“…looks to take votes from the populist end of the Tory spectrum…”
There it is again. The last time I checked, “populism” meant “offering people what they want (to hear)”
In other words… Politics.
And then this: “The Brexit Party didn’t make much of a dent in 2019 (perhaps because of the Tories’ embrace of Brexit)”
Er, no. It was because leavers knew that brexit was threatened unless they voted Conservative. Farage knew the same and stood down half of his Brexit Party candidates.
And this guy calls himself a political commentator?
So, since anyone can obviously have a go, here’s my tuppence worth. I think there are going to be some very big surprises for some “political commentators” at the next general election
Well said. Populism is a word invented by political commentators to describe politicians who propose policies they don’t approve of (which happen to be popular) or whom they can’t pigeonhole into one of their neatly-constructed socio-political categories.
If they got out more they’d realise that issues cut across social, economic, political and class boundaries, and voters turn to what they term ‘populists’ because they home in on the particular issues of the day that matter to people and that the mainstream parties have shown themselves incapable of dealing with. Immigration is certainly high on the list, but Net Zero, wokery and the dystopian agenda of the WEF are also major concerns of everyday people across the board.
It’s just such a lazy word to use. Is the NHS populism? Is it populism to collect our rubbish bins?
But the bigger issue, as you say, is how the Tories have failed to understand what that 52% Brexit vote and 2019 General Election vote, were asking for. Probably not one million immigrants a year, would be my populist guess.
Populism – extolling policies popular with a sizeable segment of the population in order to get elected but without explaining the required trade-offs inherent, hence deceiving the public at the same time. Then crashing head first into reality
If anything this aptly describes the US Democrat Party.
Andrew Horsman
3 months ago
How about this for a “narrative”, John?
Legacy parties of all colours have invested themselves heavily in the delusion that the dominant model of corporatist “stakeholder globalism” is going to be forever stable, sustainable, and beneficial to mass affluent populations. They are no longer, if they ever were, aware of what it is, how it works, or who an attempted perpetuation of it in a world of limited resources is likely benefit – or harm.
They defer their judgment, and so our country’s political sovereignty, to self-proclaimed so-called “thought leaders” such as Carney, Harari, and (yes) Musk because they don’t have an original idea or the courage to pursue it themselves.
They subscribe, sheeplike, to the utopian crackpot vision of a green, digitised, AI-dominated future in which a disenfranchised, infantilised population is happy and they know it and they clap their hands (or take their pills) when they are told to do so.
They think they live at the end of history and they are the vanguard of second Enlightenment which is going to liberate humanity from its history of violent wars, hostility, and prejudice and solve the “tragedy of the horizon” with a utilitarian ethics which effortlessly sciences the optimal answer to everything.
They are terrified of their own mortality because they don’t have any religious faith; the universe, to them, dies when they die. They project that fear on to the rest of us. Apart from their own death, what scares them most is stepping out of the consensus and the temporary comfort it brings them.
Increasingly, more people are becoming aware of this. They understand that neither the technocratic political mainstream nor the angry populists of left or right have the answers – the former have a plan that won’t work, and the latter don’t have a plan. They will start to organise. Politics is downstream of culture. A lot could change, and sooner than you might think.
Aside from criticism and dismissal, what’s your solution? Can you point me to a place in the World, a time, or even just a coherent theory, that emodies or sets this out?
“They are terrified of their own mortality because they don’t have any religious faith; the universe, to them, dies when they die”
To my experience you have that back to front – the religious ‘answer’ to the fear of death is a form of avoidance or denial – ‘it doesn’t really exist, because there is an afterlife’. This is a fragile, childlike notion, which easily crumbles upon inspection – leaving the religious wide open to anxiety, until they admit, afterall that they do not know. Anxiety that non believers were exposed to early on, an opportunity to process the fearful unknown without fantasy.
