Reform secures the money bags before Christmas, Lee Anderson gets baited by a Twitter bot, and Pat McFadden channels his inner tech bro.
Read all about it in this week's Who's Top Who's Not!
Top: Reform Party Coffers
The Reform Party continues to build momentum as they secured Billionaire Nick Candy’s pledge to donate a “seven-figure” sum to Reform UK after resigning his Conservative Party membership to become Nigel Farage’s new treasurer. Candy later told GB News he would raise “more than £40 million”, with the broadcaster reporting he would donate £1 million in the coming weeks.
The Conservatives received further blows as former Conservative MP Aiden Burley joined Reform UK. Additionally, Suella Braverman’s husband Rael Braverman has started campaigning for Reform.
Labour is not in the clear either. You don’t have to be an expert to see that the Labour government has had a rough start. Keir Starmer’s approval rates plummet, and Nigel Farage’s are on the rise. It has been less than five months since Sir Keir Starmer’s landslide election victory, and already, two-thirds of Britons say they feel worse off. It is clear that the UK is moving further into elastic multi-party politics, and Reform is gaining ground.
Middle-ranking: Tech bro Pat McFadden MP
Pat McFadden may not look like your typical tech bro but he channelled his inner Californian this week, giving a speech on the need for civil service reform.
In particular, McFadden said that the state had to be “more like a start-up” as he launched a £100 million fund to pioneer public service reform and deliver the Government’s Plan for Change.
This speech coincided with multiple labour briefings that ‘Dominic Cummings was right’ about the inertia of the civil service ‘blob’ and followed Starmer’s speech last week that “too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”.
Clearly, Labour is still finding its feet in government and the pace of change can be disappointingly slow. But McFadden’s speech perhaps shows that Labour wants to reform the Whitehall machine to make the sizable policy change it wants to enact. But the proof will be in the (Christmas) pudding.
Bottom: Lee Anderson MP
Lee Anderson was not enjoying the same Reform Party glory this week as he spent it being mocked online for his bizarre post comparing World War One’s most brutal battle with periods, pregnancy and menopause.
It was in response to a Twitter/X user who wrote: "Women deal with periods, pregnancy, and menopause. What do men have to deal with?" The former Tory deputy chairman, who is now Nigel Farage's chief whip, responded to a tweet, who was born in 1967, wrote: "Try the Battle of the Somme."
The cherry on top was finding the tweet was from a blue tick bot account farming engagement with rage bait posts. Perhaps Pat McFadden is not the only one who needs to act more like a start-up.