Reform Watch 14: Nigel Farage’s billionaire buddy

Perhaps you can help us answer a question we’ve been mulling over today. The bosses of Reform UK seem to be fascinated by a pothole-fixing machine called the Pothole Pro. They keep talking about it. Nigel Farage, back in April, promoted the Pothole Pro on Facebook, saying: “I haven’t seen anything more practical or better in solving the pothole problem.” Richard Tice, his deputy, also plugged it on Facebook this September. In May, Zia Yusuf, the party’s head of policy, gave the machine a shout-out on Sky News and shared the clip on his TikTok. 

The Pothole Pro is a niche piece of industrial equipment — so what might have prompted Reform’s interest in it? Well, as it happens, the Pothole Pro is made by JCB. And according to records, the chairman of JCB, Lord Bamford, is a Reform donor. His net worth is estimated at around £9.45 billion, making him the 15th richest person in Britain. Last year, he paid for Farage and a staff member to make a helicopter trip to their Staffordshire premises. It was valued at more than £8,000. A spokesperson for Farage has even said: “Nigel and Lord Bamford are friends.” This September, JCB was also an official exhibitor at Reform’s conference — which can’t have come cheap.

That same month, Reform’s leaders announced that it was going to trial JCB’s Pothole Pro in Lincolnshire. What a coincidence! Especially after Lincolnshire County Council trialled the machine back in 2021 and, according to one Tory councillor who sat on the transport scrutiny committee, “found better tools for our county’s needs”. A source within Lincolnshire council shared an informal assessment on the Pothole Pro written before Reform was elected, and concluded that if they purchased it they would be “paying above the odds”. What could have possibly convinced Reform to change their minds?

In other news…

🌊 The turquoise wipeout

Since the May elections, 36 councillors have quit or been booted out of Reform. A list published on Mark Pack’s blog (he is a Lib Dem peer and president of the party) suggests an interesting pattern. It’s not just that the odd councillor is losing their position. Four out of 35 Reform councillors in Doncaster have left — in addition to three out of 20 in Northumberland, and five out of 25 in Cornwall. Five out of 49 councillors in Kent have been expelled. To me, this indicates greater dysfunction instead of the unexpected circumstances that might lead a politician to leave their party. Zia Yusuf once said of his councillors that “they may not have much experience in politics, but they’re great people”. Which sounds half right.

🤞 Promises, promises

Speaking of Yusuf, he bristled at a press conference last week. He was asked by a reporter how his party could really expect to run the country when chaos seems to reign at the ten councils under its control. Yusuf didn’t like it. “It’s one thing to scrutinise Reform councils,” he huffed. “That is perfectly fair. But this insane expectation that Reform were going to totally transform local politics in any given region inside six months was always for the birds.” Yusuf must have a short memory! Listen to him speaking shortly after the May elections. He told one interviewer that “the bar for us is not that high”, adding: “We’re pretty high agency people.” In another, he promised that his party would “deliver” on more bin collections, fewer potholes, no council tax rises — promises which now look quite shaky. Perhaps the business of governance isn’t quite as easy as first imagined. 

💸 Deals are my art form

“I’m not really a politician,” Nigel Farage once said. “I’m actually a businessman.” What does his recent record look like? Back in January, Farage announced a partnership with UK We Save, a website that offered wholesale prices for products like nappies. Describing it in a promo video as “a brand new concept”, Farage said: “It’s going to save you a lot of money.” So almost a year on, how is the business looking? Well, UK We Save’s website is down and it hasn’t posted on its X account since January, except to promote a similar service run in the US under a different name. Farage, who is Britain’s highest-paid MP because of his lucrative media side-hustles, normally charges £3,800 to promote a business on Cameo, the celebrity video message app. He said he took no money to promote UK We Save. So he must have done it out of the kindness of his heart!