I have never noticed this anxiety among religious people. My experience of religious people is that they are much less anxious than non-religious people. The least anxious of all are those that are faithful, patriotic and traditional.
You state that faith crumbles on logical inspection but faith (like tradition and patriotism) does not have a rational basis. You can’t persuade someone to become a Christian any more than you can convince someone that Britain is the best country in the world. It either comes to you as a revelation or it is what you are born into and you choose to embrace it.
But once you do, everything is sorted. You know which side you are on and you don’t worry about things not working out for you. You are British and God is looking down on you. Your job is to try to live a Christian life and do you duty to your King and country and take care of your family. Worrying about “the Patriarchy” or global warming or “structural racism” never enters into it.
Our dear, late Queen was the perfect example of this way of life.
You should try it.
“You state that faith crumbles on logical inspection but faith (like tradition and patriotism) does not have a rational basis”
You say that as if it is a good thing. I prefer my perceptions, mindset, and actions, where-ever possible, to have a rational basis, or at least to know the rational basis of my irrationality. I am agnostic. Each to their own.
I think you are probably right about the anxiety though – a soothing fantasy, unbroken, is a very effective anxiolytic (as far as I know, Narcissa Florence Foster died with the happy sense that she was a great opera singer). It’s just that I do ask questions, not really unusual, and was brought up to – it’s the European way, enlightenment (the Woke have claimed this as a definitive aspect of whiteness). Some supposedly anti-woke people seem to want to backtrack on that part of out history – a desire they share with the woke (see Murray’s, War on the West).
The enlightenment view on religion is that it very much does have a rational basis – every thing does, or it is random, meaningless. The religious deny reality in order to make their supernatural God become true….for the most mundane and human reasons – to try & deal with fear and confusion (oh, that reality). It is a soothing myth, just don’t ask too many questions, otherwise you’ll lose your faith, or end up asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Thanks Dominic. Nothing I can argue with there. Each to their own as you say. I am not anti-enlightenment, I just believe that philosophical questions don’t yield to rational enquiry. I follow scientific method when trying to describe the natural world but I use faith to understand why we are here and how to behave. It works for me.
I also learned a new word: anxiolytic and about Narcissa Florence Foster. Thanks!
A populist sentiment – though not at it’s worst. My posts are about philosophy ( ‘101’ at that) not science. Take a point and debate it. I’ve not shown excessive trust in science – I simply stated undisputed facts without drawing absolute conclusions (as I said, agnostic). Seems like you’ve taken a superficial understanding of scientism, and are wielding like a cudgel, to try and destroy things that disturb your emotions.
Since you say much about philosophy, may I enquire what is a ‘populist sentiment’. As several of the comments here have complained, and I agree, the word ‘populist’ is hopelessly undefined and best seen as a pejorative like racist. I am assuming you don’t mean what it might be read as – a sentiment typically held by the uneducated hoi poloi!
I think the definition of populism is where a where a group’s passionately held, ‘common-sense, and wrong mindset/beliefs is catered to by politicians and others, because it is a route to power. Wokery is one form of populism, and Trumpism another. For example a total Mexico/USA border wall is not and never was viable as an effective deterrent (too easy to dig under, climb over etc, and horrendously expensive to build and maintain) – yet Trump preached it and sold it because he knew he could get the herd to vote for him that way. No-one else serious was pushing it as a solution, because it’s daft – but for the uninitiated it sounds common sense – ‘wanna keep ’em out? Build a wall’
In other words, forget reality and live as though god just wants you to live a Christian life (whatever that might be) and do your duty etc. trouble is, few nowadays have that ‘revelation’ and fewer still are born into it.
I couldn’t have put it better myself!
Those who subscribe to the “comfort” view of religious belief know in their heart of hearts that it’s just that – a comfort blanket.
How that translates to the article is the knowledge that the universe does not disappear upon one’s own demise, and that a party ineptly named Reform (even if successful) can only do one thing: reform the present and therefore condemn itself to irrelevance beyond the short term.
