Reform's Sarah Pochin 'problem'

Try as he might, Nigel Farage won't have hundreds of drones at his disposal in 2029

In their short history, Reform have had a total of seven MPs. Of these seven MPs, two — or nearly thirty percent — are no longer sitting as Reform MPs. Alternatively, we could say that forty percent of the Reform MPs elected in 2024 are no longer sitting as Reform MPs.

I am not the first to note that this is a remarkable record. It could be said that this was a feature of the hasty selections for Reform at the 2024 General Election. Rupert Lowe, after all, could have been identified as a potential troublemaker and kept out if he wasn’t already ensconced in a party which was, at this time, still small and weak. And, at a minimum, James McMurdock’s conviction for an assault against his girlfriend in 2006, which has caused the party much embarrassment, could have been spotted in the vetting process and blocked his selection (even if we accept that the scandal surrounding his use of COVID loans that ultimately precipitated his resignation of the whip was unlikely to come to light). This, of course, is just the MPs: we haven’t even mentioned the activities of former Deputy Chairman Ben Habib, among others.

Since 2024, Reform have experience in selections for one Westminster by-election, as well over one thousand councillors. Once again, we can perhaps explain away some of Reform’s more ‘fruitcake’ councillors with the haste that selections had to be made. More difficult to explain away is the case of Sarah Pochin, Reform MP for Runcorn and Helsby.

Many details of the process behind Sarah Pochin’s selection as the Reform candidate for the Runcorn and Helsby by-election in May 2025 will probably remain a mystery to those who were not directly involved (Reform is, if anything, a tight ship). However, what is clear from the information about the process that has surfaced is that Reform wanted a safe, reliable candidate; someone who would not cause trouble either through personalistic factionalism or through ideological disputes with the leadership. This selection process was, of course, occurring at a time when Rupert Lowe appeared to be a greater threat to the party than he is today. No one in Reform wanted a repeat of this.

It is clear that many — though not all — within Reform HQ wanted a woman, as it was thought that this would help them improve their polling among women nationally. There was a general worry that, thanks especially to Farage and Anderson, Reform had an excessively ‘blokeish’ image (not helped by all their MPs being men) as well as a more specific worry that Reform would be vulnerable to attack over James McMurdock’s conviction. But Pochin was also apparently favoured for two other reasons. First, her professional background would help cement the party’s reputation as a ‘party of business’, appealing to conventional centre-right and even centrist voters. And second, at this time Farage wanted to make it clear that Reform was a party which former Conservatives could support. Pochin was, of course, a Conservative councillor from 2015 to 2020. She was then expelled from the local party, not over any ideological rift, but for accepting a position from the Labour-Independent administration of Cheshire East council. This precipitated her resignation from the national party. She then returned to the national party in 2022. It is unclear when exactly she left again.

In all, Pochin seemed like a very safe candidate for Reform. None of the rumoured reasons for selecting her would suggest she would cause any trouble, barring her apparent penchant for hopping parties in order to secure her own advancement; indeed, all three reasons appear to be inspired by basically ‘centrist’ concerns. Pochin was portrayed as a concerned local mum and businesswoman, with a background virtually identical to a typical Conservative parliamentary candidate, and no record of political radicalism whatsoever.

Unsurprisingly, Pochin’s reception online — where the atmosphere is generally more radical — was frosty. It was discovered that she had previously supported the resettlement of Afghan refugees. But there was also a general suspicion of her on the more basic ground that she had been a Conservative until very recently, and this was interpreted as further evidence that Reform was needlessly pivoting towards the centre-ground. What was appealing to Reform, then, was unappealing to those on the Right.

With the benefit of hindsight, that this interpretation of Pochin’s views (whether sincere or opportunistic) was inaccurate should have been clear from her campaign, which was almost entirely focused on immigration. Nonetheless, most were very surprised that her first real contribution to the national debate from the Commons was a call at PMQs in June 2025 to ban the burqa, directly contradicting what seemed to be party policy at this time. Zia Yusuf, still Chairman of Reform, then appeared to call Pochin ‘dumb’ on X in response. This, among other things, precipitated his public meltdown and temporary resignation from the party.

Four months later, Pochin again caused trouble for the party by saying, clumsily, in a discussion about the overrepresentation of ethnic minorities on television, that ‘…it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people.’ Pochin later apologised, and Farage criticised the remarks as ‘wrong and ugly’ though ultimately stood by her on the basis that they were not intended as racist. Pochin herself, however, took an altogether more combative approach on social media despite her initial apology, responding to Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s attacks on her by posting a video of Anas Sarwar, leader of Scottish Labour, complaining about the representation of people who are ‘white’ (a word said repeatedly with dripping contempt) in various areas of Scottish society.

