Inside the new Reform think tank with links to MAGA, chaired by a Cambridge academic.

Earlier this year, a new right-wing think tank was launched, the Centre for a Better Britain (CBB). The CBB is, ostensibly, an independent think tank, yet it just so happens to share the same London office building as the Reform party. What’s more, it is listed as a private limited company rather than a charity, per the think tank norm, to avoid constraints on political partiality.

The CBB is, in the words of the Financial Times, a “MAGA-style think tank”, with a focus on building policy for the Reform party and attracting US donors. Its creation seems to be just another footnote in the attempts of Farage and Reform to mimic Trump and the MAGA movement in both style and substance.

The think tank has wholeheartedly endorsed Trumpian policies surrounding cutting state services, reversing state funding of the NHS, an acute focus on culture war issues (such as DEI), and especially immigration. To be sure, Farage’s Trump impression was in full flow only yesterday, when he launched Reform’s “Operation Restoring Justice”, pledging to leave the ECHR and deport 288,000 people from the UK annually.

This new policy is dog whistle racism 101: dressed up as ‘protecting’ ethnic British women and girls from immigrants, while peddling the poisonous fiction that only minority immigrants commit sexual offences. It’s a straight lift from Trump’s “alien invaders” rhetoric, the same demagoguery that has carried him into the White House twice.

Now, this new populist pledge from Farage, with the backing of his new technocratic think tank, can mean only one thing: the starting gun for his Downing Street bid. While previously Reform have been dismissed as a racist rabble without the competence to properly vet their election candidates, this new party machine is attempting to professionalise the Reform outfit in its financial, administration and policy departments. It is a Trumpism rerun almost line for line: the dismissed crank on the fringe, written off by the press, rebranded as a ‘movement’ once business, policy gurus and religious conservatives spotted a meal ticket. That’s how MAGA stitched itself into America’s political fabric, and Farage is angling for the very same tailor.

This attempt for Reform and Farage to be taken seriously is best encapsulated by the new chairperson of the CBB – Cambridge academic James Orr. Orr is an associate professor of Philosophy of Religion in the Faculty of Divinity, yet he is also a figurehead of the national conservative movement in Britain, in many ways the poster boy of UK-based religious conservatism.

His influence and connections can be traced all the way to the Trump White House, especially the Vice President’s Office. Orr has a very close personal friendship with JD Vance. He is often nicknamed Vance’s “philosopher king” and his “British sherpa”, illustrating his unequivocal ideological influence on Vance, especially regarding national religious conservatism. Orr was in attendance at Vance’s already notorious barbecue in the Cotswolds recently, alongside Vance’s new unlikely bedfellow, social media star Tom Skinner, known for his no-look gravy pours, his love of a full English and his constant “Bosh” usage.

It comes as no surprise that Orr has come under fire for some of his more controversial views during his academic and public career, largely derived from his personal religious devotion. He resolutely stands against abortion under any circumstances, even rape, he insists that the January 6^th Capitol riots were “exaggerated” by the left-wing media, and his posts on X often refer to “disastrous demographic change” in the UK, eroding the strength of the nation through ethnic diversity.

However, Orr provides a new problem for those attempting to battle the rise of Reform and this fresh form of national conservatism in Britain. He acts as the intellectual spokesperson of the far-right, a movement which is often dismissed as reactionary and bigoted.

Yet Orr cannot be dismissed. He is a man of eloquence and intellectualism, and one with substantial influence in the worlds of politics, religion, academia and business. He is assured of the validity of his beliefs through his religious devotion, intellectual learning and a vehement patriotism.

He, and others like him in the UK, mark a radical break from traditional conservatism. He recently posted on X “good riddance” to “Old Right” figures like Daniel Ficklestein and Rory Stewart. His austere religious conservatism and the anti-immigrant rhetoric of Reform is a far cry from the “compassionate conservatism” of the Cameron one-nation Tories, a government which legalised same-sex marriage in 2013 and was strongly anti-Brexit.

Clearly, conservatism is moving away from the old public school “wet” Tories like Stewart and Cameron, and this shift is embodied by the stances of Orr, who on paper should be one of their ilk. Even Cameron’s old right-hand man George Osborne was rolling out the red carpet for Vance upon his recent visit to the UK, setting up a meeting including himself, Vance, Robert Jenrick, who has recently been competing to out-Farage Farage in his anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the owner of GB News and the Spectator (the perfect mesh of both Reform and Tory press), Sir Paul Marshall.