Those that believe seem happy enough to die for those beliefs. However, that apart, who cares, Reform may or may not be ineptly named, but it is where my vote will go, every one of the GreenLibLabCons is fraudulently named. They are in fact ALL The GreenLibLabCons and the following major influences that are about to tip Western Culture over into a battle for survival, being
QE/0 interest rates/deficit spending/Zero Covid/Net Zero/Wokery (epitomised by the concept that ‘believing you are something means you are so contradicting knowledge hard won over centuries using the Scientific method) are ALL the policies of the GreenLibLabCons.
One other point, which potentially still has relevance 5 years after the event. IF all leave voters voted for The Reform Party, they would, on the basis of the 2016 referendum voting stats, return 410 Reform Party MPs. No tactical voting by the Remainers could stop it, because the Leave vote was spread widely and the Remain vote concentrated.
Now for me, I couldn’t give a toss IF Reform struggle to achieve anything, the fact that it is possible to more than decimate the current House of Commons removing 410 of them at one sweep would be sufficient. So I vote Reform and then hope!
Thank you for the thought-provoking responses to my comment.
I don’t profess to know what happens to us when we die. But I do know there are things that we don’t know and won’t ever know eg (if you subscribe to the theory), what happened “before” the Big Bang? And I do know that, at its root, all science ultimately requires a leap of faith because you have to have faith that what you are seeing is “real”.
The Enlightenment allowed humans to make enormous progress. But the problem with progress is that it never stops. Just because it might be possible to use positivist science, for example, to work out the tensile strength required to build a bridge or how to split an atom doesn’t mean that it can be used for example to work out how optimally to structure society, or decide what is and is not “equitable”. If all you “believe” in is rationalist or positivist science and “progress”, either at the individual or the societal level, for its own sake – and you (therefore) take the view that the universe is essentially a cold moral vacuum – in my opinion you leave yourself very vulnerable to making big, ethical and logical mistakes that your very supposed rationalism blinds you to. The history of eugenics is a case in point, as is the more recent outbreak of virulent, destructive scientism in response to SARS-CoV-2.
That doesn’t mean you have to go to the opposite extreme into a full-on Nietzsche-woke denial of objective reality or completely trash the scientific method. You just have to acknowledge its inherent limit, and recognise who it can be perverted by human avarice.
That set of over-reaching pseudoscientific beliefs includes, in my personal humble opinion, the belief that the world is essentially well ordered, that our systems are sustainable, that we can just keep on going & course-correcting and all will be fine. It won’t – but not for the same reasons that the net zero crowd would have you believe.
I do not profess to have the answers. But what I do want to see is a more intelligent, respectful, grown up debate in which the limits of science, faith, politics, economics, and technological progress are acknowledged; and in which reasonable people may agree to differ from, and speak and listen to, each other in good faith and without falling out. But sadly I don’t see that anywhere in mainstream or fringe UK politics at the moment. All I see is (perhaps well-intentioned but delusional) groupthinking consensus-making, narrative management, egoism, fear, and greed.
Thanks for the folksy wisdom. Real enlightnin’ Jerr. Do you know what agnostic means, or are you choosing to redefine me to fit your simplistic narrative?
I’m certainly not disputing what you say, but when you say, ‘they will start to organise,’ I have some scepticism. Organise into what or around what? To an extent the referendum on the EU could have provided some sort of realignment but I’m not convinced it actually happened.
Western voters (not just in the UK) have been very good at saying they want ‘change’ or ‘something different.’ But I don’t think anyone has really come up with anything. Indeed the closest I can think of is Macron – a reminder to everyone who wants ‘change’ to be careful what it is they wish for.
Demanding ‘change’ in itself isn’t much of a demand. I just have a feeling that if something in the UK was going to emerge as ‘something different’ then it would have done so by now. There have been flashes – nationalists to the small extent they are not mainstream, UKIP where PR and circumstance helped in the EU elections. Arguably Jeremy Corbyn was an organised effort at something different. But none of it has really stuck.
