With his daytime TV teeth and perma-tan, David Bull is one of the UK politicians who most resembles the slightly unnerving Donald Trump acolytes who populate Fox News in the US. But rather than being an unyielding zealot, as the new chair ofReform UKhe appears a safe choice.
Bull is very much a politician. He was briefly on the Conservatives’ “A list” of candidates under David Cameron before shifting allegiances, and was a Brexit party MEP, as well as a Westminster candidate for the Brexit party and Reform.
However, as someone who has spent the bulk of his career as a do-anything TV presenter, Bull will be expected to build on his existing position as what may be called the party’s feelgood man, its liaison with members.
Anyone who has attended a recent Reform rally or conference will have seen Bull in his now traditional role as the warm-up act, touring the venue with a camera and lights in tow, chatting easily to audience members beforeNigel Faragetakes to the stage.
This is all in a day’s work for someone whose 30-year broadcast résumé takes in everything from the BBC’s Newsround and assorted CBBC programmes to Living TV’s Most Haunted.
Under Zia Yusuf, Reform’s chair for 11 months, the role was more like that of CEO of a tech startup – putting in place structures, recruiting staff and sometimes knocking heads together. It was sufficiently gruelling that last week Yusuf briefly resigned from the party, an episode described jokingly by Farage as his “bid for freedom”.
As set out by Farage at a press event on Tuesday,the now returned Yusufwill focus on trying to find cost savings in Reform councils, while the party seeks a new head of operations and a new chief fundraiser.
In this expanded structure, Bull’s role will be, in the words of Yusuf at the same event, “someone who is an incredible communicator, someone who is loved universally across the party, loved by the volunteers, someone who is going to, I think, do a better job than me at energising volunteers on the frontline”.
Bull said: “My role is about bringing the two parts of the party together – the voluntary party, the professional party. I want to act as a conduit between the two.”
This is, in some ways, an unenviable job – an endless tour of Reform’s 400-and-growing list of branches, geeing up a volunteer base who, while generally enthusiastic, have minimal say in how the party is run.
But if anyone is up for the job it is Bull, despite his jokes to reporters on Tuesday that a permanent regime of pub-based meetings felt like a recipe for putting on weight.
While he is generally billed as Dr David Bull, the 56-year-old has not practised medicine since his 20s, instead presenting or appearing on a long series of TV programmes, mainly in the UK but also in the US and New Zealand, with other ventures includinga 1998 bookfor young people titled Cool and Celibate: Sex or No Sex.
Most recently he has been a presenter on TalkTV, the News Corp-owned spin-off from Talk Radio, from which – according to Bull at the press conference – he handed in his notice on Tuesday, just before being announced as Yusuf’s replacement.
He is, however, more of a party insider than his Mr Entertainment public image might indicate. When the Brexit party was rebranded as Reform in 2021, and Farage stepped away from frontline politics, Bull spent three years as deputy leader under Richard Tice.
So central is he to the origins of Reform, according to Bull’s version of events on Tuesday, “I think it’s fair to say that Reform UK was founded in my kitchen in Suffolk”.
There is, however, one quality to Bull that is perhaps most important of all: he has no obvious record of having fallen out with anyone in Reform, or even exchanging a particularly cross word. In a party that has alreadylost one MPamid contested rows about bullying, and (briefly) a chairfollowing a disputeabout the burqa, this could be a valuable skill.