Credit : Leon Neal/Getty Images
There are two important things to remember about the new Tory majority. First, the class-party realignment represented by Tory victories in Bolsover and Sedgefield, and Labour ones in Canterbury and Putney, has been happening over a long period of time. Second, it is not just about Brexit but about a whole values/worldview divide — at least partly summed up in my own Anywheres/Somewheres labels — which has afflicted almost all big centre-left parties in Europe as they have come to primarily represent the interests and priorities of their liberal graduate members, activists and MPs.
Brexit did, of course, hasten this realignment. And spare a thought for the Theresa May/Nick Timothy strategy in the 2017 election which was widely ridiculed at the time, because it narrowly failed, but which can now take a bow as a necessary prelude to the breath-taking Tory advances made into historically hostile territory on Thursday.
Brexit, rather like immigration in the past couple of decades, has become an “emblem” policy. Support for Brexit is not so much about the details of EU regulation, rather it has become part of a wider, defensive reaction to the radicalism of the post-Cold War “double liberalism” of free market and cultural opening, represented in the EU by the two central post-national policies of the Euro and free movement.
The challenge for the Tory party now, as Mary Harrington lays out in her election night piece, is to represent aspects of this defensive, national reaction without turning its back on the attractive aspects of the economic and social openness of recent decades. There is no reason why this cannot be accommodated under the canopy of the “One Nation Conservative party” that Boris Johnson talked up last night and throughout the campaign.
On immigration, for example, Johnson has already been shaping policy to appeal to both wings of the new Tory coalition. While the overall stress is on control and a return to more moderate levels, there has been selective liberalisation — over post-student work opportunities, for example.
It is not even impossible that Johnson, pressured by the Spectator magazine’s enthusiasm for it, could announce an amnesty for those illegal immigrants who have been here 10 years or more and who are never going to be deported anyway. Such a gesture to the liberal end of the coalition could be balanced with something for small-c conservatives such as the introduction of a citizen identity system (ID cards in the old language) which would, incidentally, make illegal immigration much harder.
There will also be genuine conflicts of interest between different parts of the new Tory coalition. The small-state, low-tax Toryism of the affluent suburbs has hardly been in the ascendancy in recent years. But it will have to concede further ground to the new Tory voters who want quite high public spending and good public infrastructure. How much ground it will have to concede will be the stuff of battles to come.
Housing is another potential battleground. The interests of younger people and lower income renters not on the ladder are potentially in conflict with those who are already happily housed and worrying about the impact of a massive building programme both on the value of their home and its effect on the green belt.
Meanwhile, in post-school education, the over mighty universities, long institutions of the middle-class Left, may find themselves less favoured, as investment into the battered Further Education sector is prioritised. Yet universities should also be on the front line of a rejuvenated Tory industrial and regional strategy which tries to spread good jobs and economic success more evenly around the country.
So new priorities need not always conflict with old ones. But one interesting thing to follow will be the changing tone and accent (literally) of the Tory party as the proportion of privately educated Tory MPs falls to an all-time low, possibly as low as one-third. The new generation of Tory MP, such as Eddie Hughes the working-class Birmingham man who won Walsall North for the Tories in 2017, do not have a noblesse oblige interest in decent public services for the masses because they have spent their lives depending on them.
People such as Eddie Hughes and the new generation of less middle-class Tories might also have an interesting impact on the party’s attitude to family, gender and race issues. In recent years, British Conservatives have not really offered any kind of alternative to liberal metropolitan thinking in these areas. This could be about to end. Fairness and opportunity for minorities and women need not take the often sectarian and hyper-liberal form of recent years and can better accommodate the priorities of small-c conservatives, in family policy for example.
The fact that Johnson has promoted ethnic minority Brits to leading positions in his cabinet and No 10 also bodes well for more balance in the area of race and minority rights and a willingness to challenge the assumption that any departure from perfectly proportional ethnic representation must always be down to white discrimination.
