Reform = Conservatives 2.0?
It’s the first day of the Reform Annual Conference and the timing was either very good or very bad. Maybe both. Obviously it coincided with the chaos surrounding Labour and that took away a few headlines but it also contrasted a Party making huge strides (Reform) with a Government in a total mess. On the eve of Conference, the ex-Conservative Minister Nadine Dorries defected to Reform. She follows other ex-Conservative Ministers like Andrea Jenkyns who have also hooked up with the Reform bandwagon. Here is Andrea making an entrance at Conference. I like Andrea but this is…odd.
Former Conservative Minister Jacob Rees Mogg is speaking at the Reform Conference and there is every chance he too may defect. Lord Ashcroft was also spotted so we may see a glut of former Conservatives in Reform
So, is this all good news or a red flag?
I think it can be seen as both. This is the Boris wing of the Conservative Party now folding into Reform. Jenkyns and Nads were Boris devotees and when he fell they floated away. Reform is a convenient vehicle for them. Dorries has interesting form. Here she is in 2022 praising the Orwellian Online Safety Act.
The Boris wing of the Conservatives may seem like natural allies to Reform but I have questions. After all, they participated in the fake Brexit, their fingerprints are all over the tyrannical lockdown of 2020 and of course they completely ignored the issue of mass migration. In other words, they are frauds. Yet they are welcome into the bosom of Reform with no questions asked.
Is Reform morphing into the Conservatives 2.0? What would happen if Boris Johnson himself decided to join? Some people think that Nigel Farage himself is an old fashioned conservative so perhaps this is all good.
My biggest concern is that the Conservatives spent many years betraying us. Now they flock to Reform. Join the dots.
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David raises the right question. If Reform simply becomes a refuge for disillusioned Conservatives, then yes — it risks morphing into “Conservatives 2.0,” carrying all the same failures forward under a new banner.
Britain doesn’t just need a new party logo. It needs a new architecture of government. The betrayals of recent decades weren’t just about personalities, they were about a broken state: a hollow Parliament, an unaccountable civil service, quangos ruling without consent, and sovereignty treated as theatre. Swap the faces and the same decay continued.
That’s why we’ve spent the past eight months developing the Quiet Mandate: ten Blueprints for national renewal. It isn’t a manifesto. It isn’t a party pitch. It is a plan to rebuild the machinery of state itself — principles, foundations, renewal, safeguards, oversight, cohesion, independence, capacity, finance, and delivery.
If Reform is serious about not becoming Conservatives 2.0, it needs more than defectors. It needs a framework to govern. Without that, it will end as just another vehicle of disappointment.
https://substack.com/@thequietcentre/note/p-172663663?r=64gwcp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
I do not trust Reform after the way they treated me personally. All the public noise they make is also disturbing. They adjust their sails according to their perception of where public opinion is blowing. No principles and no plan other than to have a Cabinet of unelected Big Business. Hello Fascism!