CONFERENCE SEASON: REFORM UK BURIES IT’S POLICY ON THE “GRIEF TAX”

In which 36,000 grieving families discover they’re less important than 40 million taxpayers, and Richard Tice invents a new way to make buy-to-let great again.

INTRODUCTION

It’s been quite the weekend in Birmingham.

Reform UK rolled into the NEC with big plans. Their first-ever Business Day. Champagne breakfasts with Nigel Farage. A French far-right leader as warm-up act. The full works.

What they got instead was a Channel 4 sting operation, two suspended aides, a police referral, and an Electoral Commission investigation.

However, buried beneath the “dodgy donations” headlines was something far more interesting for those of us who follow the tax game.

Reform UK just executed a complete U-turn on inheritance tax.

And almost nobody noticed.

THE GRIEF TAX OBITUARY

Cast your mind back to 2024.

Reform’s manifesto… sorry, “Contract with the People”… promised to cut what they had rebranded as the “Grief Tax” for estates under £2 million. They pledged to “immediately remove IHT from family farms and from family-run businesses.”

This was red meat. Pure, uncut, ideological protein for the property-owning classes who’d watched Labour’s “tractor tax” announcement with mounting horror.

Nigel Farage himself had made it personal. Standing in farmyards. Shaking hands with tweed. Promising that no family would have to sell the ancestral acres to pay the taxman.

Fast forward to September 2026.

Robert Jenrick – the former Conservative immigration minister who defected to Reform in January and is now their Treasury spokesman – took to the stage in Birmingham.

And what did he say about inheritance tax?

“It’s a bold chancellor that would say I’d rather privilege 36,000 families than 40 million taxpayers.”

Read that again.

Privilege 36,000 families.

This sounds like a policy funeral.

THE NUMBERS GAME

Jenrick’s framing is clever, if brutal.

Only around 36,000 estates pay inheritance tax each year. Meanwhile, 40 million people pay income tax.

If you’re going to cut taxes,  and you’ve already admitted you can’t afford the £90 billion splurge you promised in 2024, which group do you prioritise?

The farmers? The family business owners? The people whose parents had the good fortune to die owning appreciating assets?

Or the millions of workers watching their pay packets shrink as fiscal drag pulls more and more of them into higher tax bands?

Reform has chosen door number two.

The personal allowance (the amount you can earn before paying any income tax at all) has been frozen at £12,570 since 2021. Labour has frozen it until 2031. This is the longest stealth tax raid in modern British history.

Jenrick promised to raise it to £15,000 in Reform’s first 100 days in office. He even said he’d resign if he failed.

“No ifs, no buts, I’ll be gone.”

That’s more specific than anything Reform has ever committed to. It’s also, notably, £5,000 less than the £20,000 Farage was promising in 2024.

But it’s something.

And inheritance tax? The grief tax? The tractor tax attack line that was supposed to win rural England?

Gone. Deprioritised. Relegated to the “maybe someday” pile alongside corporation tax cuts and all the other 2024 promises that didn’t survive first contact with fiscal reality.

THE TRUSS EFFECT

To understand what’s happening here, you need to understand the ghost haunting Reform’s economic policy.

Her name is Liz.

At a fringe event with journalist Allister Heath, Jenrick was explicit: “We need to learn the lessons of Liz Truss, who basically went into a sweetie shop, took everything off the shelves and stuck it into a budget.”

“Quite rightly the markets reacted very negatively to that.”

This from a man who was a health minister in the Truss government. Who was there when the mini-budget detonated. Who watched mortgage rates spike and pension funds wobble and a Prime Minister outlasted by a lettuce.

Jenrick has clearly internalised the lesson.

You cannot promise £90 billion in tax cuts and expect the bond markets to shrug. You cannot run on vibes and expect gilt yields to stay calm.

So Reform is now attempting to position itself as the “party of fiscal responsibility.”

The insurgent outsiders who were going to smash the Treasury orthodoxy are now writing letters to gilt holders in London and New York, trying to “earn the trust of the markets.”

