Welcome to Political Fix from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher.

Coming up, we'll ask whether Reform UK is ready to become a serious contender for government.

And we'll look at the Chancellor's Spending Review, which kicked off this week.

Here to discuss at all is FTE Deputy Political Editor Jim Pickard.

Hi, Jim. Hi, Lizzie. And FT Political Correspondent, Anna Political Editor Jim Pickard. Hi, Jim.

Hi, Lizzie.

And FTE political correspondent, Anna Gross. Hi, Anna.

Hi, Lucy.

Plus, we'll have Gideon Rackman, the FT's chief foreign affairs columnists,

joining us in the studio shortly to discuss what's going on in Syria and how the UK should respond.

So, let's start with reform. It's been a big month for the party. In the past seven days, we've had

the first poll that puts Nigel Farage's party ahead of labour. And one of the leading bookmakers,

Labbrooks, now makes Farage the favourite to succeed Kirstama as the next Prime Minister, ahead

of Kemi Badadernog.

Anna, you've done this fantastic big read this week on the party, and I'll put the link to that in the show notes.

Tell us about that and this crucial question, could it become a serious contender for government?

Yeah, so the party does feel as though it has a lot of momentum behind it at the moment. And there are a few

different factors as to why that is. The first I would say is that just its membership is growing.

It's surpassed 100,000 members, which is not far behind the Tories, which are on roughly, and

they don't publish their figures, but they're thought to be around 140,000. And as part of that growing membership, they've also had some quite high-profile

defections. Tim Montgomery, who is the founder of Conservative Home, Suella Braverman's husband,

and Suella Braverman, former Home Secretary, who is still a sitting Conservative MP,

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