Since the beginning of this year, candidate selection for Reform has been under the strict control of Zia Yusuf, of clan Yusuf. My own thoughts on this mysterious Aladdin of the FYP, and what exactly he is doing in Reform, are complex and not wholly negative but nonetheless would be received poorly if articulated here. What does seem likely is that Yusuf is not a man who will smile upon a career in posting. His worldview: a queer echo of Fareed Zakaria documentaries about ‘multipolarity’ aired on France 24 News in the middle of the day c. 2015. If the choices for council candidates are anything to go by, Yusuf prioritises people who seem vaguely ‘local’, with prior political experience over both ideologues and lifelong Reform/UKIP activists.
Is all lost? Not necessarily.
While Reform is a centralised party and this is exactly why it is doing well (decentralisation is in fact the biggest orthodoxy of Whitehall), local input cannot be entirely immaterial to selection. It is plausible that the situation is something like this, that local associations have no formal power, to prevent the election of weirdos but if they endorsed a normal person it wouldn’t be outright ignored, especially if that person was an otherwise solid Reform loyalist. That is to say: I cannot see Reform outright forcing a mediocre candidate on a local association if there was a strong independent candidate. If a local Reform branch overwhelmingly backed a candidate with a public profile and some history helping Reform, it would probably still be accounted for by HQ provided there was no other reason to disparage them.
Who are the people who run local Reform branches and how do you appeal to them? In some areas, notably Essex, parts of London and Kent they will be lifelong Faragists with Strong Views. Counter-intuitively, these will be the hardest places for a bright young politician to get selected because they’ve been around for so long. These local branches will function like social clubs, people will know each other on the basis of decades-old friendships and local activists in the area will have been waiting since the Kilroy-Silk era to finally gain some sort of reward for their thankless labours in the service of Putinism. They will react badly to intruders, possibly with physical violence.
Rather, you ought to be looking at places which were not predicted to go purple until January of this year, where the Party infrastructure is new and run by previously apolitical people. Or even better, places that will likely go to Reform in 2028 but are still being discounted by polls. It is obvious, for example, that some constituencies in Northern cities like Manchester and Liverpool, both of which saw anti-migrant protests in 2024, are up for the taking although the fight will be far harder than a nice May holiday pottering about Spitfire Avenue, Manningtree. Scotland is another massive piece of low hanging fruit although Wales is, in fact, historic UKIP country. The West Country coast is also underrated as are bits of London, like Barnet, which do not have a historic right-wing presence. The essential thing is, Reform H.Q are likely already earmarking ‘safe seats’ across the South-East coast for members of the Dar-al-Yusuf, if you’re under 30 and looking to make it you’re going to have to present yourself as someone who can win a tricky fight.
How does one charm the people in such places? They will be, running on pure intuition, basically normal people who have gotten into politics fairly late, have no political ambitions themselves and fairly obscure activists. Obviously, very few people reading this will want to spend four years hanging around Royston Vasey. You don’t have to. The key to impressing these people, contra Thomas Skinner thought, is to actually give them the impression someone from ‘the inside’ is descending from Olympus to represent them. If you have contacts at GB News, invite them to the studio, if you know people in Reform leadership, bring them to an event where they’ll meet Farage. You make them believe that they are getting a real treat by having you as an M.P. If you are young, the bias against you isn’t inexperience, it is that they feel their constituency is getting a raw deal; show them that you will get them attention they won’t find elsewhere.
Regardless, you need to be doing your seat selection now, building the infrastructure for a Parliamentary run Reform cannot ignore is a two year process. Give up any thought of going to enough parties where Yusuf or Nige will be there and trying to get a centralised appointment: these will be very closely guarded and then, likely, filled 6 months before General Election with ex-Tories and a few personal loyalists. Give up any thought any national work you do for the Party will be rewarded. You cannot be sure of it so you cannot depend on it. Even if you are extremely competent, there’s an argument H.Q would prefer you doing an office job well than being an M.P given competence is scarce and wannabe MPs are plentiful. Anyone young is going to need to fight for it.
Alongside local associations, a second ingredient vital for getting selected is the endorsement of a national “celebrity”. Look, this doesn’t have to be Sir Michael MacIntyre or even Dr. Lawrence Newport, it can be someone as boring as a member of the House of Lords, someone in the ‘intellectual’ right-wing sphere, a sitting M.P or a broadcaster. This shows Reform H.Q that people with established reputations are prepared to put their necks on the line for you and so, even if you yourself have a bit of ‘History’, they will be reassured that any cancellation attempt won’t be a one-sided affair.
I don’t think it even needs to be said that alongside this two pronged offensive, you have to minimally involve yourself in the politics of your seat. This doesn’t have to be arduous. I recommend doing whatever you do now in politics but simply focused on the issues in your constituency for a period of seven months. If you are a writer, write about the local issues. If you make videos, focus them on local complaints. ‘Local issues’ is perhaps the wrong word, you can and should address big national issues like migrant hotels but simply set the scene in your constituency. If you are, as I imagine most reading this will be, primarily a social media personality, you do not have to stop doing that but ought to consider how to re-locate your engagement pipeline so that local people see it. You must infiltrate the local F.B groups, local crime report pages, instagram or establish some sort of conveyor belt whereby X. content reaches these places. The holy grail, of course, are local Whatsapp groups.
