One of the most important unwritten rules of politics is that for a party to become a government it must first look like one. In the UK that involves holding not just rallies but a proper conference. Could Reform pull this off? Well, yes – in part.

Previous Reform gatherings have, in effect, been rallies where every speaker was a support act for Nigel Farage.

This is fine for grabbing attention and building support, but at some point voters want reassurance that there is a proper, functioning party machine in place, one capable of populating a cabinet of 20-plus people.

The two-day event at the NEC in Birmingham was thus a step beyond anything previously attempted by Reform. The focus was still a vast main arena, but this time there were fringe events, even a handful of business stands.

There were also, for the first time, some opposing views. Even by the standards of party gatherings, Reform rallies and conferences have often felt a bit cosy, safe spaces for members to tell one another that they are entitled to hold robust opinions about migration, crime and the environment.

But attenders of Friday’s fringe programme – still much smaller than its equivalents at Labour or Conservative conferences – heard at one early event some liberal thoughts on prisons from rehabilitation campaigners.

This was balanced by the Reform MP Sarah Pochin, who told the event that hundreds of town centre police stations could be reopened by saving money “wasted sending police on training courses for 70 different pronouns and all that rubbish”.

Even more bold was the decision to invite the Antisemitism Policy Trust to host an event it has organised at other party conferences about the pernicious influence of conspiracy theories, including a presentation about how often these are aired by some Reform activists.

The overall sense was of a party keen to present itself as normal, mainstream. Even Andrea Jenkyns, the Tory defector-turned Lincolnshire mayor, usually a one-woman news and controversy machine, stayed pretty much on message beyond an early call for the UK to, “drill, baby, drill”.

There was some inevitable leakage when party members had their say. At the conspiracy theory fringe, an activist called Rupert insisted that the former leader of the World Economic Forum had confessed he was “controlling and training up all the world leaders”, comments that brought a weary shaking of heads from the panel.

Similarly, while the business area included some big names, such as the transport giant First Group, it also featured stands for cryptocurrency and investment in gold bullion, the latter endorsed by Farage himself.

Overall, it was something of a work in progress, and understandably so. Reform’s great asset, and simultaneously its potential weakness, is that everything revolves around Nigel Farage. On that front, nothing much has changed.

So it was that in an apparent attempt to shoehorn the party leader on news bulletins dominated by Angela Rayner’s resignation, the conference timetable was hastily ripped up so Farage’s speech to the main arena could be moved from 5pm to 1pm.

Beyond Farage, as a party with just four MPs (and two ex-MPs), Reform is short on star power, also obvious in Birmingham. Pochin had to leave the fringe event on justice after only half an hour, and at almost any point of the day you could witness one of the MPs or the former party chair Zia Yusuf being shuttled between engagements by burly guards.

Some of this gap has been filled with defectors such as Jenkyns – and, in the big pre-conference reveal, the former Conservative cabinet minister, Nadine Dorries, who joined Farage on stage.

Reform is aware that too frequent a conveyor belt of former Tories risks giving the impression that Reform is not bold and new but merely a refuge or retirement home for a party Farage routinely condemns as having wrecked the UK.

But as Farage himself has privately said, at least some defections are necessary for a party that otherwise has zero experience of government and – according to Farage’s timeline – could be in power as early as 2027.

Would it be ready? On the evidence of the scene in Birmingham, possibly not. But does it believe it can do it? Absolutely.