Certainly I am gloomy about the prospects for Reform or SDP.
I’d be interested to hear your thinking on what it is that people may start to organise around.
Yes I am gloomy about their prospects too. Corbyn, and Truss too, were attempts at “change” from the ideological left and right. And you make a good point about Macron – be careful what you wish for!
I suppose what I think I want is just a bit more intellectual honesty and humility from people who are not necessarily front line politicians (but also from them too). To have a genuinely liberal and pluralistic politics you have got to have a shared understanding of the basics of the reality that we all inhabit and share. What I perceive is that one class – a very small and wealthy class – is trying to gain a near-monopoly on what people like John Oxley like to call “narrative”, or to put it a different way, what people believe to be “true” to some extent or other. Because that class, to some extent or other, pays the salaries of those in the broader influencer class. That is polluting our culture, and our politics; and they are for sure using technology to do that.
So I don’t think the answer is in one or other political party. It’s more in a wave of reawakening of individual consciences and, frankly, people in literally all walks of life growing a pair and saying what they really think instead of just going along with it even if they think it might dent their promotion or job prospects in the short term. Downstream of that improved awareness of reality and therefore their own self interest will come political organisation; yes there will be conflict but at least it will be honest, informed, and negotiable.
The ‘¨People’ will organise around nothing. TPTB have learned very well from the Covid 19 experiment, that they just have to create a new ‘fear’ and the ‘People’ will do exactly as they are told.
Stephen Walsh
3 months ago
“…it generally opposed Covid lockdowns and has been sceptical of vaccines — an odd line for populists to take when both measures were widely popular…”. Perhaps they were. But the inevitable consequences of lockdown – rampant inflation, severe economic damage, lower educational attainment, and a healthcare system collapsing under the weight of non-Covid related conditions neglected during lockdowns – are not popular. In the past mainstream politicians looked ahead at least as far as the next election. Governing by opinion poll and focus group – with the public wound up by an hysterical media – is not the path to sustainable popularity.
Of course a six-month-long duvet day was always going to be popular with corporate and government bureaucrats – but for blue collar workers and the near two thirds of the workforce who are now either self-employed or working in a small business it was a disaster. Problem is, we don’t have a voice in either the media or government so people like this writer didn’t notice.
It isn’t proving so popular now that the truth is getting out, and the lies SAGE told to frighten us to death are being exposed. The same for the largest vaccine trials in history. Though if you read the MSM you wouldn’t know how much the vaccines have been discredited and the ‘conspiracy’ theories supported. Even the scientists who attacked Trump for claiming it was ‘out of a Wuhan lab’ aren’t widely condmned for their politics overcoming their science despite their private emails showing they believed the virus was ‘manipulated’ but publicly slated Trump for claiming it was.
3 points to cheer folks up. Firstly the NHS isn’t primarily creaking because of stored up non Covid demand. It’s creaking because of 12 years of Tory under-investment, a staffing crisis because a national workforce plan was repeatedly blocked and a failure to sort Social Care meaning hospitals are bottlenecked. Secondly whilst Lockdowns were not good for vast majority of us, they seem to have been v good for fraudsters with c£14b disappearing in useless PPE and Covid loans. Remarkable how little the usual Unherd commentariat comment on that – maybe because it was administered by a chumocracy of non public sector crooks? And thirdly cast an eye across to China if you want to see what a proper Covid mess looks like too and watch carefully the next few wks.
Bravo. The worst thing about UnHerd is the views of most of its commentariat. It always makes me wonder why they bother reading UnHerd articles at all! A committed trolling mentality might explain it…
Fletcher Christian
3 months ago
If you vote Conservative in the next election, just before you place your cross, say out loud… “I fully support mass immigration and the destruction of my country’s heritage.”
If you vote Labour, just before you place your cross, say out loud… “I fully support mass immigration and the destruction of my country’s heritage.”