Once you have charmed a local association (the sign of this is when someone there informally opines that you should be an M.P) the trickiest part is leveraging that into selection. How this will work depends heavily upon how Reform decides to select their candidates 2027-28. If, as last year, it is an open application form submitted online; I’d recommend getting the now docile local branch to sign a declaration of endorsement to be attached alongside your application (+video of celebrity endorsement). If, as I suspect is more likely, the application process is more shadowy and appointment-based; this requires greater cunning.
If you announce too early, it will look like you are trying to stage a coup and frighten H.Q. If you play by the system for too long, an unpopular candidate can be sprung on the constituency weeks before the election campaign. A simple public declaration by a local branch that [your name here] is our preferred candidate, and that the other proposed names will all disappoint activists, followed by a polite letter-writing campaign to H.Q cannot go entirely awry. The key is that somebody else has to endorse you. A good rule to follow in life is that it is harder to stop something from happening than to start one, if you already begin, very subtle, campaigning in your chosen seat; with a string of publicity stunts (bins, bogs, hotels, heckling Labour M.Ps/Councillors etc.) it will be harder for Reform H.Q to announce that, actually, Marie Tory-Singh will be representing Dagenham thank you very much. Once you have the confidence of the local association you must, essentially, act like you are already the candidate.
Your main opponents will fall into three categories. 1. Politics nerds who became Reform councillors in 2025 and now want to jump into Parliament. I suggest a Machiavellian route for dealing with these people which is to vigilantly monitor their social media presence until they say something a bit controversial (if they’re Reform they will) and then saving it for later. If you want to be extra-Machiavellian, create a fake right-wing slop account, follow them and engage them in DMs until they are prompted to drop “the Socialism of Fools.” 2. Ex-Tory or establishment figures drafted in by HQ. For this opponent the strategy is the opposite, trawl their social media on Wayback to find anything attacking Farage, pro-trans or pro-immigration (last one is actually overrated; they’re being picked precisely because they seem bland — personal attacks on Nigel are the best) and leak it to local Tories/Homeland party twitter people desperate to posture as to the Right of Reform. Then get your local allies, which you should have by now, to contact H.Q saying they don’t believe they can win with this candidate. 3. UKIP veterans, if you have picked your seat correctly, these will be thin on the ground and should be charmed into giving way to someone younger rather than attacked. 4. Local celebrities. You are sort of screwed if they pick this one tbh. Imagine running against Basil Brush in Chester. It’d be a washout.
Needless to say, the moment you select your seat you should be creating a database of every potential challenger: read, all current Reform councillors, any ex-Mayor/M.P/Lord Lieutenant whatever, anyone who has been on T.V from the area with vaguely ‘right wing’ views.
Basically, the key is to make Reform think it will be easier to just accept your candidacy than try and appoint a new one but, and this is crucial, without giving away a hint of ambition or disloyalty. You must not even threaten to run an independent campaign, never criticise Nigel, Zia, Tice or anyone else and let other people run personal attacks on any challengers within the party. You’re trying to tell Reform H.Q that you are doing them a favour by running in this desperate seat. On that point, if you are lucky enough to be in a position to solicit independent donations, it cannot hurt to suggest you will be able to finance a round percentage of your campaign independently. Reform are rich atm and the Lowe saga might’ve frightened H.Q away from buccaneers but it cannot be entirely unappreciated.
Once you are selected, winning the election itself is the easy part. 10 years ago, you’d be advised to create your own vote-tracking software but it is likely that, in 2025, Reform already have a variant of this. One area for innovation in this, especially if you’re in a marginal seat, is integrating the ethnic data from the census into existing software: i.e; you can find a breakdown of languages spoken in a household by street and duly put out a version of the message tailored for different groups. When I was idly speculating about giving Zarah Sultana a run for her money, in the name of North London values; I found at least 10 people willing to campaign for me. At the time I had about 1,000 followers on X. (Alas, Woke crashed Bitcoin and sent my financial situation spiralling back towards poverty). 10 people, in the context of a small constituency, is a lot of ground covered. Leverage any following you have, whether through x. or subscribers, into boots on the ground. Get your irl friends and family to campaign for you as well. You want to appoint the most competent person you know as a general manager so that, whenever you want something done, you have one person you can call.
Needless to say, none of this has been written as a statement of intent on my part. When the Meritocracy arrives on the scene, it shall enfold its wings like a great eagle and swathe all below in the shadow of their triviality. Until this point, politics is irrelevant to me. If I had the money, I could stand in Clacton and beat Farage himself hands down, no refunds, without breaking a sweat. This is simply impartial advice to ensure some talented people can take advantage of a future Reform victory.