What a difference a week makes. Only a matter of days ago, Nigel Farage was facing speculation that he might be ready to walk away from politics.
The summer had been dominated by questions over party funding, Ann Widdecombe was battered to death, and Reform UK’s annual conference was overshadowed by a Channel 4 undercover sting.
Mr Farage admitted his family had urged him to quit. But no one is talking about Mr Farage standing down now. An injection of £72m into Reform party funds, unprecedented in British political history, has transformed the party’s prospects and gives a reinvigorated Mr Farage a new sense of purpose.
Any suggestion that Reform’s billionaire backers might have been spooked by a dip in the party’s poll ratings has been put to bed by the biggest vote of confidence in a leader donors have ever given.
Mr Farage now has the financial clout to take on the Tories and Labour, and to a lesser extent the Liberal Democrats, on a far more equal footing than at the last election.
Two years ago, Reform won only five seats, or 0.8 per cent of the total seats in Parliament, despite getting 4.1 million votes, or 14.3 per cent of the total. In contrast, the Lib Dems won 72 seats with 3.5 million votes.
Reform’s problem has been that it does not know who, or where, its voters are, meaning it doesn’t know where to target its resources. The Lib Dems demonstrated in 2024 how ruthlessly an efficiently run party could convert votes into seats if it had the know-how built up with decades of experience.
The money that Mr Farage now has at his disposal will not only allow him to beef up his policy team – party insiders are talking of doubling its size – but crucially it will enable him to hire hundreds of local campaign managers to work in target seats.
If you ask Reform what they lack, the answer you are most likely to get is data. To stand any chance of getting from five MPs in 2024 to more than 325 MPs in the next election, Reform needs granular data on who its supporters are, and who its potential supporters are, so that it can communicate with them and ensure the maximum number turn out on election day and vote Reform. There is no shortcut to gathering this information.
Only by going door to door can a party build up a true picture of its support, and that takes time and money.
Although Reform now has the money, it has not had the time. Its rivals have been around for more than a century, meaning Reform has an awful lot of catching up to do.
And even with its extra £72m, its income over the past five years is still below that of the Tories and Labour. Reform’s target is to have 400 campaign managers in place in its top 400 target constituencies as soon as possible, and the £72m from Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne should enable the party to do that.
Starting on Monday, Harvey Griffiths, who has held numerous posts as a chief executive and managing director of a wide range of businesses, will begin work as the party treasurer, backed by a team of legal professionals to oversee the proper use of funds.
On the policy side, Reform is adamant that it will not repeat the mistake of Sir Keir Starmer, who entered No 10 without a plan for government.
Mr Farage wants to have the most comprehensive plan for governing of any incoming party, which is why last week’s party conference was themed on the first 100 days of a Reform government.
With party finances secured, Mr Farage and his team will no longer have to devote time or energy to raising money, freeing them up to concentrate on developing policies.
The big question now is how this will affect Andy Burnham’s thinking about the timing of the next election.
Westminster is rife with talk of an early election, and Mr Farage is convinced that the Prime Minister has been planning to go to the country in 2027, possibly in the spring.
Will Reform’s new firepower scare Mr Burnham off? Or could he even be panicked into calling an election this year, before Reform has a chance to put its money to use?
Mr Burnham’s decision will partly depend on how he responds to what his MPs have to say on the matter.
Without question, many of them would lose their seats if an election were called now, and they will be telling their whips that an early poll is the last thing they want.
Labour has only a marginal lead in even the most favourable opinion polls for them, and Mr Burnham would need nerves of steel to call an election without opening a bigger gap.
Whatever his thinking was this time last week, one thing is certain: he cannot ignore Reform’s transformed spending power in whatever plans he has for the next general election.