This is what happens when populist parties start thinking they might actually win.

THE WELFARE STATE IN RETREAT?

If taxes aren’t going down as much as promised, spending had better be.

And here, Reform delivered. Sort of.

They’ve pledged £80 billion in spending cuts over five years:

• £50 billion from welfare
• £10 billion from scrapping net zero programmes
• £8 billion from reducing the civil service
• £7.1 billion from capping overseas aid

Let’s pause on that welfare number.

Fifty billion pounds.

The entire welfare budget is around £353 billion, of which roughly half goes on state pensions. Reform has explicitly ruled out touching the state pension. So, the triple lock stays.

That leaves £175 billion or so in non-pension welfare. Reform wants to cut it by £50 billion.

That’s a 29% reduction.

How? Remove benefits from non-British citizens. Reassess disability claims. Get people with “non-major anxiety” off Personal Independence Payments.

Farage has previously promised “the biggest benefit cuts you’ve probably ever heard any government do.”

He might be right.

ENTER THE PROPERTY ISA

While Jenrick was deprioritising inheritance tax and promising fiscal rectitude, his deputy leader Richard Tice was having rather more fun.

Tice announced a consultation on what can only be described as a landlord’s Christmas wish list.

For homes built on brownfield sites – land that’s previously been developed – Reform would offer:

• No stamp duty for ten years
• No capital gains tax for ten years
• No tax on rental income for ten years

In other words, if you buy a new-build flat on an old factory site, rent it out, the you would pay precisely zero tax on the income or the gain for a decade.

They’re also proposing to scrap affordable housing requirements for brownfield developments outside major cities, cut the planning process down to 60 days, and generally remove anything that gets in the way of pouring concrete.

Of course, there are massive incentives to property investors and developers at precisely the moment when Labour’s “mansion tax” and other changes are continuing to drive capital out of UK property rental market.

Tice knows his audience. The buy-to-let brigade who feel persecuted by a decade of mortgage interest relief cuts, stamp duty surcharges, other tax changes and Labour’s renter reforms.

Reform seems to be planning to throw landlords a bone.

THE BRITANNIA CARD REWRITE

Reform’s signature policy for attracting foreign wealth to the UK – the so-called Britannia Card – is apparently being rewritten.

The original pitch, unveiled by Farage in June 2025, offered a ten-year residence permit for a one-off payment of £250,000. No tax on international income, gains, or wealth. No inheritance tax. The fee redistributed to low-paid British workers.

It was bold. It was also, as I noted at the time, full of holes.

What counted as “international” income? How did it interact with treaty obligations? What happened after ten years? Could you stack Britannia Cards indefinitely?

Reform appears to have realised they need to iron out some of those pesky details…

THE CHANNEL 4 DISTRACTION

Of course, none of this policy detail got much airtime.

That’s because Channel 4 News chose the Thursday evening of the conference to broadcast their undercover investigation.

Reporters had filmed Dan Jukes, described as Farage’s closest aide,  and Dr James Orr,  Reform’s head of policy and a Cambridge academic, apparently discussing how to funnel foreign donations to the party through intermediaries.

Electoral law is clear: donors to UK political parties must be UK registered voters or UK-registered companies. What Jukes and Orr appeared to be describing was a workaround.

Both were suspended mid-conference. Labour and the Liberal Democrats referred the party to the Metropolitan Police. The Electoral Commission said it was “considering all relevant information.”

Farage dismissed it as “loose pub talk” and “entrapment” by “foreign-funded activists.”

Maybe. But it’s worth noting that Dr Orr was Reform’s policy chief. The man responsible for articulating “The New Right”… the intellectual framework Jenrick and others are supposed to be building on.

He’s now suspended, pending investigation, and Cambridge University is “looking into these matters.”

Reform’s first attempt to woo serious business at a conference ended with two of its most senior non-MPs being filmed apparently trying to circumvent electoral law.