Is it possible that fresh thinking in these areas, thinking that is closer to what the decent average person thinks, rather than the average university administrator, might even filter through to younger people who are overwhelmingly under the sway of the Left? That is unlikely to change in the short term but if the Tories push back intelligently against ‘woke’ culture, they might find a surprisingly receptive audience among young people.
A significant section of educated Britain has been suffering from Brexit derangement syndrome in recent years. It might be seen as a less alarming version of the 1930s flirtation with communism. But, as in the 1930s, the sophistry and fundamentally undemocratic instinct of many of those wanting to overturn the Brexit vote has come up against the decent common sense of the new Tory voters.
As John Gray put it in a recent A Point of View talk on BBC Radio 4:
“Those who have studied to degree level and beyond have often embraced ideas and projects that many less educated folk instinctively recognise are dangerously absurd. Something like this happened in Britain in the 1930s — much of the intelligentsia was ready to junk democracy in Britain for a new order that they felt was coming into being somewhere else.”
The EU is not the Soviet Union but the quasi-religious embrace of the EU worldview does seem to have driven many people, some of them my best friends, slightly crazy!
This election result is a big blow to the confidence and cultural power of educated, left-liberal Britain. A new coalition of people from many different backgrounds, by no means all Tories, now has an opportunity to push back against the extremes and pathologies of that cultural hegemony.
David Goodhart is the author of Head, Hand, Heart: The Struggle for Dignity and Status in the 21st Century. He is head of the Demography unit at the think tank Policy Exchange.
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SubscribeDo you see any hope? Reform is the last throw of the dice, but I don’t see any miracles happening. Britain decided to throw open the doors to the Third World for reasons I don’t understand and the final act is inevitable.
What is emerging unnoticed (in particular by those that do not wish to notice )
There is now a whole generation of young voters who are part of the “multicultural experiment” from school age and beyond .
They no longer pay attention to the slogans but rely upon their own experiences.
As an American, I just don’t understand how this slow kiss of death was given to such a once great country like the UK. What is it about the native collective psyche that allowed this to happen, to keep electing feckless fools when it’s been clear for years, even from our shores, that your country is not, nor could or should be, a melting pot for the world’s ethnicities? Is there not a sizable enough demographic to just absolutely not play ball? Can England not get angry?
The UK’s fate is sad beyond words, and confounding. Not that we don’t have our own absurdities in the USA. But at least there’s a strong vein of ‘screw it, not taking this ** anymore’ and then doing something about it.
When all parties in the Uniparty and their cheer leaders throughout the media continually ram home the elite message that unlimited immigration is a good thing it is easier to see why any other political view is hard to get across. Any criticism of the elite view has been denigrated for decades especially the state sponsored BBC which dominates broadcast media here.
We saw during the lockdowns how people can easily be persuaded by state propaganda to follow the elites’ line. They even have specific departments to carry out the propaganda. This was first openly acknowledged by Cameron-Clegg who boasted about what they tweely called The Nudge Unit. These programmes are now bigger and laws have been passed to limit the range of opinions which may be discussed.
JD Vance was right but maybe he under estimated the degree we have lost free speech.
There is something creepy and sinister about how our country is being taken over. It smells rotten of underground slime. Devious and malign. I would rather the Germans had won in open air combat than this slow strangulation, revealing cowardice and corruption by our “leader”.
The ‘liberal’ establishment that has sold the country down the river is now terrified both about what they’ve done and that people have noticed.
As someone once said: wars happen when the government tells you who the enemy is; revolts happen when you work it out for yourself.
Yes. The liberal establishment is like those parents of ‘trans’ children, who affirmed and encouraged their child, and cajoled and bullied all those about them to accept what they had helped create.
The awful reality that they have mutilated something beautiful is too horrifying to bear, so they persist aggressively with the lie. They will never give it up.
The Conservative Party is moribund and the Labour Party is heading that way. The Lib Dems are only attractive at a local level. Which party can represent the Liberal Establishment?
I expect we will need a (genteel) Trumpian reduction in state run organisations before the authority of the Liberal Establishment is cut down to size. It won’t be pretty.
The Lib-Dems are clowns.
