Reform suspends Tim Montgomerie after Spectator interview

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0:35Noa Hoffman: Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots. I'm Noah Hoffman and I'm delighted today to be joined by James Heal and Tim Shipman. Now, lads, the two of you have inadvertently caused quite the storm in British right-wing politics today. James, can you catch our listeners us up on what the last 24 hours has entailed.

1:00Tim Shipman: Of course, at one o 'clock yesterday, we did an interview with Tim Montgomery, filmed interview. And in the course of the two hours or so before that interview went out on our YouTube and podcast channels, we understand that Tim Montgomery was suspended as a member of Reform UK. It seems from briefings this morning that he was suspended in light of the way in which he went about criticising elements of the party. Very much in the episode yesterday, he was spoken about Zia Yusuf, the former party chairman. He also made some points about Nigel Farage's leadership of the party, how the party's been handling various recent events.

1:31Tim Shipman: And that seems to very much be something that's annoyed senior figures in the party and flies in the face of Farage's dictum at last year's party conference that we should have disagreements, there should be disagreements in private. So you now have ended up with probably the most prominent member of the reform grassroots, if you want to call it that. Someone who's been a member since December 2024. Someone who, when he decided it was in effect, was then put on Twitter with Z, so if and Nigel Farage, big photo op, you see there's actually a suit, Montgomery's wearing a suit jacket it over a Manchester United football shirt.

1:58Tim Shipman: And that was very much how their haste to sort of show that they had captured the former

2:01James Heale: editor of Conservative Home. I'm not sure that indicates anything more than they've got an outpost in North London, but anyway.

2:07Tim Shipman: And I think that that very much tells us a lot about kind of reform, where they believe the sort of lines are in terms of criticising the leadership, how they respond to that kind of ecosystem of feedback, if you want to call it that. And obviously, Tim was appearing on our show talking about his planned new website, which is going to be 900 days. It seems like they couldn't even last sort of 900 minutes.

2:26James Heale: Now, and the interesting thing was, I mean, Tim Montgomery told us in that interview yesterday that when he contemplated changing sides, he said to Farage, do you really want me? Because I've a habit of criticising the leadership. And Farage said, well, you know, I'm surrounded by people who told me what I want to hear and it'd be useful to have some noises off. Well, not this loud and this off, I think it's fair to say. Look, I think if you go back and look at that interview, a lot of what he said, Tim often says stuff with great sort of verve and enthusiasm. But I think if you look at the words, they were actually, a lot of it was quite sensible.

2:59James Heale: The question is whether reform was sensible or not. Now, some of it, particularly the stuff about Zia Youssef, was quite pointed and I guess quite personal. But it is perceived by a lot of people in the party that Zia himself is causing issues by the tone in which he has adopted. But clearly the tone Tim Montgomery has adopted as well has gone down equally badly. And he no longer has, you know, the reform whip, as it were, even as a punter. He tells me he's going to fight that. Had a very, very brief conversation. He says he was told at about half past five yesterday afternoon that this was the case.

3:32James Heale: So if the decision was made earlier, they obviously didn't tell him immediately. So, you know, it would seem that what we talked to him about was not what caused him to lose his perch. but equally I think they knew this interview was taking place and they had seen what he had said on The World at One last week and some of the tweets that he had put out there as well. But it goes back to that time-honoured kind of question about Farage. Does he want criticism? He himself says the one thing that matters is loyalty and he prizes that above everything else. And if you look at some of the other Tories who've moved over, people like Robert Jenrick, they have gone out of their way not to whisper a word of criticism of Nigel Farage.

4:11James Heale: They know that that would be very bad news. And Tim Montgomery has a habit, you know, when he worked for Ian Duncan Smith, he was pretty loyal. And that was a disillusioning experience, I think, when the rest of the Tory party decided they didn't want Ian Duncan Smith. Tim Montgomery was one of the first four or five people who was trying to persuade Boris Johnson to become leader of the Conservative Party. But he withdrew his support later. And, you know, this has happened with reform. He said to us, you know, if the choice was reform or the Tories, he would stay with reform. and he thinks it's capable of reaching voters that the Conservative Party cannot reach.

4:43James Heale: But equally, we'd be lying if we said that there aren't, within reform, some concerns that the ability to maximise their vote share, the ability to go from this remarkable insurgency into a party of government is still a very considerable work in progress.

4:59Tim Shipman: Yeah, I think this episode reveals a couple of other things, as well as, as I say, the contours and lines of where reform believes criticism should be drawn. The first is about the tensions that very much exist within reform, the frustrations, the sense of things not going terribly well. And this has been revealed certainly by the messages I've received in response to that interview with Tim. I think there is some online criticism suggesting that Tim Montgomery was somehow the source of all the kind of discontent, all the briefings around his quiet, all the insider, all of those. And that is very much not the case.

