Farage’s Reform gets serious on defense

LONDON — Defense and worries about Russia rank among the top concerns of British voters, but Reform UK has spent more than two years without a dedicated spokesperson and still has no detailed military policy. Without that, the right-wing party is on the back foot on policy to deter Moscow and has lacked a compelling alternative to the defense spending surge that is one of the Labour government’s biggest priorities. It has also encountered difficulties reaching out to the arms industry.

Now, Reform is moving to correct that. On Thursday, the party announced Angus MacIntyre as its new defense spokesperson. He will help the party develop a defense policy ahead of the next election.

“We want to come into government with a comprehensive program that we can deliver to the machine, rather than have a flimsy manifesto with a few headline commitments and ask them to work out how to deliver it,” a senior party official told POLITICO. Like others in this article, they were granted anonymity to discuss policy issues.