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Nigel Farage is to name Robert Jenrick as Reform UK’s “shadow chancellor”, as he unveils several members of his top team in an effort to convince British voters his party is a credible vehicle for power.
Zia Yusuf, the party’s head of policy who previously said he would be keen on the economic spokesperson position, is instead expected to be given the role of home affairs spokesperson, including Reform’s core policy areas of crime and immigration.
Richard Tice, the current deputy leader and one of the party’s biggest donors, is expected to take on a new shadow business role, covering business, energy and industry.
With only eight MPs, Reform is not the official opposition to the Labour government. The Tories have 116 MPs, while the Liberal Democrats have 72. However, the party is soaring ahead in public opinion polls, commanding around 28 per cent of public support, compared with Labour on 19 per cent and the Tories on 16 per cent.
Farage is increasingly aware that he needs to prove to the public, and potential donors, that his party is prepared to govern and shift the long-standing narrative that Reform is a one-man band.
Jenrick, a rightwinger who served in government under four Tory prime ministers between 2018 and 2023, joined Reform last month after being sacked as the Conservative shadow justice secretary, the highest-profile defection yet to Farage’s rightwing populist party.
The defection came just hours after Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch pre-emptively removed Jenrick from her shadow cabinet, saying she had “clear, irrefutable evidence” he was plotting to join Reform.