If you vote Lib Dem, just before you place your cross, say out loud… “I fully support mass immigration and the destruction of my country’s heritage.”
This will help you decide who to vote for, and will leave you under no illusion as to who’s fault the country’s ruin was when you look back in 30 years time. If you voted LibLabCon….. it was yours.
Perhaps this is because Britain has always been in flux, a mongrel country, and they are simply trying to maintain the advantages that accrue from not getting stuck in the mud, pickled in aspic…
Ah, the old ‘nation of immigrants’ fallacy. You do know of course that more people have arrived in the UK over the last 20 years than the last two thousand? That claims of… ohhh look at the Huguenots.. they came here in large numbers didn’t they!? Yes.. around 25,000 over 15 years. Twice that amount have crossed the channel in dinghy’s this year alone. 20 times that amount have arrived here legally… this year alone!! It is not only unsustainable, it is an act of self destruction, of reckless cultural vandalism, it is an act of unmitigated evil perpetrated by successive Blairite governments. And as for being stuck in the mud.. I’d rather be stuck in the mud, than drowned in it.
Last edited 3 months ago by Fletcher Christian
Ian Price
3 months ago
Odd to make no mention of Net Zero which Reform – uniquely among nationwide parties – opposes. As people die of cold unnecessarily this winter, expect the Reform surge to grow.
I thought Net zero was liked to the mass of knowledge in our Politicians brains.
Nell Clover
3 months ago
What’s the definition of a political commentator? Someone who is flummoxed that water flows downhill, surprised that bears sh*t in the woods, and did not expect the Pope to be Catholic.
I can only think it is because they spend their days scribbling thoughts and debating with everyone else in their bubble. No time for research when their grand opinions need to be published. Not so much an ivory tower, more a flat with no windows though the result is much the same
Does your comment have a substantive, arguable point? All I can see is a lot of anger about opinions you disagree with.
Howard Gleave
3 months ago
“an effective showing from Reform might not win seats but could cost the Conservatives dozens.”
I accept all the points about Reform’s policy deficiencies. But I will vote for them anyway. Because the “Conservatives aren’t remotely “conservative” and I want to administer a bloody nose for their unprincipled cynicism. They will tell literally almost anyone what they want to hear. Tough talk on immigration, accompanied by 1.3 million visas and immigration of almost 1 million, extreme green policies that are going to immiserate millions and switch out the lights, anti growth, big state, high tax, unwilling to push back at “woke”, indifferent to Brexit, which is anything but “done”. They need to be wiped out. And Reform needs to be an important part of that. If the party survives at all, it will, I hope, return to its conservative roots.
I have voted for the Conservative Party for (almost) 40 years. Joined Reform UK this year. I will never vote for the Conservative Party again – ever! Whatever Sunak does, or does not do, will be too little and it is way, way too late. Current plan on “illegal” immigration is to fix it by December 2023. Which planet is Sunak living on? Another 12 months of boats coming from France; no more hotels to house them; Local Authorities refusing to accept them due to lack of resource and funding; latest plan is to use holiday camps (good luck with that); more case officers (you don’t need a case officer if you are automatically rejected); and, new staff at Tirana Airport (think the Albanian’s are coming by boat, not Ryanair!). And, Immigration is just one, repeat ONE issue. The entire poltical class are completely deluded. And when pollsters ask me who I’m going to vote for I always answer “Labour” – which is never going to happen.
Too late guv’nor – it all went wrong when the Italians come over in 55 BC with their heathen Gods, opened the door to the Irish and the Germans I reckon. What did the Romans ever do for us? Well I suppose they did that build wall, keep out the smelly-socks. Picts? Iberians more like. Mind you, those Romans were gentlemen compared with the Norwegians with their rapin’ and pillagin’. Thank Gawd for the Italians bringing in a good bit of Palestinian religion to keep us English, Then just as the Vikings give it up, along comes the Normans with their fancy continental ways, only the beouf for them. Took out 75% of the North they did. At last Henry, bless im, brings in proper British Christianity all the way from Eisleben! And don’t get me started on the East India Company forcing their foreign tea and spices on us – coronation chicken, that’s just not right is it?