What explains Sarah Pochin’s record as an MP? Why has a woman who was selected — so it seems — to cause as little trouble as possible ended up causing quite a lot of trouble in a very short period of time? The truth is that even those who would be assumed to be fairly moderate, both in rhetoric and in ideology, have very rapidly radicalised over the last couple of years. One friend’s mother, previously an upper-middle class northern Tory, has suddenly become involved in the local ‘flagging’ campaign; another friend’s parents, Brexit-supporting but so moderate that they claim to like Barack Obama, recently had to be warned away from Tommy Robinson by our own articles, despite living in Bath (of all places). A number of factors explain this: the increasing tilt of the media diet of even older voters towards radical online ‘new media’, the heavy influence of GB News among this same demographic and, last but not least, the general collapse of this country since Boris Johnson won his landslide majority in 2019.

But the cause is not what is important. The point is that in 2029, there will be very few people who will be completely ‘safe’ from the perspective of the less imaginative minds within Reform UK who are not also simply inappropriate on ideological or other grounds. The ‘concerned mum’ is no longer such a safe bet. Spending hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of pounds vetting candidates will not make party management a simple business: many candidates may turn out to surprise you, whether for good or for bad.

The case of Sarah Pochin suggests that internal stability and party unity in Reform will not be achieved in the way that the Tories previously achieved it: by only selecting the most bland, unobjectionable non-entities, with loyalty to the party leader as the sole criterion. Not only would this seriously damage Reform’s ability to govern — Reform will need competent ministers, and relatively few competent people are also totally loyal, as the Tories learned over the course of their fourteen disastrous years in power — but in the political environment of 2029, it will simply not work. Instead, party unity will be achieved by setting clear ideological, rhetorical, and policy expectations for all Reform candidates, with as little variance as possible across the country. The earlier this is done, the better.

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No matter how thorough the vetting of candidates, it is likely that that there will be a steady stream of expulsions of MPs for saying objectionable things. As alluded to above, this is an age in which virtually the entire politically-informed public are plugged into the internet. Many Reform MPs, rightly angry about the direction this country has been going, will have been inundated for years with information or rhetoric from sometimes dubious sources, and may unwisely repeat this dubious information or rhetoric to the general public.

Reform would be wise not to overreact to this. People in this country are justifiably angry, and many of these justifiably angry people will make fantastic Reform MPs — even if they sometimes go a bit too far. But it goes without saying that there are certain things that they will not be able to tolerate, and certain MPs will end up expelled. A ‘foot-in-mouth’ moment à la Pochin is one thing: repeatedly and deliberately using language that damages the party is quite another. Reform are a party that needs to maintain broad appeal across the country. It is not a venue for competing over who can say the most radical and daring things, or to ventilate your undigested personal sentiments.

It is fairly likely that Rupert Lowe, who appears to be a diligent local MP with considerable support there, will hold his seat in Great Yarmouth as an independent. Moreover, an aggressive local campaign to unseat Lowe may well backfire as constituents would probably feel that Lowe was being treated unfairly. Should he hold his seat, Lowe will inevitably become a lightning rod for ‘right-wing’ (whether real or imaginary) opposition to Reform. Some of these expelled MPs will have been removed for voicing conspiracy theories; others for general extremism. Most likely, this grouping will not pose any direct threat to Reform so long as the party is doing its job on the basics, especially immigration; indeed, their removal may in fact help by improving the party’s public image.

The risk is that some in this group manage to persuade their erstwhile colleagues, many of whom will have been friends, to do mischief from within the party on their behalf. These fellow-travellers will be egged on by elements of the online media which, no matter how much Reform complains about them, will inevitably hold some sway over many Reform MPs. Again, this can be partly avoided by setting clear and consistently applied expectations of what is and is not acceptable for a Reform MP to say, so no one can allege unfair treatment, gaining the sympathy of those still left in the party.

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Recent announcements have made it clear that Reform will have a deeply radical policy programme to implement should they win a majority in 2029. Maintaining party unity will be essential. It is highly possible that, no matter how much effort is put into ‘vetting’ Reform candidates, Reform will end up being a rather fractious party, at least in the Commons (if not in Reform HQ). The media, who almost all despise Reform and will despise them even more if they achieve everything they want to achieve, will do everything they can to promote disunity: inexperienced MPs will inadvertently let things slip to lobby journalists who pretend to be their friends; briefing wars will be alleged; the word ‘chaos’ will be thrown around with the obvious intention to create chaos.

Avoiding this will not be achieved through looking to set Farage up as a ‘messianic figure’ — as Rupert Lowe accused Reform of doing before his expulsion — or indeed, more neutrally, expecting that loyalty to Farage himself will be sufficient to prevent trouble. Of course, none of this is to say that the party should not discipline MPs for openly criticising the leadership, just like any other party does (as some defenders of Lowe seem to imply); it is merely to say that the party should temper their expectations for how much this strategy will achieve alone.

