If Reform were deliberately staging the worst publicity stunt of the year…
If Reform were deliberately staging the worst publicity stunt of the year, squatting rights for Robert Jenrick would be inspired. Not a mistake. Not a wobble. A full-blooded, two-footed own goal, studs up, VAR waived. Think Jamie Carragher in 1999 two own goals against Manchester United then earnestly explaining to the camera that it was actually about “character”.
Reform’s entire pitch rests on one simple promise: we are not part of the Westminster Punch and Judy show. We’re here to burn the political class down, not quietly rejoin it through the staff entrance. And then, with all the restraint of a Traitors producer smelling a ratings spike, it signs up Robert Jenrick: the human embodiment of a focus-grouped apology. Robert Jenrick didn’t jump ship like a brave dissident. He changed vessels like a man spotting a buffet queue moving faster next door.
Reform isn’t “building a broader tent”. It’s dragging the old circus back inside and acting shocked when it smells of elephant dung and flop sweat.
From a PR perspective, it’s not bold. Reform didn’t recruit a fresh idea it mobilised a timeline problem. Every speech now comes with footnotes. Every claim to “new politics” echoes against archived footage. Jenrick mocked Farage. Farage mocked Jenrick. Both did so loudly, publicly, and with the confidence of men who assumed the internet would politely forget. The internet remembers. The public remembers. Westminster, as ever, assumes short-term memory loss and long-term amnesia.
And that’s the real disgrace here, not pragmatism (voters understand that perfectly well), but the belief that nobody will notice the hypocrisy. That the audience is thick. That the Great British public endlessly patronised, endlessly “segmented”, endlessly treated like a focus group in a dying ad agency can be dazzled by a costume change and a fresh press release.
This is party politics as soap opera. Yesterday’s villain is today’s visionary. No explanation. Just hope everyone’s doom-scrolling something else.
The strongest message Reform could have sent was brutally simple:
We don’t take your rejects.
We don’t recycle your faces.
No defectors. No career salvage operations. New people. Unknowns. Humans without apology tours, archived quotes, or unexploded ordnance sitting in the cloud waiting to detonate.
Westminster still doesn’t understand the audience. The truth is worse: the audience understands Westminster. Voters know an own goal when they see one. They know when it’s happened twice. And they know when they’re being asked to forget something they remember perfectly well.
Every recycled face confirms what people already suspect: the system isn’t broken, it’s showbiz with worse hair and limited talent.
So the crowd doesn’t even bother getting angry. It switches off. Because when a party promises to smash the old circus and then wheels the clowns back into the ring, the audience doesn’t feel outraged.
It feels insulted.
(20) Activity | Mark Borkowski | LinkedIn