Following his party’s success in last May’s local council elections, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage delivered a stark warning to public sector workers in his victory speech in Durham – those working on climate change, equality and diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives or simply working from home needed to “seek alternative careers very, very quickly”. With no legal powers to back up this threat, it was a performative act, but a very revealing one.
Reform UK’s quiet transatlantic alliance
In December 2024, a company called Resolute 1850 Ltd was incorporated in the UK, followed by a think-tank of the same name, later re-titled the Centre for a Better Britain (CFABB).
To understand just how close the links are with Donald Trump’s team, you need look no further than the chair of its advisory board, James Orr. Orr is the UK chairman of the ultra-conservative Edmund Burke Foundation and an associate professor of religion at Cambridge University. He is considered to be an intellectual mentor to Vice-President JD Vance, who describes Orr as his ‘British sherpa’.
The CFABB seeks to use Reform, possibly in a pact with a Robert Jenrick-headed Tory party, to bring Project 2025-style policies to the UK. Project 2025 is a document which outlines some of the extreme policies of the current Trump presidency for which Vance wrote the foreword.
Tax-exempt fundraising bases have been established in Texas and Canada with funds from MAGA, American big-tech and the US religious right already pledged.
The CFABB aims to raise up to £25mn by 2029. For perspective, Labour raised more than all the other parties combined in 2024 – the sum was £9.5mn.
MAGA’s Project 2025 – bringing ‘Doge’ units to the UK
Farage’s threats to Durham’s council workers are straight out of the Project 2025 playbook and in line with his pre-election pledge to establish ‘Doge’ units modelled on Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, headed at the start of his presidency by Elon Musk. The newly elected Reform councils’ plan – like their American inspiration – is to slash council spending and target equality and diversity roles, net zero projects, and work from home arrangements.
Immediate efficiency audits were announced in May but as yet no results have been forthcoming. Meanwhile, across the UK in 2025 more than 30 councillors have been lost, expelled or suspended for – among other misdemeanours – racist posts, Hitler memes, assault, criminal damage and threats to kill the prime minister.
The CFABB aims to work closely with Reform to professionalise the party and help it to transform itself into a more successful operation. Clearly, it has some work to do.
Although Reform has denied ties with any think-tanks, it is understood that Nigel Farage and Richard Tice have met with the founders of CFABB, who are based at Millbank Tower, where Reform UK also have their headquarters.
A foreign blueprint for Reform policies in the UK
Though the think-tank has changed its name, the limited company Resolute 1850 still exists. The symbolism of the name cannot be understated. HMS Resolute was a British ship launched in 1850 which became trapped in the Arctic ice only to be later recovered by an American vessel. Its timbers were transformed into a huge 590kg desk, called the Resolute desk, which has been used by Presidents of the United States in the Oval Office ever since.
In a presentation document seen by The Financial Times, the initial aims of Resolute 1850 include:
- the reduction of state-funded services to shrink the public sector
- the opposition to EDI (also known as DEI) and net zero initiatives
- transitioning the NHS to a US-style insurance-based system.
The presentation document confirms the sourcing of donations from the American religious right, so promotion of socially conservative and religion-inspired policies, in particular those restricting abortion, are to be expected. As a taster, Vance singled out the UK in his Munich speech in February, citing buffer zones outside abortion clinics in the UK as evidence of repression of free speech.
Jonathan Brown, former CEO of Reform, a director of Resolute 1850 Ltd and now leader of the CFABB has stated that the plan is for a future right-wing government to rebalance the relationship between the government, the judiciary and the civil service, with the aim of weakening the authority of the latter two.
In other words, the separation of powers which is essential to the functioning of democratic governments will be up ended.
Data and technocracy to influence voters
The CFABB hopes to further its aims through a role in “broader policy development and testing”. It will support Reform MPs and personnel by briefing them on effective arguments and rebuttals to criticism. They also seek to change opinion around key issues and provide “technocratic competence”.
The think tank’s newly instated webpage declares that it will be: “Acting as a bridge for transatlantic dialogue, fostering collaboration and influencing decision-making in both Britain and the USA.”
