Richard Tice sets out Reform UK's pitch to London

The party conference season is underway - the annual gatherings of political party activists began on Friday with Reform UK in Birmingham.

BBC London's political editor Karl Mercer is sitting down with leaders and other senior party figures to discuss some of the key issues facing the capital and what their party might do to tackle them.

Earlier this week he spoke to Reform UK's deputy leader Richard Tice MP and asked about their performance in May's local elections and the party's prospects in London at the next mayoral election in 2028.

This interview was recorded before reports about donations to the party were published on Friday.

Karl Mercer: Do you think your party lived up to expectations in May's local elections?

Richard Tice: We had a great success in Havering. London is politically, it's very diverse. It's not one of our strongest areas, but we're making great progress.

We've got a fantastic candidate to be the next mayor of London and we keep pushing forward. And where we're not convincing people, we've just got to work harder. That's the nature of democracy.

Karl Mercer: Is London's diversity an issue for you in that you don't appeal to people?

Richard Tice: No, I think the challenge for us is that London has got a significant, what I would call, Islington-style middle-class socialism.

And that's not our politics, that's just the nature of it. We can't, in a sense, we're not going to please everybody.

"But in the outer parts of London, you look at the Haverings of this world, we did very well in south east London, and, sure, everybody's scrapping around for every vote that's the nature of it.

Karl Mercer: You say you're kind of writing off that middle part of London, the middle classes, you're writing off, maybe this is more challenging, but that whole kind of messaging of 'we'll do well in the outer boroughs'.

'We'll do well in Croydon' - you launched in Croydon. 'We're going to do well in Bexley. We're going to do well in Bromley'.

Richard Tice: And from a standing start, we did do well. Obviously, we'd love to win more. We'd love to win more. But you know, in terms of the growth of our votes, fantastic.

Karl Mercer: You've now got nearly 80 councillors in London out of 1800, you are the fifth party in London by a distance. The next closest to you are the Lib Dems, 250, something like that.

Richard Tice: Proves my point that it's, you know, five parties competing hard for every vote. But look about what we're doing elsewhere in the country, where we're literally dominating. That's just the nature of politics.

Karl Mercer: So, do you write off the capital city, this is not one for us?

Richard Tice: Just got to keep working harder and keep pushing out great policies.

We have got our conference this week, where we're setting out what we would achieve in the first 100 days and the pledges that we make around that I think will impress people.

And in a sense, the cost of living is the critical thing that is affecting everybody, whether in London or elsewhere in the UK.

We've got to bring down the bills and we're going to talk about issues in order to do that to make people better off.

Karl Mercer: One of the pledges you did make in Havering, well you did exceptionally well, won the first council and the first council ever in London, one of the pledges was we're going to look at Havering leaving London, Hexit they called it.

In his first speech as leader, Keith Prince, the new Reform (council) leader said 'I'm definitely not going to do that because it would cost the people of Havering too much money to do it'.

Richard Tice: Sometimes you look at the cost and you say 'I'd like to do this, but actually, is it a good use of money?' That's the nature of what people elect people to do.

Karl Mercer: But it's kind of a dishonest campaign.

Richard Tice: Far from it. We've campaigned on saving people money, and that's the key focus across all of our councils around the country, including under Keith's leadership in Havering.

And let's remember that Havering's finances, under the previous regime, a complete and utter disgraceful mess, and they've got a big job to sort that out and I'm confident that they will and onwards and upwards for them.

Karl Mercer: Is another issue for the party in London is that a lot of the people who are leading Reform in the capital are Tory retreads?

They are the people who left the Conservative Party who you roundly denounced when they were in it.

Richard Tice: We're a new party, so people have come from somewhere, whether they've come from no party, the Labour Party or the Conservative Party, that's the nature of it.

People, at the end of the day, no one can rely forever on someone's vote.

People lend their votes to parties at every election. The fact that we stood everywhere in London, 1800 seats, I'm very proud of that.

I think it's absolutely fantastic. And as I say, we've won our first council. There's more to do. We've got in two years, year-and-a-half's time, the mayor election.

"That's going to be a very, very competitive election.

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