'We're not BNP-lite' Reform UK attempts to patch up its image

It was the grand finale of Reform UK's September conference and Nigel Farage had a serious message to deliver: it was time for Reform to "grow up" and professionalize.

- Helen Pidd, Natalie Ktena

He couldn't do it alone, he told 4,000 hyped-up members who had paid Eso each to bask in his presence.

"We will not realise our dream unless the people's army of supporters are organised, unless the people's army of supporters are helped to professionalise, unless that people's army fight elections," he said.

"What we have to do is to be credible. What we have to do is to be on the ground everywhere."

A remarkable number of people have heeded Farage's call since the general election, when Reform had 40,000 members.

The party now claims to have almost 100,000, more than the Liberal Democrats and only 30,000 shy of the drastically diminished post-Boris Johnson Conservative party.

Jealous of the Liberal Democrats for having won 72 seats to Reform's five, despite Reform receiving a bigger percentage of the national vote, Farage plans to ape their highintensity, hyperfocal strategy. He wants to blanket communities in leaflets and win council seats, paving the way for more Reform MPs in 2029 and potentially his own path to Downing Street, something he thinks "may not be probable but it's certainly possible".

There are now Reform branches in more than 300 of Britain's 650 constituencies, with new ones launching every few weeks.