My brush with Reform (and Liz Truss)

A clip of a teenage Liz Truss appeared this week in which the current Tory leadership candidate is seen addressing a Lib Dem conference.

It’s rather sweet and I don’t think the anti-monarchist views she held in 1994 should be held against her.

Nor does it bother me that she voted Remain because her commitment to making Brexit work seems genuine enough.

Sadly my store of Liz Truss tales and trivia is completely bare. The best I can come up with is that I once produced a magazine for a think tank she later worked for.

The magazine, like the think tank, was called Reform.

Reform (the think tank, not the more recent political party) was launched in 2002 by Nick Herbert and Andrew Haldenby to ‘challenge the idea that increasing public spending, and taxation, was the only way to improve public services’.

The first issue of Reform (the magazine) appeared that same year - in time, I think, for distribution at the main party conferences.

I’ve forgotten why I was approached to do it. I think Nick and Andrew must have seen copies of The Politico that I designed, edited and produced for Iain Dale’s Politico bookshop.

Or perhaps they liked the issues of Freedom Today that I edited and produced for The Freedom Association before I was sacked for being too liberal. (It’s a long story.)

Either way I was invited to meet them in Reform’s small but spotless Westminster office.

A week or two later I was commissioned to design and produce the first issue of the magazine (right) and they were sufficiently pleased with the outcome that they went on to publish further issues using my design template but without me.

We didn’t fall out - Nick and Andrew were far too nice for that - but there was a little tension, with Nick in particular. Andrew was the one who tried to smooth some occasionally ruffled feathers.

Did I get the wrong end of the stick at that first meeting? Perhaps.

I thought I had been asked to edit and produce the magazine in the same way I edited and produced The Politico, with Iain Dale happy for me to make most of the editorial decisions before I delivered the final product.

Likewise Freedom Today, although that happy arrangement - which began under the late great Norris McWhirter - ended after two years when The Freedom Association’s new chairman, former Conservative MP Christopher Gill, objected to the direction I was taking the magazine.

The final straw, after I had published a series of articles about drugs and other libertarian issues he didn’t much care for, was an interview with a female boxer - a student at Cambridge - who we featured on the cover.

The Mail on Sunday subsequently published an op ed in which I explained (at length!) why Gill had given me the boot. I didn’t keep a copy and it’s not online sadly because it was quite entertaining, if I say so myself.

But back to Reform.

Nick Herbert, I think, saw himself as both publisher and editor and I was merely the production guy. (When the magazine came out I was formally listed as managing editor.)

To be fair it was their magazine but I wasn’t used to working with so little editorial input so I wasn’t fussed (or surprised) when my services weren’t required for the next issue the following year.

As it happens Nick went on to become a Conservative MP (2005-2019) and government minister and is now in the House of Lords. I was surprised his ministerial career didn’t last longer than it did because he struck me as very competent and engaging.

Andrew succeeded him as director of Reform and ran the think tank for many years before stepping down in 2019.

Some time back I bumped into him at a Conservative party conference in Manchester. He recognised me and I greeted him like a long lost brother.

“James! Lovely to see you. How are you?”

Thanks to a slight facial resemblance I had confused him for journalist James Delingpole who had taken part in a Forest event at the Conservative conference the previous year.

Unfortunately it was only after we exchanged pleasantries and he walked away that I realised who I had been speaking to.

(Andrew, should you ever read this, please accept my humble apology.)

Btw, if you’re wondering how Liz Truss fits in to this story, she doesn’t.

It’s worth noting though that having been deputy director of Reform before she became an MP it’s clear that her views on taxation and public spending have been consistent for many years.

The only time our paths have ever crossed was at a party conference in Bournemouth (in 2007, I think) when we were setting up events in adjacent rooms - she for Reform, me for Forest.

Fifteen years later the person I saw hard at work in the Royal Bath Hotel is on the cusp on being elected leader of the Conservative Party and, by default, our next prime minister.

Fancy that.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

I imagine that she won't be any different to other leaders and the bullying of smokers and other lifestyle sinners in accordance with political lobby groups like ASH, posing as a public health charities, will continue.

However, I would not like to see Rishi as PM or leader of the Tories. I don't think betrayal for personal gain should be rewarded. If he stabbed Boris in the back after the opportunities he was given to rise through the ranks, imagine how he would treat the public who could be stupid enough to vote Tory with him as leader.

In my opinion, he simply isn't a man to be trusted and Liz Truss will blow whichever way the wind is pushed by lobby groups. Thanks to the selfishness and in fighting of these hypocritical Conservatives, I fear we will be condemned to a Lib/Lab alliance at the next election and run by people with the mentality and maturity of toddlers.

None of them want my vote as a smoker so I am inclined not to give it to any of them. Every vote should matter but clearly not when intolerance is the preferred method to eradicate certain groups from society.