What exactly is Reform UK?

By Andy Ford

We all know who Nigel Farage is. But what is his political vehicle, Reform UK?

One thing it is not, is a political party, as the term is commonly understood. Reform UK is owned by a private company, Reform 2025 Ltd, which has just two directors – Farage, and his Chairman Zia Yusuf, and it is Reform 2025 that really controls the political party, Reform UK.

According to the Byline Times of March 24 2025, Reform 2025 Ltd is a ‘company limited by guarantee’, which means control over it is in the hands of its ‘guarantors’ – Farage and Yusuf. This entity retains the right to appoint half of Reform UK’s Executive Committee.

The ‘Board’ of Reform UK has seven members, but only three are elected by party members, while three are appointed by Reform 2025 Ltd. But then Farage as leader has the casting vote, meaning that through this convoluted structure he completely owns and controls the Reform ‘political party’.

So, Reform is not actually structured as a party, but as a corporation. If you decide to join the Tory party, or Labour, or Liberal-Democrats, or Greens, you pay your money, you become a member and that gives you certain rights, including the ability, potentially, to elect members to the governing council, to vote for the party leader, and at the annual conference to have a say on the party’s policies and manifesto. In legal terms these political parties are ‘member associations’, not limited companies.

Membership has questionable value

Membership of Reform is of very questionable value. You can pay a £25 membership fee, but all this gets you is a membership number and an email bulletin. The Reform constitution says:

“Members who are “in good standing” shall receive a membership number and the Party’s newsletter either by post or electronically. The method of communication shall be at the discretion of the Party. They shall be entitled to vote in such internal Party elections or ballots as the Board shall, in their absolute discretion, decide.”

That’s it. You get a membership number and a newsletter. Everything else is at the discretion of Nigel Farage, though he may occasionally run a referendum of members on an issue, if that is convenient to him. ‘Members’ can be deleted at any time with no reason given.

Rules and structures are far more lax around political parties than they are for trade unions, who must have a fully elected ruling body, and a General Secretary elected under extremely strict regulations.

When we come to candidates, Reform could not find enough people to stand at the 2024 general election. Tortoise media found that as many as 115 people who were candidates for Reform at the last general election were “ghost candidates” with zero digital footprint (no photos, bios, social media accounts, or presence in their constituencies on the campaign trail.  

Strangely, there are now stricter controls on voters than candidates, who do not even have to prove their existence, far less provide photo ID. A paper candidate with no picture, biography or online trace took 8,168 votes in Dorset South, taking enough votes to deprive the Tories of the seat, and ensuring an unlikely victory for the Labour Party on just 32% of the vote (Labour 15,659, Conservative 14,611, Reform 8,168, Lib-Dem 8,017 and Green 2,153).

Reform UK is very well funded

To be a candidate you only have to assert that you are over 18 and a citizen of the UK, Ireland or a Commonwealth country. There is not even a requirement to come to the Returning Officer in person. A letter will suffice. How bizarre.

The Returning Officer by law is not allowed to even check the information provided and neither does the Electoral Commission enforce these very limited rules. According to Democracy for Sale, it needs a complaint from a member of the public, which then has to be followed up by the police, if they choose to do so.

How the holding company Reform 2025 Ltd gets its money should be revealed in its company filings, if it ever makes any. They are certainly well funded.

Another strange feature of this whole story is the near absence of reporting in the mainstream media of Reform’s structure. A Google search mainly reveals dozens of articles regurgitating Farage’s claim to have “given Reform to its members”. It’s almost as if someone has been paid to delete or demote critical coverage.

But this organisation, a company wearing the clothes of a political party, and leaving a lot of unanswered questions, not least about who finances it, could win a general election and govern the country. This is largely due to the mass disgust with Keir Starmer and Morgan McSweeny’s misleadership of the Labour Party. The leaders of the affiliated unions must urgently force a change of leadership and a change of course.

[Feature picture is Nigel Farage on BBC – AGAIN – in this case live feed on BBC News 24, of a speech made to business leaders in London today]