Indeed. It won’t be pretty because state run organizations never respond to “genteel” reform efforts.
There is no such thing as ‘genteel’ reforms any more. The rot will have to be ripped out of Westminster, it won’t be pretty but it is glaringly needed and soon.
“‘Dagenham is home to a proud and diverse community that reflects the industrious and pioneering spirit of its heritage’ boasts the construction site billboard.”
Reads like a Red Guard poster in Beijing circa 1966.
Labour is caught between two stools. Does it seek to recapture the disillusioned white, working class of the Red Wall, or seek to hang on to the Muslim vote that is leaking away to Corbyn’s Independents? It can’t do both.
There is a shocking neglect of attention to the Greater South East outside London (and whilst Dagenham is in London it is really the border area with the Greater South East like many London Boroughs where there was a big vote for out in the EU referendum). Very little social science done on these areas – almost no real ethnography – and not much decent journalism. This piece is good but there is a need to look further. I suggest attention to Bedford, just one of the towns now a commuter zone for London. The Greater SE is the largest region by population in the UK when you include Hertfordshire, Essex and Bedfordshire which were put into the Eastern Region to even up numbers. This is where UK elections will be decided and deindustrialization is the major cultural driver of voting.
Sad consequence of our political class caring more about virtue signalling than dealing UK voters’ needs and aspirations.
The liberal establishment and their lapdog media have several years to destroy Reform. Their agents will be joining, ready to be activated.
I am afraid Britain cannot no longer be saved via the ballot box.
That is possible,m BUT Net Zero is going to destroy any party that backed it AND possibly the very country itself as NO modern society can survive without a reliable grid, AND windmills and solar will NOT provide that. In fact I believe even National Grid is now aware of how close failure could be. Last week they actually sent me an email asking if I was prepared for Power Cuts!
Stopping and then reversing the spiral of decline will not be easy. In fact it will be damned hard. Dropping the lunatic deindustrialising policy called Net Zero will
help but beyond that we have to start repaying our ever increasing national debt which must involve attracting private investment to stimulate sustainable growth and curbing the Welfare State. That means lower taxes and lower benefits – both of which can be divisive. It will take exceptional political leadership to deliver this.
The quickest way to recovery is to scrap vast swathes of European Napoleonic style legislation, and the Public sector and QUANGOS and the mindset you can ONLY do what is allowed. Revert to the English Common Law and the attitude UNLESS it is banned, you can do it. For example. the insanity of rules re energy when selling houses. The law re contracts and honesty plus Caveat Emptor should be the aim. Free the people to achieve what no Government can, to revive economies.
AND stop the vast waste of tax-payers money. We could save a fortune IF we stopped funding arts – Why fund them? Did the Beatles need funding? No, in fact they even wrote a song about the taxman and his 90% demands Does Banksy get funded? Tho it wouldn’t surprise me to find he did.
IF Reform are brave enough the UK could be turned around FAR faster than the pessimists on here think.
“Right-wing populism”
Disappointing.
I would have hoped for a more nuanced and intellihent anlysis at UnHerd. Not more of the same .
It’s certainly ground as fertile for radical Right as there is going to be. It shows the direction we are heading, and have been for some time but with an acceleration driven by Austerity and the Pandemic, is increasing starkly obvious – growing inequality of opportunity and thus outcomes. The juxtaposition of private affluence, public squalor as documented 70 years ago in another Country, pulling apart that which bonds us.
The question for Reform is what solution do they offer other than the red meat on migration? (Let’s assume for the moment we all want massive reduction in illegal migration and less legal because we’ve invested more in training/developing our own etc). What is the coherent Reform offering? I read the Policy section of their website – it, to be fair like most Parties, ducks how it’s really going to pay for changes or whether it’s at all interested in addressing growing inequality. It needs revising in light of Trump’s approach too.
