.
– Company structure: Unlike traditional UK political parties, Reform UK was founded as a private limited company, which allowed Farage to maintain control by holding the majority of shares. The new structure is a non-profit company limited by guarantee, with no shares or shareholders.
– New company: The transfer involved the sale of Reform UK to a new limited company called Reform 2025 Ltd, which is owned by the party’s members. Farage and party chairman Zia Yusuf are listed as the directors of Reform 2025 Ltd, but the company’s filings state there are “no persons with significant control”.
– Leadership and oversight: While Farage remains the party leader, a new constitution was passed at a party conference in September 2024.
This constitution allows members to remove the leader through a no-confidence vote if half of all members request one in writing.
– The leader and chairman, however, still have control over most of the party’s board.
– Motivation for the change: According to Farage and the party chairman, the transfer was an “important step in professionalising the party” and giving members more control. Farage stated that he no longer needed to be in control and was “surrendering all of my shares”.
So Farage controls the board. He clearly controls the MPs. And the hurdle to removing him is technically possible but de facto so implausible it is impossible. I disagree with the claim he has no overall control in that case. That relies on implausible assumptions.
I don’t think it is Reform 2025 Ltd that has control of the party. For some reason (tax? foreign donors to the first company?) they created this entity as part of the transaction and then eventually transferred the party to Reform UK Party Limited, a company limited by guarantee with no shareholders. Reform 2025 Ltd is still active although I don’t know for what purpose.
See my detailed comment explaining why I think the change was symbolic and actually changed nothing.
No one will ever get 50% of Reform members to sign a petition to oust Farage: I suggest that this would, in practice, be impossible. The changes are, therefore, meaningless. He also still has de facto control – as his management of the parliamentary party proves. Hnece my argument in the video.
Yes, in practice he still has full control. I’m more interested though in the details of the transaction. I cannot help thinking there is more dodgy stuff (with foreign money at the forefront of my mind) going on with all these entities that we haven’t spotted yet.
If Reform is a company in law (and I have no idea how other parties are registered) then that seems consistent to me with the times that we live in. It’s a sort of private sector nirvana we’re in isn’t it, the sort of thing that von Hayek and Friedman advocated.
The thing is, is that now having achieved that state, we can also see the weaknesses they were blind to – greed and short termism in particular. But also that contemporary capitalism is fundamentally a form of legalised plunder that Frederic Bastiat spoke of. The ‘taking’ from the planet and society to produce things to sell and produce wealth has not been accounted for in any form of double entry book keeping.
The result is that we could be now overwhelmed by these hidden costs – the environmental costs (global warming) and societal costs (economic chaos leveraging fanaticism/extremism/fascism and enabling the Trumps and Farages of this world – political instability).
We are in a really bad situation. Never mind the the ‘Road to Serfdom’ that Hayek bleated about (which was a ruse to get the rich to fund Neo-liberalism in order to be the exception). These hidden costs take us on the road to death.
Period.
“Fake” Farage really just a fanboy for adversarial capitalism. The same can be said to a large extent about Starmer.
The primary concern isn’t strictly Farage, but the media moguls and millionaires backing him.
He would very quickly fade into irrelevance if he were starved of the very favourable press he continues to enjoy.
Eliminate Farage, and he would be replaced.