With Orr at the helm, links to big business in both the UK and the US (donor Andrew Reid sits on the CBB board) and a connection network reaching all the way back to the White House, it’s hard to argue that this new think tank will not be influential in making Reform a serious political outfit and competitor at the 2029 election. Its vision for the country would spell the end of the two-party consensus in Britain. Perhaps the writing is on the wall for the Conservative party as we know it.

Furthermore, the CBB has already outlined Reform’s key demographics to help them win in 2029. Their appointment of ex-YouTuber and social media influencer Archie Manners to lead its social media and communications team is a statement in itself, as Reform target the disillusioned young white male vote in Britain. They have already made significant inroads in this regard: the Reform Party has over 400,000 followers on TikTok, and Farage himself has over 1 million on the platform, which is used predominantly by younger voters. Their success in this department could be further enhanced by Labour’s decision to extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds, many of whom have clearly been won over by Farage’s populist style.

Vance, Orr and Farage’s recent friendship with the aforementioned Tom Skinner is another clear example of this targeted shift in approach, as they covet the votes of younger and working-class voters. Skinner has a whopping 709k (at the time of writing) followers on Instagram, including myself and 30 of my mutual friends on the platform. As someone from Skinner’s homeland of Essex, his hard-working market salesman image, as well as his love of beer, roast dinners and West Ham has made him something of a cultural icon here. For many, his lifestyle is idyllic, and encapsulates the aspirations of many fitting the ‘normal guy’ prototype.

Farage himself has leaned heavily into this demographic. He’s launched the first Reform UK pub in Blackpool, and recently a Reform UK football kit, again targeting that ‘normal bloke’ who loves football and beer. During his 2024 election campaign (as was the case during the Brexit campaign), many of Farage’s appearances were in boozers alongside local residents. It has come to the point where he has seemingly fooled the nation into thinking that he is a man of the people, representing the average, everyday man.

The public forget, perhaps, that he was publicly educated at Dulwich College, which has annual fees of around £20,000, was previously a commodities broker in London before politics, and someone who banked at Coutts before the scandal, the same bank used by the Royal Family.

Orr and the CBB are certainly buying into Reform and Farage’s appeal to the working man. In a recent interview with the BBC, Orr called Farage “surprisingly welfarist” on certain issues, citing his support for scrapping the two-child benefit cap, a divisive policy which the Labour government has refused to budge on.

Orr is even deploying this ‘average Joe’ tactic regarding Vance, insisting in his The Times interview that the Vice President is just a “normal guy who likes his beers”. At least Vance did actually come from humble origins in Ohio, as outlined in his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, unlike the son of a stockbroker Mr Farage.

All of this spells out, in block capitals, the demographic Reform and its pet think tank, the CBB, are gunning for. The sales pitch is social conservatism dressed up with just enough working-class handouts to woo the so-called “everyday man.” It’s a neat sleight of hand, banking on the Tories’ historic flop, from Cameron’s austerity axe through to Truss’s economic demolition derby, to sell themselves as the lads who’ll finally look after the punters.

Reform aims to penetrate traditionally left-leaning economically communities, just as Farage did with the fall of the “Red Wall” during the Brexit referendum in 2016. They are looking to win support from voters who are worried about the national identity of their country with mass immigration and who are tired of “woke” culture. This is the exact strategy of the MAGA movement in both 2016 and 2024, with the Republican Party securing an unprecedented triumph among “blue-collar” working-class voters.

This, then, looks like Reform’s chosen route to power, and the CBB is the hired muscle helping them kick the door in. The brains of Orr, with his policy drafts and spreadsheets, are the missing piece Farage needs. With a think tank at his back, Reform could morph from pub-bore protest vote into a part with a plan for running the country.

The blueprint is straight off the MAGA-Brexit copier: rile up the base, gift wrap it in flag-and-faith and enjoy being written off by the press. Suddenly, the once laughable prospect of JC Vance in the Oval Office and Farage in Number 10 doesn’t seem so far-fetched, with Reform riding high in the polls.

That would give the ‘special relationship’ a whole new twist: less transatlantic diplomacy, more holy alliance, a nationalist-Christian axis set on kicking the legs out from under secular democracy itself.