How conference season was turned into the Farage show

When Nigel Farage kicked off the party conference season for Reform in Birmingham, he joked to party members: “It’s not all about me.” He pointed to a line of 11 Reform UK football shirts with the names of leading party members on them, insisting “we are not a one-man band, we are a full team.”

- DAVID MADDOX POLITICAL EDITOR

Except when it came to buying one of those shirts, the only one available was the one with Farage’s name on the back. But with Farage propelling Reform to new heights in the polls, the traditional main political parties have taken it all to heart and decided that their conferences should be about them too.

In Manchester for a sparse Tory conference drawing little interest, it appears that Kemi Badenoch has decided to do her personal Reform tribute act by aping Farage’s policies.