England ain’t never been the same since, and don’t get me started on those the Royals – nary a drop of English blood in em.
The day foreign tea leaves, spices or coronation chicken get to receive benefits is the day wokery really has reached its final conclusion. 😉
Guy Aston
3 months ago
I believe this piece misses a crucial element. So many people I talk with mention that politics seem to be heading off in a different direction than the people. The situation is worsened by the fact that Labour and the Conservatives are just about standing on the same ground. They say that they no longer feel that our establishment represents the public (democratic?) will.
These folk may see a party that will claim to listen to them very attractive, even to the point of forgiving a weak political manifesto. The current political system is broken and may well need reform.
Re our “broken political system” (of FPTP) do you mean reform like Proportional Representation? So that we have representative democracy at last?
PR is the only way to get rid of the Tory-Labour duopoly: which relies on suppression of minority parties by forcing people into tactical voting — at an estimated 30% of all votes cast in the 2019 General Election.
PR could give Reform 8% to 9% of MPs in a general election: if the incoherence of its policies and its lack of organisation survived more serious scrutiny, especially by a possibly hostile media with a preference for established parties.
But with PR, the currently suppressed votes of LibDem and Green supporters would hugely outnumber any votes for Reform.
Matt M
3 months ago
If the Tories can stop the boats and cap total net immigration below 100k by 2024, they will win re-election.
If they don’t, they won’t.
Neither Farage, Tice or Starmer have any influence over the outcome, only Sunak, Braverman and their MPs.
Even today the wretched BBC is shrieking about an English Scallop Dredger, fishing in the English Channel*, rescuing a boat load of illegal immigrants!
So far over 45,000 of these b*ggers have made the crossing this year! That is slightly more than the Roman Commander, one Aulus Plautius brought with him during the Roman invasion of 43AD.
(*An astonishing event in itself! Let alone the illegal immigrants.)
I think it is entirely possible. What the King-in-parliament decides is law. No court can overturn it. The Tories have a substantial majority, They can easily rule that anyone entering the country illegally will be detained and then deported – home or to Rwanda etc. This is what Rishi Sunak said he was going to do on Tuesday. He knows it is make-or-break. If he has the nerve and the gumption, he can make it happen.
On capping immigration. This is even easier. No court can challenge parliament on this because we have already left the EU and so the ECJ writ no longer holds.
All it needs is the will to do it, hard work, preparation and nerve. Can RIshi do it? We’ll see.
Cameron said he’d accept the referendum result, he didn’t, same with parliament. The Tories are forever claming they’ll do something, but they don’t. When the reality of the catastrophe the Western woke elite and their Central Bankers created plus virtue signalling over a fight we have no dog in, comes home to roost, the Tories are toast. The only question is, will there be the lowest voter turnout ever or will there be a massive backlash against the current established parties masquerading as different parties?
Sunak and the Tories won’t do it. They’ll say they’ll do it, but they won’t and there are only so many times the cry of ‘Wolf’ when there is none works.
You may be right but time will tell. The election isn’t for a couple of years. Let’s see if they can do it. If they can’t, vote for Reform, someone else or sit the election out.
But if they can’t or don’t do it, it is not because of courts or lawyers or treaties. It is because they don’t want to do it. If they did, they could.
Why don’t they set up a declaration of Emergency for the illegal immigration crisis. They did for Covid.
Michael Welby
3 months ago
Generally speaking there is a lack awareness by the populace that our political system is broken and the main stream parties are no longer the answer.
As a former Conservative activist who recognises we need radical change there is only one party (semi formed though it is) that I could vote for.I doubt we shall break through in 2024 and our immediate best hope is that a Labour or Lab-Lib coalition introduces PR.
