Richard Tice: Reform UK Deputy Leader, Boston and Skegness MP, Career Explained

Introduction

Richard Tice is the Deputy Leader of Reform UK and the Member of Parliament for Boston and Skegness. He is also, in a sense, the man who built the party that Nigel Farage now leads: Tice was its first chairman, its leader for three years, and the person who kept it alive as a political organisation between Farage’s two periods at its head. When Farage returned in June 2024, Tice stepped aside gracefully, took the deputy leadership, and won a Westminster seat on the same night.

Tice came to politics late and from business, not from a party youth wing or a parliamentary staff job. He made his career in commercial property, became chief executive of a FTSE 250 company, and then put his money and his time into the campaign to leave the European Union. That route — businessman, donor, campaigner, party leader, MP — is now a familiar one in British politics, but Tice was among the first to walk it all the way to the Commons.

Quick Bio

Property career

Tice was born in Farnham, Surrey, the grandson of property developer Bernard Sunley. He was educated at Uppingham School and then studied Construction Economics and Quantity Surveying at the University of Salford. He built a career in property asset management, serving as chief executive of CLS Holdings plc from 2010 to 2014 — a FTSE 250 property company with holdings in the UK, Germany and France — and later as chief executive of Quidnet Capital LLP, a property asset management firm he founded.

That business background is central to his political pitch. Tice presents himself as someone who has run organisations, managed budgets and dealt with regulation as a practitioner, not as a theorist — and he argues that government should be run with the same attention to cost and delivery.

From Conservative donor to Brexit campaigner

For most of his adult life Tice was a donor and member of the Conservative Party, but he opposed the euro and the direction of the EU. He was a co-founder of the Brexit campaign groups Leave.EU and Leave Means Leave, and he financed the founding of the Brexit Party in 2019, becoming its first chairman. In the 2019 European Parliament election he was elected as an MEP for the East of England, serving from May 2019 until the UK’s withdrawal from the EU on 31 January 2020.

When the Brexit Party was renamed Reform UK in 2021, Tice became its leader, succeeding Farage. He led the party through the post-Brexit period, when its argument shifted from leaving the EU to a broader platform: lower taxes, opposition to net zero policies, reform of the House of Lords and the electoral system, and a harder line on immigration. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament in Hartlepool in 2019 and in Old Bexley and Sidcup in 2021, and for the London Assembly — defeats that, for a party leader, would have ended many careers. Tice stayed.

Deputy leader and MP

In June 2024, as the general election approached, Farage returned as Reform UK leader and Tice stood down, briefly serving as chairman again before becoming Deputy Leader on 11 July 2024. On 4 July 2024 he was elected MP for Boston and Skegness, a Lincolnshire constituency with one of the highest Leave votes in the 2016 referendum, winning with a majority of 2,010 over the Conservative incumbent Matt Warman.

In Parliament, Tice has been Reform UK’s voice on business and energy. Since February 2026 he has served as the party’s spokesperson for Business, Trade and Energy, and he has been a prominent critic of net zero policies, arguing that they raise energy costs for businesses and households. During Farage’s absence from the Commons in July and August 2026 — when Farage resigned his Clacton seat to trigger a by-election — Tice served as Leader of Reform UK in the House of Commons, from 8 July to 14 August 2026, a brief but telling sign of his standing inside the party: when the leader steps away, it is the deputy who holds the parliamentary party together.

He splits his time between Westminster and his Lincolnshire constituency, and he remains one of Reform UK’s most visible media performers, regularly appearing on broadcast news to argue the party’s case.

What competitor biographies get wrong or leave out

1. They still call him party leader. Tice led Reform UK from March 2021 to June 2024. Since July 2024 he has been Deputy Leader under Nigel Farage. Calling him leader now is out of date by more than two years.

2. They confuse his vote total with his majority. In Boston and Skegness in 2024, Tice’s majority was 2,010 votes. Some online profiles quote a much larger figure, which appears to be a vote total or a previous Conservative majority, not Tice’s majority.

3. They skip the Brexit Party chairmanship. Tice did not arrive at Reform UK’s leadership from nowhere: he was the Brexit Party’s first chairman and one of its founders, and an MEP before he was an MP.

4. They invent money figures. Estimates of Tice’s wealth circulate widely and disagree with each other. No reliable, sourced figure is published here.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Richard Tice?
Deputy Leader of Reform UK since July 2024 and MP for Boston and Skegness since July 2024.

Was Richard Tice leader of Reform UK?
Yes, from March 2021 to June 2024, when Nigel Farage returned as leader and Tice became deputy leader.

What constituency does Richard Tice represent?
Boston and Skegness in Lincolnshire, won in 2024 with a majority of 2,010.

What is Richard Tice’s business background?
Commercial property: chief executive of CLS Holdings (2010–2014) and founder of Quidnet Capital.

What is Richard Tice’s net worth?
No reliable, sourced figure exists in the sources used here, so none is published.

More on Presslix

• Lucy Powell: Education Secretary, Labour Deputy Leader and Career Explained
• Nigel Farage: Reform UK Leader, Clacton MP and the 2026 By-Election Explained
• Presslix Biography

Sources and Further Reading

• Richard Tice on Wikipedia — career timeline, party offices and parliamentary record
• UK Parliament — Parliamentary career for Richard Tice (plain-text source)
• Reform UK — Richard Tice profile (plain-text source)

Note on this article: party offices and election figures are taken from the sources listed. No net worth or salary figure is claimed because no reliable figure exists in these sources.