Getting better? The think-tank fuelling Farage’s ‘machine for government’

Last week, the voters of Gorton and Denton rejected the GB News presenter put up for election by Reform UK. But Nigel Farage’s plan to make Britain nasty again still goes on.

Farage unveiled a frontbench team full of Tory failures earlier this month, saying he was creating “a machine for government”. And the man primed to put fuel in the tank is James Orr, an anti-abortion Cambridge theologian who serves as Reform’s head of policy and used to chair an advisory board for the rightwing think-tank Centre for a Better Britain (CFABB).

CFABB told Good Law Project they are “an independent think-tank”, and the party likewise insists that it is “not associated with any think-tanks”, but this “independent” outfit was founded last year by Reform’s former chief operating officer Jonthan Brown alongside two of party’s biggest donors. The Electoral Commission confirmed to Good Law Project that they are currently assessing whether CFABB have broken electoral law. While think-tanks are not generally required to report their funding to the elections watchdog, declarations are required from organisations that campaign alongside political parties. Reform, in turn, must disclose any services it receives for free from think-tanks in support of its political activities and, like all political parties, cannot accept foreign donations.

The Financial Times reported last year that the think-tank has already raised more than £1m from UK donors and has registered a branch in the US to help raise money from “MAGA, tech, religious conservatives”.

Orr told the BBC that the challenge for any party wanting to be “government ready” is “Can you write your first king’s speech? What is the first budget going to look like?” and sang the praises of the Heritage Foundation – a rightwing think-tank in the US which attacks abortion and protest rights, as well as action on the climate crisis.

During Joe Biden’s presidency, the Heritage Foundation created a plan for Donald Trump’s second term called Project 2025. This 900-page blueprint for power called for sweeping changes: bringing federal bureaucracy under the president’s control, firing government workers and replacing them with loyalists, scaling back environmental programmes and tightening policy on abortion and immigration.

On the campaign trail, Trump claimed to “know nothing” about it. But as soon as he reached the White House, Trump started following the plan. He fired more than 300,000 federal employees, including people involved in prosecuting January 6 rioters, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and former FBI director James Comey’s daughter. He cancelled renewable energy projects, stopped research into the climate crisis and revoked the landmark ruling that greenhouse gases are a danger to public health. He removed access to abortion care and has launched a surge in immigration enforcement that has seen 45 lives lost to ICE since 2025.

Here in the UK, CFABB is mapping out similar territory. In November they argued the government should cut more than 100,000 civil service jobs. Documents leaked to the Sunday Times show that the centre has already commissioned research “challenging” the narrative on environmental and social impact. Brown has said the country needs “radical changes” and cited both the Climate Change Act and Equalities Act as “obstacles”. And CFABB papers have called on “a new government” to leave the European Convention on Human Rights and repeal the Human Rights Act in order to speed up deportations of asylum seekers whose claims have been rejected.

Reform has embraced these recommendations with enthusiasm, announcing policies to slash the civil service, boost fossil fuels, repeal the Equality Act, scrap the Human Rights Act, leave the European Convention on Human Rights and deport 600,000 migrants over five years.

According to Good Law Project campaign manager Charlene Pink, it’s an alarming prospect.

“Centre for a Better Britain is putting together a frightening blueprint for a Reform government,” Pink said. “People say it couldn’t happen here, but when someone tells you who they are and what they want to do, believe it the first time.”

When we asked CFABB about their US inspiration, they told us that they have “had engagement with the US”, but they believe the position here is “very different”. But last year Orr said that Reform should learn from Trump, who acted “very fast” to impose policies he knew would be unpopular. A new government will enjoy a “honeymoon period”, he added, so the first hundred days will be “absolutely vital to force the nasty cough medicine down the country’s throat”.

With Reform riding high in the polls, it’s becoming clearer just how difficult Orr’s prescription for the UK will be to choke down.