But that’s a long shot.The real prospect for change comes after 2024 when the next government also fails and the penny begins to drop for voters; the need for root and branch reform
I disagree. I think ‘the people’ are all too aware of how broken our political system is. They just aren’t sure what they can do about it.
As far as Proportional Representation, Labour was all in favour of moving to it, until they won a landslide election victory, then they opposed it. Until they lost an election, then suddenly realised again how attractive PR was.
Odd that, innit?
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It’s not a bug, it’s a feature of the system. Neither party in the Tory-Labour duopoly will want PR if they’e just won a majority of MPs on a minority vote share.
However things are changing. A majority of Labour voters, members, constituency Labour parties and even unions (tipped by members of Unison and Unite, the two biggest) now want PR.
It’s Keir Starmer for whom PR is “not a priority” and who has banned it from the Labour manifesto.
But that’s because the really perceptive and smart people, like you, don’t bother to tell the rest of us. Please spell out exactly what is broken and what your solution is, so that we may one day become as enlightened as you.
Ruud van Man
3 months ago
Reform is a right-of-centre “none-of-the-above” party. Well I, and I suspect many others, are in a none-of-the-above mood so guess who I’ll be voting for at the next GE!
Nicky Samengo-Turner
3 months ago
The term ” right wing” here is as incorrect as it is outdated. The Tories and The Labour party are now on the verge of racism/LBGTQ/ global warming driven National Socialism, and dramatic curtailment of freedoms and free speech, now actively aided and abetted by an out of control Police force nationwide: this is right wing and is what libertarians must fight against with all the moral courage that each and every voter has a duty to summon in order to save this country from totalitarianism.
If only the malcontent Tory, and indeed other MPs could only lift their eyes from the ” fifth column” media and internet and actually see and realise that the vast majority, most especially of working class, voters abhor the woke racialism/ lbgtq/ eco agenda, and have to guts and courage, moral fibre, backbone and sense of service and duty to join and support The Reform Party, and make it electable?
Rob N
3 months ago
“Right wing”? I am not right wing yet I have always voted Conservative, when I have, as the least worst option and I will next time not even consider voting Cons (gender rubbish, lockdowns, vaccine mandates etc etc).
I expect I shall have to vote Reform as the, by far, least worst option.
IF only all Brexiteers and the disillusioned would vote for them. They would do two things that are needed. a) They’d scrap Net Zero and that may save millions of lives b) The very act of voting would remove approximately 410 of the current 600+ MPs in the HoC.
The second fact would be as fantastic as the first and sufficiently ‘reformist’ for my liking!
A Willis
3 months ago
Extract from the Uxbridge English Dictionary:- Popular: The people like it and it is in the interests of ‘The Establishment’. Populist: The people like it, but it is not in the interests of ‘The Establsihment’.
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Wait until the Wokery get hold of the editors of that dictionary. I hear one of the big dictionaries now defines a woman as whatever the biological entity thinks it is.
As I read a comment recently, it’s surprising that a belief system that would readily mock Roman Catholic belief in the transubstantiation of the flesh by a ritual, can claim to believe so fervently in being able to change sex by simply deciding to.
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Indeed – or that people who believe that a wafer turns to maji flesh in the tummy, think it ridiculous and impossible that someone may change gender
Last edited 3 months ago by Dominic A
Andrew Wise
3 months ago
After Ms Truss’s defenestration I looked at the Reform web site to see if they were a viable alternative for my support
Totally incoherent policies put me off an immediate choice
Come the next election I’ll have a choice, vote for a failing Tory party I no longer support or for Reform who are probably more aligned to my views even if I can’t make sense of some of the policy details
Starmer doesn’t look particularly dangerous, he can’t tax wealth much more than Sunak and he can’t be much more anti entrepreneur
so if my Reform vote causes the Tories to loose, it might at least put a rocket up their a**es to return to Tory values with minimum damage in the mean while
a vote for the present lot will only encourage them to drift further left.