The Farage/Lowe fight is more personal and ego driven but there are elements that relate to major Policy tension. Is this a Party that really rejects neo-liberalism and thus would, ironically, share some of the Corbyn/McDonald economic view (which wasn’t unpopular with red wall Voters), or a Party that just uses migration concerns to gain power for the same old elite benefit that the Tories did? For now that tension may not prevent it winning protest Votes, but anyone truly interested in solutions to our many problems, rather than just a nihilistic attitude, needs Reform and others to properly grapple with the choices we face. Desires and slogans are not Policies that then really deliver the outcome wanted.
The question for Reform is what solution do they offer other than the red meat on migration?
Electoral reform?
Ask yourself: why is a Labour government piling ever more taxes onto working people, small businesses and farmers and taking benefits from disabled people whilst you and everyone you know are still collecting £tens or £hundreds of thousands every year in artificial property price inflation, unfunded pensions and all the rest of it? Because Labour need your vote more than they need those of the people they are taxing into oblivion and whose lives they are destroying with mass illegal immigration and all the other globalist scams designed to enrich the suburban middle class at everyone else’s expense. A de-centralised electoral system along Swiss lines could fix that.
That said, I have as little confidence that Reform is the answer as you do.
THERE SHOULD BE NO electoral reform. FPTP is what we need. Look to Germany and the EU for the impossibility of clearing out the Augean Stables with PR. Germany’s population is increasingly moving to the right, BUT PR elections mean the Government is moving to the left. It forms a coalition with the far left & Greens in order to keep the popular vote suppressed,. FPTP would ensure these parties DO NOT GET IN. Reform are insane IF they scrap FPTP they have now hit the watershed, and they will only achieve what they want via FPTP because that ensure the demise of the Uniparty. Go for PR and Reform will be in opposition watching the Uniparty Coalition destroy the country.
You might be right. What we really need is decentralisation.
What benefit to the UK was there in letting the rubbish of the world into England? It was either incompetence or intentional. Both are unacceptable. Only a radical solution can possibly save the country from further decline and stem the decline of the natives
Veni vidi vicit
Nigel and his Asian friend look set to make Reform another branch of the post-Partition British uniparty.
Then the party members should plan to stop it. BUT not until they get into power. Reform getting in may also end up producing a REAL conservative party , patriotic enough to attract the White Working class AND Reform voters, The White Working Class who by the way appear to refusing to join the military. Tommy Atkins 2025?
A sad but accurate indictment of the Dagenham and Barking that gave us among others, the legends of Greaves, Venables, Brooking and Moore….and the Cortina.
I am not from the London area but when you consider that in 1961 London (and I guess that part of Essex now in Greater London) was 97% white British but by 2021 that percentage had fallen to 37% the rise of the Reform party should not surprise anyone. Even if Reform were to form a government in 2029 (by which time a further 1,5 million may well have joined our shores) I doubt whether the party would be able to do much about it. Even in its darkest days of 1983 and 2019 the Labour Party still had 200 or so Members of the House of Commons. In any event the parties which are either left or left leaning i.e. the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Nationalists and the Greens will do anything to prevent a Nigel Farage premiership possibly by encouraging tactical voting in a multitude of constituencies. The eminent historian Dr. David Starkey believes that the only way forward is to introduce what he calls ‘The Great Repeal Bill’ removing all of what is deemed contentious legislation i.e. the Human Rights Act, remaining in ECHR etc. which has been enacted since 1997 and which would be a mammoth task given all the obstacles. The question is then : If the Reform Party had a comfortable majority would they have the stomach for such a fight?
Many overlook how demographic shifts can intensify over time. Ethnic minorities tend to have higher birth rates and often bring extended family members with them. As certain areas become more diverse, some white residents may choose to emigrate, possible to leave the UK.
I know this might come across as harsh or prejudiced, but it’s the reality I see unfolding.
Tactical voting would NOT work IF ALL BREXIT voters voted for Reform. Farage proved that in the THREE effectively Brexit votes we’ve had. 410 constituencies out of 600 had a Brexit majority. No tactical vote could have beaten them. Farage won a referendum, a European election , then let Boris borrow (then betray) the Brexiteer vote in a General Election. 3 votes, under 3 different voting systems, straight majority, D’Hondt (European Elections) and FPTP for Boris. AND Brexiteers won every one. The ONLY thing that can stop Reform is the Tory voters who think the Tory part is conservative and so vote for them.