In reality, Farage sits somewhere between Trump and an ordinary party leader. It is true that he is not the leader of a party that existed long before and will obviously continue to exist long after he is gone. It is therefore also true that in some sense, Farage is the party. If he wins a General Election he will command significantly more loyalty than a mere David Cameron or Keir Starmer. But this support will not be unconditional. This, of course, is a good thing, showing the maturity of both this country and likely Reform MPs. For the great majority of Reform MPs, Farage will be thought of as the vehicle, not the cause itself. In this respect, he is rather different from Trump, who has a more directly personalistic appeal. A selection strategy that seeks to find thirty or forty MPs to serve in important ministerial roles but several hundred to act merely as lobby fodder and fill up unimportant junior ministerial roles, appointed almost solely on the basis of their loyalty to Farage the man, is unlikely to succeed. Moreover, the sort of person who becomes a Reform MP is likely to be more disagreeable than MPs for other parties. The only way to guarantee success is to guarantee ideological coherence within the party.

A particular flashpoint will — much as for the current Labour Government — be the first budget, where Reform’s promises will collide with what is likely to be a deeply worrying fiscal reality. Indeed, Reform may even face more serious problems than Labour, given four more years of maladministration and what is probable to be a negative reaction of the bond markets to an as yet unproven quasi-revolutionary party taking power. Although, sensibly enough, Farage has started retreating from some of Reform’s more irresponsible promises at the previous General Election (an inevitability for a party that had no chance of winning last time), there is a risk that this still might not be enough to avoid spending cuts that hurt some of Reform’s own supporters in the poorer regions of this country; equally, Farage might be forced to postpone the tax cuts that many Reform supporters in the wealthier areas were anticipating (and indeed, Farage has already started to signal that tax cuts may not be forthcoming for some time).

The worst possible outcome is that the party simply fractures — probably roughly, although highly imperfectly, on regional lines — over spending cuts. Competing ‘national liberal’ and ‘national populist’ factions could emerge, maybe centred on Kent/Essex and Lancashire/Durham respectively, with the ‘national liberal’ faction being inundated with the worst kind of former Tories and the ‘national populist’ faction, which would be sui generis, injecting poisonous French-style welfare politics into our ecosystem. This would seriously obstruct the radical change that this country desperately needs, especially on immigration.

On balance, it is probably more likely that Reform will face more trouble from those who object to spending cuts than a lack of tax cuts (which can be more easily justified to the ‘national liberal’ faction on the basis of the need for fiscal consolidation). Reform have always pandered, albeit tentatively, to post-liberalism, especially during their welfarist turn earlier in the year. Current polling shows that some of Reform’s strongest constituencies are also those with some of the highest rates of welfare claims. At the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, some voters even abandoned Labour for Reform precisely because of Keir Starmer’s planned (now mostly abandoned) cuts to PIP. Moreover, as new MPs, they will be liable to overreacting to complaints from constituents, not understanding that this is an unavoidable hazard of the Government actually doing their job.

This needs to end. It will be essential that Reform MPs can form an ideologically unified critical mass on these issues. Some level of internal debate is healthy, but disagreements with the central premises of Reform’s actual programme is not. Expectations, especially on the spending side of the equation, should not be raised and then dashed, both for voters and MPs. Reform candidates should be left in no doubt before the election that tough decisions, especially on welfare, will have to be made for the good of the country. They must not be left under the illusion that all that will need to be done is to cut out ‘waste’ and other ideologically and politically easy targets like asylum hotels. Equally, MPs should not be given a false impression about the speed at which Reform is likely to be able to reduce the size of the state and therefore implement tax cuts. The usual (false) bromides about the ‘Laffer Curve’ must not be aired. None of this is to claim that honesty about what the party programme will entail is a silver bullet; merely that it is wiser than simply telling everyone what it is after the fact.

As Reform continues to grow in both size and strength, there will be a temptation to pitch Reform as a kind of ‘big tent’ party in order to keep all of the different groups — both in terms of social class and in terms of region — on board, uniting only behind a shared distaste for mass immigration, Net Zero, and crime. This approach almost inevitably involves false promises about what is possible on tax and spend. This is a recipe for chaos in the Commons, and Reform should not be fooled into believing that the personal prestige of Nigel Farage will be enough to override this. A ‘big tent’ would therefore destroy what might end up being Britain’s last chance to seriously change this country for the better via mostly conventional means.

Reform cannot afford ideological incoherence any more than they can afford ideological self-indulgence. There is a reason why FdI controls Italy, not MS5.

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This article was written by Nigel Forrester, our editor-in-chief. Have a pitch? Send it to submissions@pimlicojournal.co.uk.

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