Reform are a one-man band, and they just showed why

Nigel Farage announced the Reform UK shadow cabinet today, with former Tories taking front and centre. This is despite the fact that Reform UK has just eight MPs, so is in no need of a shadow cabinet.

As the racist party are not the official opposition, so they don’t get to name a shadow cabinet. But, why would the facts stop Farage? At a flashy event reminiscent of an American election campaign, Farage announced the first members of his “shadow cabinet”.

New Tory cabinet for Reform

And surprise, surprise, it’s full of Tories

Robert Jenrick has been named as their shadow chancellor. Jenrick defected from the Tory party last month and has stolen the role from both Richard Tice and Zia Yusuf.

Jenrick, who lost the Tory leadership to its current leader, Kemi Badenoch, is expected to give a speech outlining his economic plan sometime this week. By that point, he might’ve actually come up with one.

The most recent Tory defector, Suella Braverman, will take on more than one role. As well as education and skills, she will also handle equalities. Though this is Reform, so that means she’ll be hellbent on destroying any sort of equality. Namely, she wants to get rid of the Equality Act.

Richard Tice isn’t too glum about being sidelined as Chancellor. As well as deputy leader, he’ll now be ‘in charge of’ (and we use that term loosely) business, trade, and energy. His biggest focus is on getting rid of net-zero targets to focus on oil and gas.

And then finally, we have Zia Yusuf as Reform’s ‘home secretary’. Again, there’s a heavy use of quotation marks here, because they aren’t the shadow cabinet or opposition.

Definitely not a one-man band

One person noticeably missing was Reform laughing stock Lee Anderson. Ol’ 30p will apparently remain as “chief whip”, but it’s interesting he wasn’t announced for a welfare role when he’s apparently been their “welfare spokesperson” for months now.

Presumably it’s because he can’t so much as move without making a fool of himself. Most recently, he was mocked for campaigning in the wrong place,

As well as no DWP “shadow” minister, there was no health secretary announced. This surely shows what Reform’s priorities are. You can only assume this is because Reform are so snugly in private healthcare’s pockets.

Farage said a big reason for naming a “cabinet” was so the world didn’t see Reform as a “one man band”. Which would be more believable if he wasn’t constantly fucking everywhere. But then it’s not like he’s got many people to sub in is it?

Despite apparently not wanting to be the star of the show, Farage announced each member of his cabinet in the centre of a big stand at a podium. Instead of letting them speak at his podium, they all had their own smaller podiums. These were also, naturally, slightly further back.

Reform are not to be taken seriously

The naming of Reform’s shadow cabinet confused a lot of people, but probably none more so than 30p Lee Anderson. Just three weeks ago, Anderson rebuffed rumours of an almost correctly predicted shadow cabinet.

When a Tory, Luke Robert Black, remarked that this was “savage” towards Anderson, he replied

Thicko alert. We cannot possibly have a shadow cabinet, we have spokespersons. I was made DWP Spokesperson last year. Carry on being a useful idiot for the Tory party, but you won’t get that safe seat you want. They’re laughing at you.

This tweet is currently still up, but let’s see how long it lasts. Instead of addressing this, Anderson tweeted this afternoon that the new cabinet was “the Beginnings of a World Class Team.”

This latest announcement from Reform UK is just the latest in the long line of them assuming they have any sort of authority or power in Westminster.

More than anything, it shows how entitled they all are. But to the country it’s just another silly stunt by Farage, and even more reason to not take Reform seriously.

Featured image via the Canary