The mistimed book that claims Farage will become Prime Minister

Martin Shipton

There was a notable moment in October last year when, immediately after the result was declared, journalists from London made a beeline for the Reform UK candidate who came second in the Caerphilly by-election rather than the Plaid Cymru candidate who beat him.

It was a perfect illustration of how obsessed mainstream media operatives in England have been with the supposedly unstoppable rise of Nigel Farage’s latest political vehicle.

Now there is a whole book dedicated to the phenomenon called, inevitably, The Rise of Reform.

Written by the self-described Centrist Dad Remainer Nick Tyrone, it seeks to persuade the reader that Farage will be the Prime Minister after the next general election.

I can’t help thinking that the book has been published too late. Commissioned at a time when Reform had a commanding lead in the opinion polls, it was completed just before Andy Burnham took over as Prime Minister – an event that has triggered an improvement in Labour’s ratings and a downturn for Reform.

If readability is a measure of a book’s value, Tyrone’s ranks highly, but there are other criteria and I found it unconvincing.

He makes a big play out of the fact that he voted Remain in the 2016 referendum, but much of the book consists of an attempt to convince the reader that Farage and his crew are not as bad as they’ve been portrayed and that they represent the best hope for Britain’s future.

At an early stage the author would have us believe that none of the large number of Reform activists he met during the research phase of his book were racists. This is surely stretching credulity to breaking point.

In the section where he writes about the Caerphilly by-election, Tyrone fails to mention Reform’s appalling behaviour in seeking to stir up community division by its attacks on the Welsh Government’s Nation of Sanctuary programme, 91% of whose budget was spent on resettling refugees from Ukraine.

Anyone who followed the by-election campaign will be aware of the cynical way in which Reform created an atmosphere in which people from ethnic minority backgrounds were made to feel unwanted in their own home town. Tyrone also fails to analyse or even allude to the way the community collectively responded by rejecting Reform’s toxic messaging..

Later, when writing about the Wales-wide Senedd election that took place in May 2026, he refers to the institution as the “Welsh Assembly” – a common mistake made by journalists with no knowledge of, or interest in, Welsh politics. It’s disappointing that his editor didn’t spot the error and correct it.

Interspersing his main narrative, which consists of touring various parts of Britain to meet Reform activists whose company he finds congenial, is a series of interviews, or rather monologues, in which Tyrone listens to key players like Robert Jenrick and Danny Kruger. Such Tory defectors were happy to talk about the future of Reform and the Farage-led government in which they doubtless saw themselves playing leading roles.

In the case of Jenrick, his meeting with Tyrone took place at a Conservative Party gathering in Rishi Sunak’s North Yorkshire constituency before Jenrick’s defection actually occurred.

Jump ship

As Tyrone puts it, nothing Jenrick said dissuaded him from the view that the former Tory leadership contender – who persistently referred to Farage as “Nigel” – would jump ship for Reform. As indeed he did – though only after he’d been expelled from the Conservative Party by Kemi Badenoch after “irrefutable proof” emerged of his disloyalty.

Tyrone made clear his feelings about Jenrick in this short passage from the book: “Throughout our conversation, he never seemed cagey, or like he was trying to avoid saying the wrong thing. He was remarkably natural. I feel a little bad saying this now, but I had expected him to be a bit phony, politician-like, with talking points that seemed not just prepared but over-rehearsed. Yet he wasn’t like that at all. I liked the guy and enjoyed his company.”

I’ve not met Jenrick myself, but from what I’ve seen and read about him, I’ve long held the view that the guy is an untrustworthy slimeball.

There’s a comedy gold moment in another chapter, where Tyrone describes a meeting he had with Danny Kruger. Kruger explains how it will be his role in government to ensure that Reform policies are delivered. For that to happen, he will need, he says, to break the power of the Civil Service “blob” to slow things down and ensure that real change never happens.

James Orr

There’s another Reform figure who will be helping him make preparations for this transformation: James Orr. Tyrone writes: “I asked [Kruger] about how he thought Reform’s policy team was going to work under the recently appointed James Orr. I wondered how Orr’s and Kruger’s jobs would intersect. ‘The easiest way to describe the demarcation of roles is that James is responsible for everything up until the general election run, and I’m responsible for everything after it,’ Kruger told me. ‘But in practice, obviously, what we’re saying leading up to the election is about what we’re going to do afterwards, so I have to know everything. James oversees the working with the shadow ministers and whatnot.’”

Except that he doesn’t any more. James Orr was caught in a sting a few weeks ago, when he discussed accepting an illegal donation from a fake American businessman and had to resign from his party role.

Those involved in producing the book either made a conscious decision to keep the Kruger/Orr passage in as written, or overlooked the fact that there was a problem. Either way, the pompously self-regarding Kruger is made to look stupid.

Tyrone’s overall conclusion is that Reform will win the next general election and Farage will become Prime Minister. He has blind faith in the party being able to cling onto its lead and defeat any attempt to defeat Reform via tactical voting.

He underestimates the popularity of Andy Burnham, especially in Manchester, and floats the implausible idea that Burnham could lose his Makerfield seat at the next general election.

Praised 

I expect the book will be praised by Tyrone’s mates in Reform, including the activist who puts him up when he’s in the area so he can save on hotel bills. It will also be lauded in a hand-wringing kind of way by progressives who have read the book and toyed with the idea of “reaching out” to left-behind Leavers so they can share their pain.

I’m not buying any of it. A Reform government would lead, as Tyrone himself admits, to a tyrannical state where agents of a British version of ICE roam the streets and cart off people from ethnic minority backgrounds to concentration camps.

Surely no sane person would condone the creation of such a dystopian society, and would use their vote to ensure it never comes about.

The Rise of Reform by Nick Tyrone is published by Forum at £20.

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