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Dear John,

Here’s a question for you: what do you call it when politicians who crashed the economy, dodged tax questions, and failed at their jobs get handed a new platform and a fresh start?

In any functioning system, you’d call it a scandal. But in British politics, it’s just Reform UK’s recruitment strategy.

Nadhim Zahawi. Robert Jenrick. And we hear rumours of Liz Truss too. Nigel Farage has spent a decade telling us he’s nothing like the Westminster establishment. Yet now he’s building his shadow cabinet from its wreckage.

Best case: this is rank hypocrisy. Worst: it’s the clearest possible indication of how broken our democracy actually is (and why it’s essential we fix it quickly).

Just pause for a moment and think about what’s happening here. Zahawi left government under a cloud over his tax affairs. Jenrick spent years in a government that promised to stop the boats, cut waiting lists, and fix social care - then delivered none of that. Truss’s mini-budget cost families thousands in higher mortgage payments. In a proper democracy, records like that would end political careers.

But not here. Here they get a rebrand and they’re back vying for positions of power over us.

This is what happens when there are no real consequences in politics. When we have a system that ensures serious failure is not a one way ticket to the job centre (as it would be for everyone else). When the only accountability that matters is to the new patron willing to bankroll your comeback.

Remember, Farage’s party doesn’t run on grassroots donations. It runs on the largesse of a handful of very wealthy backers whose contributions dwarf what ordinary supporters could ever provide. And that kind of backer will always want a return on their investment. They want establishment credibility. They want recognisable faces who can go on TV and give the impression of being a government-in-waiting.

So the “people’s party” ends up recruiting the exact politicians responsible for the distrust and anger that Farage feeds on. Even if he really wanted to be the outsider genuinely challenging the establishment - and I’m not sure he really does - his big-money buddies won’t let him.

And there’s the problem: it doesn’t matter what the people want, it doesn’t even matter what the leader of a challenger party wants. Our broken democracy - with its inadequate finance rules - can’t prevent the will of the people being bulldozed by the wealthy and well-connected.

Here’s the ugly truth about British politics: our system doesn’t allow for genuine outsiders. FPTP pushes everything into the binary. You’re either a protest movement that never wins, or you start absorbing the establishment you claim to oppose. There’s no third option.

Farage has made his choice. His objective isn’t to change the system; it’s to inherit it…with all the same people, funded by all the same forces, playing by all the same rules. And if you have the all the same people, doing all the same things, in exactly the same way…why on earth would you think you’re ever going to see anything but the same old outcomes?

At least some of the anger behind Farage’s rise in recent years is justified. People genuinely want something different from politics. But they’re not going to get it from a party that’s become a recycling centre for ex-ministers who’ve already failed them before.

Two things we’re fighting for would change this dynamic completely:

Political Finance Reform: Real transparency. Lower reporting thresholds. Limits on how much any single donor can give. Take the big money - and the dark money - out of politics and parties have to build genuine grassroots support instead of courting billionaires.

A National Commission on Electoral Reform: An independent body to get to the bottom of what’s wrong with the system we currently use to elect our politicians and identifying one that is fairer and that ensures the will of the people can be properly represented where the big decisions are made - the House of Commons.

These aren’t abstract constitutional concerns. They’re the difference between a politics that recycles failure and one that’s genuinely accountable to you.

We’ll keep exposing these contradictions and we’ll keep fighting to fix the broken political machine that is keeping us in this hole.

Thank you for being part of that fight.

Mark Kieran
CEO, Open Britain

P.S. If you’d like to help power the pushback - and you’re in a position to do so - please consider chipping in today to support our work. Thank you!
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