Reform UK will be following the Trump model of governance should they win

One session at Reform’s conference was titled “Saving British democracy and lessons from Trump”

Shaun Roberts, Director of Campaigns, Unlock Democracy

The last decade in British politics is the most turbulent we’ve seen in our lifetimes. Yet in the last 6 months, things have changed even more dramatically with the rise of Reform UK.

There has never been a period this long in polling history where a party that’s not Labour or the Conservatives has led the polls. Reform UK has been ahead in most polls since February and every one since April. They obliterated both Labour and the Conservatives in the May elections. They are the bookmakers’ favourites to win the next election and Nigel Farage is favourite to be the next prime Minister. 

Everyone can agree that it is not business as usual. As elections guru, Sir John Curtice, commented recently, “Everything has changed.”

Reform UK’s Annual Conference at the Birmingham NEC earlier this month was a glitzy and very well attended event. Anyone attending would have left with the conclusion that Reform’s leadership are very serious about changing Britain.

Much of Reform’s policy platform is currently being revisited, with Zia Yousef appointed by Nigel Farage at the Conference to overhaul it. 

But one thing is crystal clear from everything Reform UK said: an incoming Reform UK Government would be far more like Trump’s administration, than what we’ve seen from the UK Labour Government, with an intense focus on speed of action. 

Trump 2.0 came in with a blizzard of Executive Orders to immediately begin work to put his agenda into action. He’s barely let up in six months – sacking anyone whom he sees as threatening his agenda, removing independent oversight, taking federal control of everything he can. The courts have pulled him back very occasionally, but it’s clear Trump has taken unprecedented power as President, and is using it. 

Meanwhile, nearly 14 months since the General Election, large parts of Labour’s legislation announced in the King’s Speech is still very gradually making its way through Parliament. The parliamentary session looks set to be lengthened well into 2026 to allow time for the Government’s legislation set out in its first King’s Speech to get through.

A clear example of the desultory speed our democracy is moving is the incredibly simple Bill to remove hereditary peers from the House of Lords. As we write this, after more than a year, it’s still not through Parliament, despite it being in Labour’s manifesto and one of the least radical changes to the House of Lords anyone could have put forward (essentially it completes the 1998 Lords reforms).

Whilst we would not suggest that President Trump’s methods should be a model for democracy anywhere, you also have to say that a functional democracy should move faster than this. Trump doesn’t even have the luxury of a huge majority in the Senate or the House of Representatives, in the way Labour does in the House of Commons.

In July 2024, UK voters clearly voted for change. Here in September 2025, very few voters see change happening quickly enough. And that brings us back to Reform UK who are clearly the main beneficiaries of public dissatisfaction right now. 

At the Reform UK Conference they were talking about appointing 500 Reform peers to ensure their legislation would face no opposition in the Lords. They were talking about the immediate repeal of human rights legislation, equalities legislation, net zero legislation and much more. Their view seems to be that any law or body that might restrict the Government’s power to act should be removed.

One session at the conference was titled “Saving British democracy and lessons from Trump” and one of the key speakers was former Conservative Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg. Rees-Mogg described his experience in Government of being blocked again and again by civil servants and the law. 

Reform UK Policy Chief Zia Yousef told the Conference that Elon Musk’s DOGE had failed because in the US, Congress controls the spending. He remarked that in the UK, that power all lies with the Prime Minister and Government as long as they have a majority. 

It’s clear that Reform UK will be following the Trump model of governance should they win power here. 

So where does this leave things? Unlock Democracy is a strictly non-party political organisation; we are on the side of people – who, in a democracy, should be the only ones dictating what happens. 

We are concerned about what a corner-cutting Trumpian approach would mean for democracy in the UK. But we also share people’s frustration with the glacial pace of change our democratic institutions seem to impose.

Now is the time to act – the Government could task the Modernisation Committee it set up a year ago (which so far has modernised very little) to bring forward urgent proposals to speed up a Westminster system that is simply not delivering and has barely changed in a century. 

It could start by considering areas of cross-party and public consensus and identifying ways to fasttrack legislation.  

If we can’t find a way out of this legislative quagmire and fail to tackle foot-dragging inertia,  the door will be left open for any chainsaw-wielding autocrat who sees guardrails as something to be smashed or ignored.