Sawt Falasteen - Farage grabs momentum, convenes hard-right Reform UK party

Farage -- who rebranded his Brexit Party as Reform in 2021 -- gathers his handful of MPs, local elected officials and members for two days in the central English city of Birmingham as the migration-fixated party surges in popularity.

Although the next general election is not due until 2029, Reform's wins in May local elections and its lead in most polls over the last six months has a growing number of people eyeing Farage as prime minister-in-waiting.

The sense that the party has the wind in its sails was fed further on Thursday when Nadine Dorries, a 68-year-old minister in the previous Conservative government, defected to Reform and declared her former party "dead".

"I am leading a political party that I think is going to win the next general election," Farage, a long-time ally of Donald Trump, told a crowd of the US president's officials and allies Wednesday in Washington.

In a welcome message penned to the thousands of members expected at their conference, Farage insisted Reform "has all the momentum".

That includes trebling its membership to nearly 240,000, winning five parliamentary seats -- though one MP has since been expelled from Reform's ranks over harassment claims -- and seizing control of 12 local authorities across England.

Enthused conference attendees can't wait.

"We're getting ourselves ready for government," Sophie Preston-Hall, 52, an entrepreneur and Reform branch chair in Thurrock, northeast of London, told AFP as she headed to Birmingham.

She predicted Farage becoming prime minister was "100 percent going to happen".

- 'Flocking to engage' -

Kings College London political scientist Anand Menon told AFP "it's a big conference for Reform".

Could Farage be prime minister? "It's a very long way away, but it's certainly possible," Menon said.

He noted polling showed many potential Reform voters "are slightly worried about the lack of competence".

The party must show it can "run a professional conference that looks like you're a potential governing party".

With Reform ascendant, hundreds of businesses will reportedly attend the conference, with big-name firms including Heathrow Airport, TikTok and JCB paying for a presence at the National Exhibition Centre.

Former party spokesman Gawain Towler said the expected corporate turnout shows it is "no longer the pariah it once was".

"Businesses, trade bodies, and even mainstream think tanks are flocking to engage with a party that, just a year ago, was a footnote in corporate strategies," he told AFP.

However, the bosses of Britain's biggest companies are staying away, instead dispatching public affairs representatives "to find out more about the party and its policies," according to the Financial Times.

Two high-profile former Tory Cabinet ministers, Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg, are both listed on the agenda.

And after numerous ex-Conservatives defected to Reform in recent years, speculation is rife that fresh recruits from its right-wing rival could be unveiled.

Farage will address the conference twice, with his "leader's address" slated for 4:10 pm (1510 GMT) Friday to be preceded by a mystery "special guest".

He will conclude the gathering with "closing remarks" Saturday.

- Immigration focus -

Farage, 61, an ex-commodities trader, has been ever-present in UK politics over recent decades, but previously as a fringe Eurosceptic rabble-rouser.

A European parliamentarian from 1999 until the 2016 Brexit vote triggered Britain's departure from the bloc four years later, Farage has since transformed himself into an agenda-setting hard-right figurehead.

Winning election to parliament -– at the eighth attempt -- in July 2024, he has seized on the divisive issue of immigration to bolster Reform's fortunes.

After 14 years of Conservative rule, during which both legal and irregular immigration reached record highs, his Trump-style message of mass deportations and ditching human rights treaties appears to resonate.

Farage has also assailed centre-left Labour's handling of the issue since it took office last year.

Both those rival parties hold their annual conferences in the coming weeks.

Farage was in the Oval Office Wednesday after appearing at Congress to decry alleged curbs on free speech in Britain under Labour, posing for a picture with the American president.

He has even begun using Trump's trademark slogan to claim he will "make Britain great again".

Menon noted some peril in that strategy, arguing he "doesn't want to associate himself too closely" with Trump, who is "very unpopular" in Britain.

M.Qasim--SF-PST