Farage has survived worse. But for the lobbyists and City types who paid hundreds of pounds for champagne breakfasts, it’s not exactly reassuring.

THE JENRICK PARADOX

Here’s what fascinates me about this conference.

Robert Jenrick is now, effectively, Reform’s shadow chancellor. The man who would present their first Budget.

Jenrick was a Conservative until January. He served in multiple Tory governments. He ran for Conservative leader last year, positioning himself as the hardline immigration candidate.

Now he’s standing in Birmingham promising that Reform will be “fiscally responsible” and “earn the trust of markets.”

He’s attacking his old party by suggesting inheritance tax versus income tax will be a “dividing issue” between them.

Think about what that means.

Reform, the party that was supposed to be the uncompromising alternative to wet Toryism, is now positioning to the left of the Conservatives on inheritance tax.

The Conservatives, presumably, will defend IHT cuts for farmers and business owners.

Reform will ask why help 36,000 families when you could help 40 million workers?

It’s populism, certainly. But it’s a different flavour than the 2024 vintage.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MILKSHAKE?

Two years ago, I wrote an article called “Will Farage’s tax milkshake bring all the voters to the yard?”

The answer, it turns out, is they’re serving a different drink now.

The £20,000 personal allowance? Now £15,000.

Corporation tax to 15%? Not mentioned.

Abolish IR35? Still policy, but barely mentioned at the conference.

Remove IHT from family farms and businesses? Very much Deprioritised.

What’s left is a narrower, more defensive offering. Income tax relief for workers. A few property sweeteners for developers. Vague promises about simplifying the tax code.

It’s more realistic, certainly. More fiscally coherent. More likely to survive first contact with the OBR.

But it’s also a lot less exciting.

The party that promised to smash the system is now writing letters to bond investors explaining why they’re actually really quite sensible.

THE RESTORE BRITAIN PROBLEM

There’s a reason this matters beyond Reform’s internal contradictions.

Remember Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party? They’re now offering what Reform used to promise. Full IHT abolition. IR35 scrapped on day one. Lowest corporation tax in Europe.

No caveats. No “when finances allow.”

For voters who were attracted to Reform’s original tax-cutting radicalism, Restore Britain offers the undiluted version.

Reform’s pivot to credibility might gain them centrist support. But it opens space on their right flank for someone offering the pure, uncut version of what Farage was selling in 2024.

CONFERENCE SCORECARD

So where does this leave Reform’s tax policy as of September 2026?

Policy	2024 Manifesto	September 2026
Personal allowance	£20,000	£15,000 (committed, 100 days)
Corporation tax	15%	Not mentioned
IHT on farms/businesses	Abolish immediately	“Bold chancellor” to prioritise
IR35	Abolish	Still policy, low priority
Britannia Card	£250k for 10-year residence	Being rewritten
Spending cuts	Vague	£80bn itemised
Brownfield tax breaks	Not mentioned	New: 10-year holiday on SDLT/CGT/rental income

 

The direction of travel is clear. Less for the wealthy, more for workers. Less revolutionary, more respectable. Less milkshake, more sparkling mineral water.

Whether that wins Reform more votes than it loses remains to be seen.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Reform UK came to Birmingham trying to prove they were ready for government.

What they proved instead is that they’re becoming a different party.

The inheritance tax retreat is the clearest signal. When you go from “immediately abolish” to “bold chancellor to prioritise,” you’ve changed your fundamental pitch.

It signals a pivot from Reform being the party of wealth preservation to one of wage protection.

That’s a legitimate political choice. You can make a strong argument that income tax relief for 40 million workers matters more than inheritance tax relief for 36,000 families.

But it’s not what Farage was selling two years ago.

And somewhere in rural England, there’s a farmer who backed Reform because they promised to save the family acres from the taxman… who’s now discovering that his vote delivered brownfield development incentives and a policy chief suspended for appearing to discuss illegal donations.

Politics is full of disappointments.

This one at least comes with a champagne breakfast.