What farcical Farage’s Reform UK no-show really tells us

Despite all the hype ahead of Reform UK’s new year press conference today, there was only one type of show: a no-show, writes Andrew Grice – and what kind of panto dame does that?

Richard Tice, the party’s leader, told us he is ‘very confident’ Nigel Farage, its honorary president, will take on a bigger role but said Farage was ‘still assessing that’ (Getty)

Anyone would have thought it was still pantomime season – with onlookers begging to clamour, “He’s behind you!”... except, of course, he wasn’t. Whatever Reform UK leader Richard Tice may say about Nigel Farage being “firmly behind him”, the stark reality is that he was nowhere to be seen.

And despite all the hype ahead of Reform UK’s new year press conference today, there was only one type of show: a no-show. What kind of panto dame does that? One, it seems, who just wants attention.

What it tells us about Reform UK, the successor to the Brexit Party, is that it is still waiting for Farage. Thus, the party was unable to answer the $64,000 question: is the UK’s answer to Frank Sinatra going to make yet another comeback to frontline politics?