Britain’s Reform UK preaches water while dining on oysters

The signs at Birmingham’s exhibition centre point visitors toward a Gladiator experience, a Peppa Pig adventure and the Reform UK conference. The contrast captures the party’s predicament: it wants to be taken seriously as a government-in-waiting, but its gathering still carries an air of spectacle.

About 8,000 members, along with some protesters and diplomats, attended the three-day conference from Thursday to Saturday. Inside the halls, few appeared to doubt that a snap election could soon carry Reform UK into government. Speakers presented plans for the party’s first 100 days in power with confidence that its leader, Nigel Farage, would lead a victory march toward London.

On the numbers alone, that ambition does not look impossible. Reform UK has spent most of the period since spring 2025 as Britain’s most popular party and is already the country’s largest by membership. Yet the conference also showed why it struggles to shed an image of being unserious, unprofessional and chaotic. One visitor reportedly arrived dressed as a crusader, although his sword was taken at the entrance. The crowd was generally older, more male and whiter than Britain’s average population, while few of the staff serving it were white.

Panels addressed problems that clearly trouble Britain, including a lack of prospects for young people, rising crime, overcrowded prisons, a shortage of housing, an expensive welfare state, homelessness and poverty. Reform UK’s shared explanation remained unchanged from the previous conference: illegal immigrants and the corrupt Westminster establishment that allowed them into the country were blamed for the problems.

The organizers tried to avoid featuring the party’s most eccentric voices. Last year, an invited cardiologist suggested that Covid vaccinations caused the cancer cases of King Charles III and Catherine, Princess of Wales. This time, however, the party’s regular speakers still had to find ways to defend their convictions under difficult conditions, including on climate change. The next scandal involving Farage arrived as the conference was under way.