5:28James Heale: No, I mean, that is hoary old bollocks, I would say.

5:31Tim Shipman: But that is a narrative that is taking place online.

5:33James Heale: I mean, clearly, I mean, I think if you go back and look carefully at what Tim Montgomery said, the story at the weekend saying that Farage had fallen out of love with Zia, he said that that was not him, brackets, on this occasion. So he clearly is as good as admitting that some of that has come from him. But the only contact I've had with him, post some of his tweets, I messaged him last week and we had a very brief conversation and suggested that he came on and did an interview, which is what we've done. every other word of criticism I've heard about Zia Yusuf or about some of the internal issues has come from somebody else.

6:07James Heale: My WhatsApps are not groaning with them, but there's certainly a decent number of people who are not Tim Montgomery who share some of his views in some of those areas.

6:17Tim Shipman: And I would also make the point that this isn't criticism from left or right or wet versus hard line. Those don't really apply. Reform is a different ecosystem. And it's also things such as the handling of the five million gift, which is something Tim raised yesterday. people who disagree with him, didn't even want him in the party in 2024, have got in touch with me and said that Nigel has an issue with that. That clearly is an issue. If Nigel Farage is going out there and saying that we should have troops, you know, seven days a week campaigning, working hard, you know, old granny sending in£10, etc.

6:45Tim Shipman: And then at the same time has this. That is an issue for some people in the party because they see that that sort of sells short the message and it hurts them in the polling. That's what some people are saying to me. So I don't think the criticism is just about sort of, you know, issues around personalities between Zey Yusuf and Tim Montgomery. people across the party can acknowledge some of the things that are going on. The second point I was going to make about what this episode reveals, I think, is the strength of Zia Yusuf. And it has been quite striking to me, the amount of online support for Zia Yusuf on YouTube, on our comment section, on TikTok, on Twitter, which is all supporting Zia Yusuf.

7:15Tim Shipman: And I think that does show he is a formidable force. And that, I think, reminds some of the people in the party, not necessarily friends or allies or anyone associated with Tim Montgomery, but other people who don't like Zia Yusuf for all sorts of reasons. You've sacked a lot of people in 2024. He is a formidable force. And people who think that Farage will get rid of him willingly and easily have another thing coming. And speaking to one person very soon in the party today who said, you know, the stories have come on board. Need to get with the programme on that. Zee Yousif is going nowhere.

7:40James Heale: Totally. I mean, and to a degree, rightly so. He's very popular with the grassroots. He's very popular with a lot of people inside the party. He's clearly very able. A lot of the sort of what we would loosely term the professionalisation of the Reform Party happened when he was chairman. And he got the thing up and running, you know, almost like a sort of business startup, frankly. But that shouldn't mean that he's immune from criticism about the tone he takes, because if you want to play politics, you've got to acknowledge political reality. And I think while the substance on paper of what Zia Youssef is advocating is extremely popular with a section of society, it is not that popular with everybody.

8:19James Heale: and the tone he's taken has, as far as some people in reform are concerned, has alienated people who might have considered voting for them. And if you care about having the biggest possible party and potentially getting a toehold in government, then that matters. But yeah, at no point in this process, and reading those reports over the weekend, I raised my eyebrow and the eye beneath it rolled slightly. In a sense, it doesn't matter if Nigel Farage has fallen out of love with Zia Yusuf. He's not going to chuck him overboard. Can't afford to. There aren't actually that many seriously able people at the top of reform.

8:53James Heale: That's part of the issue. That's why when these personalities clash, it matters because there aren't 50 of them. You know, there are a dozen if we're being generous. And Zia Yusuf is clearly one of them. And it matters whether he's doing a good job and whether other people think he's doing a good job. So I think, you know, I've never thought he was going anywhere. And I've suspected that he won't change his approach. but that is undeniably going to create tensions going forward.

9:19Tim Shipman: I would also make the point that reform is currently doing candidate selection for financial constituencies. How many of those people that they constantly talk about in interviews, great talents, academics, lawyers, etc., looking at this will think, I want to get involved if they're worried they're going to jump all in their career and get thrown in the world.

9:34James Heale: Just don't forget, has been telling us for over a year, my shadow defence secretary will be a retired general. My shadow health secretary will be someone who once ran a hospital. He's been pushing this.

9:43Noa Hoffman: And the much mooted Labour defection that is yet to take place.

9:47James Heale: Well, indeed, we await with bated breath this great moment. Some of us wait with breath rather more bated than others. It's fair to say on that one. Trust me, I'll be calling you again, chaps, on that one.

