How Reform plans to govern

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Daily News, Politics

4.4 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2026

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

2025 was the easy part for Reform. If they win the election, however, how do they actually govern? In The Spectator this week, Tim Shipman writes about the party’s plans to tackle Whitehall bloat, bypass the Lords and restore the authority of the Prime Minister over the various institutions of state. The man tasked with working this out is Danny Kruger, who is working up plans to push change through using Orders in Council – a device in the Privy Council – as well as statutory instruments and ministerial guidance to avoid the need for primary legislation. But the party is only in the foothills, and one source warns that ‘Nigel doesn’t trust other politicians’: can he build a winning team? Who has his ear? And does he actually want to be Prime Minister?

Oscar Edmondson speaks to Tim Shipman and James Heale.

Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, This Waitate is Daily Politics Podcast.
0:09.6	I'm Oscar Reminson and I'm joined today by Tim Shipman and James Heel.
0:12.9	Now, Tim, in the magazine this week, you give an account of how reform are preparing for this make-or-break year.
0:19.6	How are they planning to maintain this momentum that they've
0:21.8	got over the past 12 months? Look, there's two phases to the year, I think, for reform, and there's two
0:25.7	big questions this year, of which they're kind of the centrepiece. The first is how well will they do in May,
0:31.3	and right now Nigel Farage is focused totally intensively on winning as many seats as he can
0:36.9	at the May elections in Scotland,
0:38.4	Wales and of course the English counties. After that, however, the big question, assuming they do
0:42.8	well, assuming they trade in these 170, 180 national polling leads that they've had into a
0:50.2	great result, then, you know, we really are going to be asking the question, are they on course
0:55.0	to win the next general election? Is Nigel Farage on course to be Prime Minister? And really,
0:58.4	are they ready for that? So what we've looked at this week is what they're doing to prepare
1:02.9	and to try to answer that question positively. And we know Zia Yusuf is working on a big policy
1:09.8	platform. But the bigger issue almost is not what they
1:12.9	want to do, but how they might be able to go about achieving it. And Danny Kruger, who crossed
1:17.8	from the Tories last year, is in charge of that side of things. And I think there's more detail
1:22.3	in this piece than we've seen before about how they plan to do that. Basically, Kruger is
1:26.8	looking at a whole range of proposals.
1:28.6	He's focusing on Parliament, on the judiciary, on the executive. There's sort of three things to
1:34.1	sort out. There's how do you organise government? There's what legislation or changes in rules do you
1:39.3	need to be able to bring in the people you want to bring in? And then there's this kind of element of,
	...

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