Quite frankly, there were more Just Men in Sodom and Gomorrah than there are conservatives in the Tory party (or perhaps in Reform’s leadership, but we can deal with them ONCE in power, NOT before.
Sorry but I don’t accept your argument. It is a fact that since the Referendum in 2016 a fair number of those who voted for Brexit have passed on and I doubt whether they would have been replaced in sufficient numbers. In 2019 yes the Brexit party gained the most seats in the European election but only polled 33% of the vote. And if I remember correctly Nigel Farage disappeared for two years immediately after the referendum. Using phrases ‘such as we can deal with them ONCE in power, NOT before ‘ is simply bully boy tactics more likely to repel any waverers rather than attract them. Like it or not Reform is going to need former Conservative voters if it is to get into power so a period of reflection on your part might be advisable.
“neatly tailored patriotism (this time with an eye on the Donbas)”
The idiocy – it burns!
How can anyone argue, with a straight face, that British patriotism requires us to get involved in a conflict between pro-Russian and pro-Western elements in the Donbas?
Putin is an unpleasant authoritarian; so is Starmer. Putin is content to throw thousands of young men into the meat grinder; Starmer also has no qualms about it.
One of these two villains is intent on demographic change for Britain that is unlikely to be reversible without violence.
Against whom should British patriots direct their ire?
I’m definitely no fan of Starmer… but to lump him together with Putin?!? That’s absurd.
Opponents of Starmer do not have a nasty habit of falling out of high windows. Nor do we have a secret police force to keep people in order (although our police officers do have tendencies in that direction). Nor do we have a policy of assassinating dissidents in other countries.
Opponents of Starmer do have a nasty habit of being sent to prison on trumped up charges, or having the cops break down their door for having the wrong opinions.
Putin is right however. Check out how many Ukrainian brigades, NOT just those labelled Azov, are basically Nazi and only accept like minded Bandera recruits. Putin steps in to protect ethnic Russians, he didn’t take over ALL Georgia or anywhere else, he effectively gave protection to ethnic Russians caught on the wrong side of Soviet drawn borders. Now in Ukraine he may take more than those areas, a land-bridge to Transnistria, everything East of the Dnieper perhaps NATO cause this and now reap what it sowed.
It is also worth noting how Ukraine basically removed the self-determination aspect of the Crimean Republic, so to claim it is Ukrainian is equally historically incorrect. NATO was warned for decades to abide by the promises not to expand East or risk War. The 2014 US coup started this war. Putin is likely to finish it. As Hungary’s Orban pointed out months ago. Ukraine is a failed state only surviving on Western handouts. We in the UK should have nothing to do with that war.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-s-eastward-expansion-did-the-west-break-its-promise-to-moscow-a-663315.html
Ukraine has many faults and is bedevilled by corruption. As indeed is ALL the ex Soviet Union, Russia included.
But Putin invaded ALL Ukraine with the aim to change the regime into a puppet state and annex the entire country. Only Ukrainian citizens willing to fight and Western military aid stopped that happening.
Mass migration and the loss of well-paid jobs in manufacturing is a lethal combination. Add to that a political establishment that seems to be complacent and not listening, and people become desperate enough to vote for anything.
So what happens when people work out that their new Reform councillors are as hamstrung and ‘useless’ as the Tory and Labour councillor they replaced? What then?
“Aux armes, citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons !
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons ! “ etc, etc.
i believe, as Charles Stanhope infers, we are beyond the point of “voting for anything”. Violence seems a possibility based on the febrile nature of the country as it descends into the third world. The article, with its uncompleted multi-vignette approach captures the identity-covulsing experience of Britain 2025. Pop collapsing public services, sustained real-term economic per capita decine, and the loss of any hope of a life that just one generation ago was a Briton’s expectation, and you have the ingredients for major conflagration. Since a new settlement is required between state and citizen (rather than resident) and that path cannot be negotiated – as evidenced by refusals to implement and attempts to overturn the will of the people – the ballot box appears to have been exhausted. I doubt that Reform can represent “containment” at this stage.
