Reporting the Reform UK 2025 Conference from Chris Mason BBC to actual journalism
The BBC’s political correspondent Chris Mason’s report of the 2025 Reform UK conference held at the Birmingham NEC earlier in September marked him out as a Farage Fanboy. So much so that a satirical take on it made it into the pages of Private Eye
Chris Mason: Reform conference shows party’s growing ambition like never before – BBC News
Fortunately a more measured and informative account of the event has now appeared in the London Review of Books
Peter Geoghegan · Short Cuts: Reform’s Disaster Capitalism
Peter Geoghegan also provides the kind of thoughtful analysis that is well beyond Mason.
Hard to far right parties are in strong positions in France and Germany and in Government in Italy. Britain may have left the EU but the country is not exempt from that political mood.
Geoghegan argues that after the 2016 Brexit Referendum the final UK vote in EU elections in 2019 which saw the then Brexit Party top the poll by some distance was not an aberration. Farage did a deal with Boris Johnson at the December 2019 General Election that saw hundreds of Brexit candidates stand down. The right-wing mood did not however dissipate. It was reflected in the ejection of the Tories from Office in July 2024 with Labour potentially only the temporary recipient of the result.
Serious times require serious analysis and as a public service broadcaster the BBC is not being well served by Chris Mason.
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