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Dear John,

Nigel Farage and Reform UK love to talk about “sovereignty” and “taking our country back.” Yet their conference this weekend was less a vision for Britain and more a two-day tribute act to Donald Trump’s America.

With no real ideas of their own, they seem content to copy and paste the MAGA playbook here in Britain – importing division and authoritarianism rather than actually coming up with innovative solutions or bold plans.

Throw a dart at the Reform party conference, and there’s good odds you hit someone somehow connected to ‘MAGA.’ Prominent anti-vaxxer Aseem Malhotra – who is tied up with infamous conspiracy crank Robert Kennedy Jr – gave the only address on health.

Tobacco, fossil fuel, and cryptocurrency lobbyists abounded. Panels rattled on about the UK’s own ‘DOGE’ and the need to ‘drill, baby, drill.’ The same bizarre coalition of crackpots and plutocrats that backs Trump is assembling here in the UK, and – though we can all see how destructive they’ve been in the States – they’re pushing for the same agenda here.

And of course, you also have all the usual suspects. The Telegraph, Times, Express, Mail and Spectator got their piece of the action. Tufton Street’s dark money think-tank cabal – the Institute of Economic Affairs, Prosperity Institute, Adam Smith Institute, and others – dominated panels and speeches. Farage may seek to distance himself from the Conservatives and especially the Johnson years, but the intellectual vanguard of right-wing quackery very much has his ear.

What’s perhaps most shocking is how normalised all of this has become, and so quickly. It’s hard to imagine any political party throwing a two-day Donald Trump parade even a year or two ago, and harder still to envision it attended by so many prominent journalists, businesspeople, and civil society representatives.

Farage himself, rushing his speech out early on Friday to claim victory over Angela Rayner’s resignation, quite literally pledged to “Make Britain Great Again.” He wasn’t wrong to say that Reform is the party on the rise right now, with a majority of the country looking for bold, fresh ideas at a time of mass distrust and disillusionment.

The only problem is that they’re not going to get that from Farage. If Trump himself is any indicator, they’re going to get masked police roaming the streets, constant cronyism and corruption, economic devastation, and the bitter end of civil liberties – and potentially even democratic elections.

Reform’s conference couldn’t possibly have made it more clear: Trumpian autocracy is staring Britain in the face. More than that, it showed that Britain’s political and media establishment is increasingly receptive to it.

The only way we veer off this course is with a massive democratic reset. No more billionaires and lobbyists propping up the populists. No more targeted disinformation campaigns designed to frighten and enrage. No more disproportionate First-Past-the-Post-elections threatening to sell our country out to the con-men.

Britain doesn’t need a poundshop copy of Trump – it needs a functional democracy where real ideas and policy innovations can thrive.

All the best,

Matt

Matt Gallagher

Communications Officer

Open Britain
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