“…refusals to implement and attempts to overturn the will of the people…”
This, Remoaners and Establishment Blob, is what you’ve brought us to, laid bare in this and other articles setting out the reality of life for the majority of the indigenous population, which includes 3rd/4th/5th generations of settled immigrants from the mid-20th century. They too, have major qualms about the more recent opening of the floodgates since it threatens their feeling of being settled in their country of birth.
It can’t continue. Those who wilfully ignore the populace at large will have their day of reckoning.
Keep in mind that only the state is armed. The folly of bringing knives and clubs to a gunfight is clearly known at this stage of history.
Twas always thus. Certainly since medieval times. But Civil War, “Glorious’ Revolution, French and Russian Revolutions still happened. The circumstances need to be extreme I grant you, but given that, even some lower level – but nevertheless armed – agents of the State might be driven to don the Phrygian cap.
Depends on who the electorate believe are most likely to cut the legal, political and bureaucratic gordian knot that is preventing positive change.
Hint – no-one believes it will be Labour or the Tories
Reform is not the answer with a Muslim as its Chairman and with Farage deliberately avoiding the elephant in the room.
But the Reform Grass roots can sort that ONCE Reform are in power. We have too many dangers threatening UK society to waste time and give the MSM an opportunity to atack to bother with sorting the leadership now. Get into power, start scrapping all Blair’s reforms, Net Zero etc and then we can sort out our leadership.
Net Zero alone is capable of destroying the very state itself. The Grid WILL fail if Miliband keeps up his insane drive for windmills and solar panels AND if the Grid fails for any length of time, what’s left of the economy will AND JIT food supermarkets will run short of food for long periods.
You also wouldn’t want to be in many modern UK Hospitals where vast areas have NO natural light and where modern medicine rests on electric and electronics. We have had THREE warnings of what power failure for only a few hours means for chaos. Manchester and Heathrow AIrports and
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-46371271
National Grid now advertise on the bcak of buses where I live AND possibly because I’m a shareholder, they emailed me last week with the SAME message “Are you prepared for Power Cuts”
Their website has this,
https://powercuts.nationalgrid.co.uk/power-cut-advice
and ironically on the very day the Tories called the last GE, ths Government webpage went up.
https://prepare.campaign.gov.uk/get-prepared-for-emergencies/
It isn’t just immigration threatening the fabric of the UK Society. Lets get Reform in first, then sort out the leadership. What could the leaders do IF 300 MPS all changed party IF it gets that bad? It is not impossible it will, so plan to change from a position of power not as wannabbees
Yes I probably agree with this, Bill. I don’t agree with a lot of what Farage has been saying recently, but I can hope he’s smart enough to be focused first on winning, and then starting to pull us back from the abyss.
The WEF loving globalist government must do an about-face, fast. You need oil, gas & coal. Net Zero is, and always has been, a scam.
Look to Africa and Syria. Southport, Manchester Arena, the so far non-existent inquiry into Islamic rape gangs are a sign of what is to come. Even if the English don’t start a revolution, Militant Islam will. Christians are massacred in Africa daily, Syria and parts of the Middle East too, BUT no one in the MSM (or even Unherd as far as I can see) ever likes to mention it. The fact that the UK is far from Christian makes no difference. Hindu, Buddhist none will be acceptable to Militant Islam.
Our Prisons are more often than not being run by Islamists AND that in some cases IS reported in the MSM. Ironically Tommy Robinson in jail and isolation for his own protection has highlighted it in the MSM. Perhaps Pakistan is the State we should look to to get a glimpse of the future England, and perhaps the whole of the UK. Israel may end up the only safe place from Militant Islam.
History repeats itself, first as Griffin then as Farage. The ugly soulless urban sprawl and the associated existential vacuity has long been with us. I would be more interested in hearing about the new immigrant economy thriving outside the mainstream which the writer alludes to and then ignores.