9:59Tim Shipman: But I do think the point you make there as well about the talent brings us to the point of party management. And Farage was able to keep the party together at the beginning of the year when he had all those Tories joining. A lot of people have heard their original shareholding was being diluted down because he was able to say, look, we've got some people like Siobh Yusuf, we've got some people like Robert Jenrick. He has told me he is going to have an expansion of the shadow cabinet, probably two or three names in three weeks time. Those picks are crucial. It shows a sort of direction of where the party is going.

10:26Tim Shipman: They've had a sort of difficult 2026. I think they're going to have to have people from the kind of base route seen as authentic reformers, some people outside politics, as well as maybe one or two Tories who kind of missed out last time, I think. So I think all of that will be that testing for Raja's kind of political acumen, his hand on the ability and his sort of ability to knock heads together to the limits. I think next month's conference is going to be very different from last year's one. And you remember last year's one, there was the Alcim Mahatra speech on COVID and the King and Andrea Jenkins singing, which I rather enjoyed, but others did not.

10:54Tim Shipman: They're going to have to really make that conference, I think, in some people's eyes. It's going to be a bit of a make or break moment. And look at what's happened in the last 24 hours.

11:02James Heale: yes the Tim Montgomery thing in Westminster is causing a huge fuss and we at the Spectator are always happy to bring you interesting news but they also did a press conference yesterday morning about a welfare policy that topped the six o 'clock and the ten o 'clock news that got a load of publicity they had a press conference at which Robert Jenrick and Richard Tyson were not asked a single question about Nigel Farage and the five million pounds and that's the first time that's happened in a very very long time indeed and look what happens when you come up with an interesting radical, coherent controversial, undeniable but eye-catching policy you get a load of publicity, you start to look again like an operation with a bit of momentum and some ideas and while the Tim Montgomery thing to a degree is drowning that out inside the bubble, I think in terms of the public, most people in the public God bless them, have never heard of Tim Montgomery they certainly know all about the cost of welfare and I suspect we will look back and say that the more significant thing that happened this week was that Robert Jenrick announced a welfare policy.

12:02James Heale: So reform don't need to go around sort of staring, you know, crying into their beer and staring at the wall and glaring at each other. This just goes to show that if you get off your backsides and get on and announce a few things and start to set the agenda for good reasons, and you can quite quickly move on from all of that. So when I write about this this week, this is not a sort of litany of woe. There's some interesting stuff going on inside reform and there are those tensions about, you know, how much do you tether Nigel Farage, the wild stallion, to a horse and cart and try to pull that horse and cart through the gates of Downing Street?

12:42James Heale: Or do you let him just charge about, looking majestic, jumping over hedges to no greater avail, with Zia Youssef cheering him on? And, you know, frankly, it's been the tension in reforms from the start and it's even more pronounced than it was a year ago.

12:57Tim Shipman: I think that it's interesting in terms of reform. Political tensions exist in all political parties, but because it is a new party and structured in such a way that it has to learn the sort of best processes to navigate some of these conflicts and people still figure out where the lines are.

13:12James Heale: Well, it's also the most solo dominated party that any of us have seen in our life times. I mean, you know, this is not a flat structure. It's Nigel Farage at the top and then, you know, a triangle beneath him. He's not the point of the triangle. The triangle is well below. You know, Nigel Farage is the sort of spot halfway up the wall and the rest of them are, you know, well beneath him. And that's not the structure in pretty well every other party.

13:33Tim Shipman: And so therefore it makes it difficult how they kind of evolve that. And I think that over the next few months or so, it's going to be more and more of the things we saw in that Tim Montgomery interview, which are talks about should there be a chief of staff or not? Does he have the right people around him? And I'd be interested, given what Tim Montgomery said in that interview yesterday, some of those points he raised around polling, for instance, I wonder if anyone will put those to various Tory defectors like Mr. Jenrick, Ms. Braverman, etc., who would have seen both parties and have a frame of reference to compare it, whether they are willing to echo his criticisms or sort of dismiss them.

14:03Noa Hoffman: Well, we will be keeping you up to date with all the developments, not just in reform, but the Tories, Labour and everyone else as well on the Spectator website. Let's not forget the Liberal Democrats.

14:14James Heale: People love it when we talk about the Liberal Democrats. They're very unhappy as well.

14:18Noa Hoffman: I will humour them with some stories as well. Thank you, James. Thank you, Tim. And thank you for listening to Coffeehouse Shots.

14:33Thank you.

15:03half a million customers. So stop the guesswork and start scaling with the proven choice. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit bill.com slash proven to get started and grab a$150 gift card as a thank you. Terms and conditions apply. See offer page for details.