Reform UK appoints same-sex marriage opponent James Orr as Nigel Farage’s senior advisor

Reform UK has appointed an anti-abortion, anti-equal marriage advocate as an adviser to Nigel Farage.

James Orr, a former corporate lawyer and associate professor of philosophy of religion at the University of Cambridge, was named as a senior adviser to Farage, in a post on X/Twitter by the party’s head of policy, Zia Yusuf, on Sunday (19 October).

“I’m delighted to welcome James Orr to Reform UK,” Yusuf wrote. “James is a brilliant academic, theologian, thinker. He has been a bastion of common sense and patriotism at Cambridge University. He has become a close friend and is someone who I believe will have a pivotal role in shaping the future of this country.

“James is now a senior member of our team, a senior advisor to Nigel Farage and will bring even more talented patriots to the Reform family.”

I’m delighted to welcome James Orr to Reform UK.

James is a brilliant academic, theologian, thinker.

He has been a bastion of common sense and patriotism at Cambridge University.

He has become a close friend, and is someone who I believe will have a pivotal role in shaping the… pic.twitter.com/jgyNYWTZZn

— Zia Yusuf (@ZiaYusufUK) October 19, 2025

During a 2023 interview with the Coalition for Marriage, an organisation that supports and promotes “traditional marriage” and “real marriage” which they say is solely between a man and a woman, Orr said equal marriage had “very important downstream ramifications”. To address these concerns, he suggested emphasising “the public good resulting from real marriage”.

And talking to The European Conservative, he described asylum seekers as “invaders”, adding that the long-term effects of migration was “making it impossible for us to use the first-person pronoun… it is becoming impossible to say: ‘We, the people’.

“I have nothing in common with those rapists in Oxford and Rotherham and Telford. I want nothing to do with them. I want them out of this country as fast as possible. They are not English, they are not British, they do not have any right to be members of our national family. And yet, I’m required by the liberals to pretend that they are as British as I am.

“No, when I use the word ‘we’, I will never have in my mind those people. Nor will I have in my mind the hundreds of people who land daily on the beaches of Dover and who… magically get a passport in five to ten years’ time.

“This kind of toxic empathy, which we are supposed to have towards all people except our own, is unnatural. It’s an entirely alien way of thinking. No civilisation has invited invaders in, put them up in four-star hotels and given them all the money they can possibly want.”

During the same interview, he labelled the LGBTQ+ community “so-called rainbow people, hyper-liberal sexual progressives pushing identity politics”. He has also described gender-affirming care for trans youngsters as the “mutilation of children”.

In another post, he wrote: “I keep hearing even the fiercest critics of transgender ideology use phrases like ‘biological woman.’ Final victory will not be theirs until once again it sounds as odd to speak of a biological woman as it does to speak of a circular circle.”

Orr was a friend of right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk, known for his gun rights advocacy and for espousing anti-LGBTQ+ views, who was fatally shot during a crowded open-air debate with university students last month.

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