Not having been to Reform’s Birmingham Conference, I can’t give a first hand report. As I have said on this blog, business – whether in financial markets or elsewhere, need to take Reform seriously and the Times report that they have this year.

Regardless, big business is certainly paying attention. The crowd appeared to be mostly made up of corporate lobbyists, including from NatWest, Serco, Drax, Rolls-Royce, Diageo and Marks & Spencer, mixed in with a handful of high-net-worth investors, partners from City firms, trade body chiefs, spin doctors and representatives of huge asset managers such as BlackRock. Vodafone had a presence, too, despite Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesman, having recently accused its bosses of “helping to facilitate the invasion of Britain” and threatening to send them to prison.

Chief executives themselves were absent, but top executives don’t generally make a habit of attending party conferences. Some City PR firms are understood to have been hosting more intimate meet and greets with senior Reform figures in recent months.

One lobbyist who attended said: “It will clearly be a huge event when it opens fully and had an impressive scale and ambition, but as a business day it was frustrating, missing a big moment or platform address, and with no meaningful round-table opportunity to engage with politicians or discuss policy.”

These comments were made before the Thursday night bombshell by Channel 4 (my comments here)

Meanwhile, at the Conference there was business to be talked about and though the Times found what was said was professional, there seemed to be a lack of serious talk about the nation’s economy and business’ place in it.

Back at the business day, much of the heavy lifting was left to Jenrick, Richard Tice, Danny Kruger, Suella Braverman and Lee Anderson. Jenrick, a former Treasury secretary, moved between a series of panel sessions, seeking to portray himself as a suitable chancellor-in-waiting. He mused confidently on the Bank of England — “too closed” and in need of more “diversity of thought” — the exodus of UK-listed companies and the need to bring down energy prices.

Tice, meanwhile, impressed some with Reform’s goal of streamlining planning. “That was all pretty clear and there was something to read which gave clarity on their policy position,” said one attendee. “But it was entirely focused on building more houses, nothing about business in there at all.”

These seem to be at “thought tank” stage. There just isn’t enough of a party to justify being taken seriously.

One thing that was striking was how effectively Reform has positioned itself as the party of small business, rather than large corporate interests — and the hint of a tension between the two. In a closing discussion on financial policy, Jenrick declared Reform a “worker’s party” that was “not for the super rich” but “unashamedly for the 80 per cent in the middle”.

A party official zealously agreed: “Those are our people.”

Reconciling the interests of the cab drivers, sole traders and other small firms along with those of the financial elite could prove tricky down the line. “It’s not the 80 per cent that pay the most tax, it’s the [top] 20 per cent,” one private investor sighed following Jenrick’s session on the City.

There were also frustrations at the relatively small pool of politicians Reform had in play. “Jenrick was good but he, [Danny] Kruger and [Lee] Anderson were speaking at every fringe and panel so it got repetitive, they got tired and they had little new to say or announce,” the lobbyist said. “It was a pain being talked at, not to.”

So what is Reform going to become as it fills in the holes and moves from being start up to scale up as a party?

This matters a lot, because small business , no matter how important it is, is not going to drive forward growth.  It’s hard to see our bonds and equity (private and public) move in the direction that creates momentum.

The difference between the Conference in Birmingham and what happened when Burnham became leader and then prime minister is very stark. To suppose that the Labour party excludes the kind of people who turn up at Reform events is naive. The Labour party   includes the unions and excludes the people in Dover who covered their face-masks in protesting against what arrives from France.

Nobody want to ban business from party conferences , it is up to them to make the most of their opportunities, but I don’t get the impression that they will be very impressed by what is going inside the Conference and out.

If big business walks out on Reform or is evicted by protestors at Reform’s speech, then that may not go down well with Reform’s loyalists. It may be as Maga’s loyalists do in the US and that may be successful for Reform.

What we will see is how Reform will fare through the conference season. My guess is that it will find it hard to keep the business community at the Conference this weekend.