Charlotte Pickles, its director, has been mulling a name change for some time, but the return of Farage as Reform UK leader last year, and the party’s recent electoral success put a rocket under the name-changing project.
“As a very strictly cross-party, independent, charitable think tank we can’t have confusion with a political party, of which there obviously is now one called Reform UK,” Pickles told POLITICO.
While the think tank is well-known in Westminster’s political circles, its old name has caused confusion with the wider general public.
“We have had people sending us emails with their thoughts that they want to share with Nigel Farage,” Pickles said. “We’ve had some letters sent to our office building.”
Reform UK supporters even mistakenly posted checks donating money, now destroyed, to the think tank.
The newly named Re:State is using its rebrand as an opportunity to reset and talk about its work on reforming the British government machine.