Centre stage Reform UK Birmingham conference promises fireworks

Reform UK's party conference will last barely more than 30 hours this weekend, but its rivals fear the glitz and political noise are going to be hard for them to beat. "We're the only party conference to have our own pyrotechnics budget," says one Reform insider with pride.

- Rowena Mason Ben Quinn Peter Walker

The party says more than 12,000 people are scheduled to attend tomorrow and Saturday, with hundreds of businesses - from Heathrow to TikTok and JCB - turning up to get a taste of the political atmosphere around the UK's poll leaders.

In a sign of how the political landscape has shifted, with Nigel Farage's party no longer on the fringes, two big-name former Tory cabinet ministers will also be in attendance - Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Gove, once an architect of David Cameron's government and now the editor of the Spectator, will interview Reform's efficiency chief, Zia Yusuf.

Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, has repeatedly ruled out joining Reform after losing his seat as a Tory MP. But he is to join a panel titled "How can Reform succeed in office? Saving British democracy and lessons from Trump" alongside the rightwing historian David Starkey.

Farage will address his supporters inside Birmingham's huge National Exhibition Centre tomorrow at 4pm, preceded by a 10-minute speech from a mystery special guest. The Conservatives fear a big-name defection but Reform watchers also note that Farage does not like to be outshone at his own events.

Before the conference, Farage was in the US demonstrating his embrace of more openly hard-right rhetoric by calling the influence of Islam in the UK "literally catastrophe" and praising Donald Trump's mass round-up of migrants in the US.