Culture wars as a smokescreen
The document acknowledges that its instincts go against the needs of a base which relies on an administrative state and that culture wars have thus far proved to be a valuable tool to bypass inconvenient policy discussions.
The constant references to an invasion of “fighting age” men arriving on beaches in small boats, or an imagined “war on motorists” in the name of net zero, or transgender access to public toilets, have proved themselves to be a highly effective emotive entry gate to far right politics. These totems of the culture war obfuscate the prospect of voters signing away access to the very things they care about most, such as the NHS, clean air for their children to grow up in, cheaper energy bills, and even their own human rights.
Would the UK vote for this?
Money will be no problem for Reform, which is clearly hoping to ride the wave of Trump’s victory in the US and harness the support they have achieved to date to lead them on to a position of real power.
This support has often been a protest vote against the Conservatives and Labour, dismissed as a ‘uniparty’ by Reform supporters, who want drastic change. The irony is that Farage has held recent meetings with Liz Truss for policy advice and seems to be offering more of her catastrophic approach to the nation’s finances. The change Reform voters seek is unlikely to be offered by oligarchic American businessmen on the other side of the Atlantic and their servants in UK politics.
A scan of X accounts reveal some Reform voters to be driven by hate and susceptible to conspiracy theories, which has, on occasion, been reflected in the choice of some of their election candidates.
Many are electorally lost and genuinely hope that Reform will listen to working class communities, protect the NHS and workers’ rights, tackle the general lack of opportunity and the housing crisis.
When the TUC exposed Farage’s voting record in these areas, supporters in his constituency of Clacton were genuinely shocked.
It’s worth noting that one of Resolute 1850’s first initiatives was to oppose Labour’s house building plans, not because they are against building houses, but out of fear that the policy would prove popular among potential Reform supporters.
The US and UK have different priorities
As with MAGA in the States, Reform’s working-class base is economically far removed from its multi-millionaire leadership. A conflict of interests is sure to arise. Reform voters are more culturally right wing than economically so, and though culture wars can divert voters from pondering socio-economic factors for a while, it won’t last forever. To take one example, most Britons are proud of a welfare state that is largely absent in the US.
In addition to this, the British electorate are not attracted by ultra-religious messaging of the type long seen in the US. In the UK, church-goers are more likely to vote centre left or left than right, and a recent Ipsos poll shows 71% of Britons believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. We effectively abandoned the death penalty nearly 60 years ago and the tragedies in Hungerford and Dunblane put paid to any appetite for mass ownership of firearms.
The CFABB’s message will have to be adapted to the British electorate and the question as to how effective that will be once policies, not culture-wars, are under the spotlight?
Realpolitik
We live in threatening times. There is war in Europe against a dictator who Farage finds impossible to outright condemn. Britain had its ‘DOGE’ experience – namely austerity – under David Cameron and George Osborne’s tenure. It has been asset stripped and left financially stunted by the 2008 financial crisis, followed by 14 years of an ideological attack on the administrative state with Brexit and Covid thrown in.
People want less of that, not more of the same.
Increasingly the British people are feeling the need to return to familiar trading policies with close geographical neighbours who share a common history and the values we have always espoused. Key among these are the rule of law and a social market economy pitching growth alongside a safety net for its people. In line with this, post-Brexit Britain is once again seeking closer ties with the European Union. This, of course, is anathema to everything Farage represents.
On this point he is clearly at odds with the will of the people in 2025.
What does Britain represent?
In the face of a real Trump-style electoral threat in 2029, would British voters be more likely to follow in the path of Canada and Australia, or the US and Hungary?
A lot will happen between now and then and only time will tell.
In the meantime Trump’s echo will continue to reverberate in the UK and the people need to decide what kind of country they want Britain to be: Forward-thinking and allied to progressive western nations, or immobilised in the ice like HMS Resolute, waiting to be carved up and reformed into a piece of furniture where American presidents can place their feet.
Since initial publication, this article has been updated to reflect the development of Resolute 1850 into the Centre for a Better Britain (CFABB).
