Can Reform Get its Act Together at the Grass Roots Level in Spite of the Squabbling at the Top?

I was up at my old Alma Mater, Boston Grammar School, for its 125th Anniversary Old Boys Association dinner on the weekend of March 8th. Warm and sunny. I looked out of my hotel room window and saw Richard Tice and another man striding purposefully into the building. I noticed them because they were wearing suits and nice pink ties, not the standard local attire in Boston which is famously ‘East Europe Central’. And Turkey country these days I discovered. Not the Christmas version, although this is where your Brussel sprouts come from. I went to school with the unofficial ‘Sprout King’ of Kirton Holme (now retired) and he was at the dinner. No sprouts on the menu.

Well, Tice is the local MP, I suppose, so had every right to be there, but on going out for the day I passed the hotel functions room where Reform were about to have a meeting of the great and the good, and from the expressions on their faces it wasn’t terribly celebratory. Later we all found out about Rupert Lowe-gate.

Fast forward to this week and I was present at the other end of the Reform firmament.

I went to the very first local meeting of Reform Brighton Branch. Partly because it was next door to where I live. Partly because I am a member. Partly because I thought I might get an update on exactly what may emerge from the Stygian marsh where the upper echelons were tussling. Not a chance. What I did learn is that while the news focuses on the top people nationally, it’s very different when you start getting dirt in your fingernails scratching around the grass roots.

People more involved in local politics than I ever have been will recognise the scenario. I went equipped with questions and suppositions I thought might at least start a debate, if the meeting turned out to be a bit slow. Not a chance it would be that kind of gathering as it turned out. Bread and butter. Or marge as it’s Reform and away from the Farage end of things.

It was an upstairs room in a pub. Naturally. Laid out for about 30-40 attendees. About 80 turned up. Seats were brought in, tables were sat on, beer was spilt. Ladies were accommodated. A few local princelings swept in from the outer reaches of Bexhill to offer advice.

There was a very convoluted entry process because there are no membership cards and the Branch Secretary can’t get access to membership details from head office. Email addresses and phone numbers had to be matched up with names. Nevertheless, cheerfulness was maintained and the meeting started 20 minutes late.

The very first Treasurer was elected. A 30-second spoken CV, and he seemed like a nice competent chap for a thankless job. Unopposed. Proposer? Seconder? Elected. No vote. Move on. No funds for the new Treasurer either. Raffle to pay for room. No funding coming from the centre. Talk of a garden party when the weather improves as everything has to be raised locally.

Chairman is a tried and tested local government candidate – formerly an independent, one defection from another party already, and a by-election coming up they haven’t got great hopes for. Others hovering to see how party set-up goes. Defections touted as happening almost by default. Seem to be happening elsewhere regularly, but there were no misgivings as to exactly who and why. It may be just me, but I’d be more suspicious that defecting to Reform might be a way to get around the glacial central vetting process.

Brighton is now heavily Uniparty locally, plus assorted others through Green to very red, to whatever colour the Gaza party is. The wilder elements are clustered mainly around the city. The further out you go, the more you find disgruntled families, i.e., Reform people, we were told. This is important because local government here is being totally reorganised into unitary authorities throughout East/West Sussex, and which suburbs are being lumped in with the city vote is going to be important. The locals want five authorities of 300,000 each, Westminster wants three of 500,000 each. No rush – they’ve postponed our local elections anyway until they’ve sorted this all out, much to the chagrin of local Reform.

Reform central is stuck in believing local structures should be organised along constituency boundaries, which just doesn’t work here, certainly not with the reorganisation. It’s taken until now for head office to agree a single Brighton Branch instead of three reflecting the three Parliamentary constituencies.

They still won’t give the new branch access to central membership information for their own members.

There is a very slow and convoluted vetting process for officers and candidates. All available central resources are being redirected to focus on the North, presumably for the local elections.

Some deep grumbling at the meeting about the shenanigans at the top, but the Chairman – sensibly I think – says all our attention should be on getting the local branch up and running and with a local comms setup if necessary as we can’t do anything without elected grassroots candidates, never mind influencing the ones at the top. And abysmal local government around here needs Reform to give it a very noisy kicking. Crying out for it.

And so on. Just over an hour’s meeting (as that’s all the room was paid for) but everybody seemed pleased that something was happening. However, I did detect disturbing hints of control-freakery in the handling of Rupert Lowe reflected in the top not wanting to release access to the party lists to the people who are actually on them, down here at the bottom.

James Leary is the pseudonym of a retired passenger jet pilot.