I’d be more inclined to vote for the SDP personally, centre left economically and centre right socially they seem a much more coherent option than Reform to me
NIGEL PASSMORE
3 months ago
Neither party has won a seat in a general election but have gained votes by grappling with issues such as immigration and Brexit where the Tories have often looked weak.
Just for the record, this statement is not correct. Douglas Carswell, who defected to UKIP (then Brexit Party) from the Conservatives in 2014, won the by-election he called on defection and then regained his seat in 2015 at the general election. In that election UKIP got more votes than the SNP and Lib Dems combined. UKIP got 1 seat and the SNP and Lib Dems combined had circa 60+ seats/MPs – such is ‘democracy’ under the first past the post system.
Regards
NHP
A Willis
3 months ago
The author states that Reform will suffer from a lack of local workers.
“Hard work on the doorstep is essential for turning voter intentions into crosses on ballot boxes.”
From many comments I’ve read in papers like The Telegraph, I’ve seen many people who claim to have been Tory campaigners, door-knockers, for the Tory party, say they will definitely NOT be doing so for the Tories any longer. Indeed, many have said that they intend to the same work, but to support Reform.
Whether they actually do so for Reform or not, surely if the author is correct, it is the Tories who are going to suffer from this weakness.
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Dougie Undersub
3 months ago
The author, like most other commentators, needs to drop the lazy use of the “Right” to describe parties and voters that are actually on the Left.
The media labelled UKIP/BP as right-wing because in their eyes anyone who dares to treat uncontrolled immigration as an issue worthy of discussion must be of the Right. They were forgetting, or choosing to ignore, Gillian Duffy who spoke for many Labour voters when she confronted Gordon Brown on immigration in 2010.
Look at UKIP’s GE manifestos and you will find left-leaning economic policies combined with social conservatism. Exactly what Red Wall voters wanted when they abandoned Corbyn’s offer in 2019 in favour of Boris’s free-spending version of Conservatism.
A Willis
3 months ago
So the suggestion is that the country can choose only between a left-wing party under Starmer, or an extreme ‘Open Borders’, ‘Net zero’ left-wing party under Sunak?
Now, let me think…
Campbell P
3 months ago
Why so negative about Reform? Why such words as ‘spectre’ and ‘threat’ when they offer policies rather than vain promises and lip service to curb illegal immigration, to not waste bribery on failing countries for influence (Yes, we know the money seldom if ever gets to the intended beneficiaries), etc. etc? A dose of realism rather than self-serving political ambition would not go amiss!
polidori redux
3 months ago
Maybe it’s just me, but John Oxley is beginning to sound desperate.
Bryan Dale
3 months ago
“issues such as immigration and Brexit where the Tories have often looked weak.”
Weak? The party has been utterly useless. Illegal immigration is increasing as well as legal. The Conservative Party spent years fighting to stop Brexit and settled on a deal that left the country half in. Since then, they’ve done nothing to cut tariffs and regulations to obtain the benefits of Brexit. On other fronts, they’ve gone completely woke in the civil service, policing and the military. Taxes? The highest since world war 2. Spending? The same. There’s no point for anyone to vote Conservative anymore. They’re the same as the Liberal Democrats and Labour.
Richard Abbot
3 months ago
I question whether is sufficient appetite for any reform (small r).
Most people are just fine with the way things are. Of course that doesn’t mean that they are happy, or content, or lacking in problems. But both reform and Reform means change, and change, nowadays, means uncertainty and risk.
People will vote for greater and greater state involvement in their lives because their priority is safety. Most people care about nothing else and both the Tories and Labour know this.
Sadly I have to agree with you. The fact that we not only accept but strenuously defend ‘our NHS’, a totally broken and dysfunctional healthcare system, shows how resistant most people are to any kind of change.
They expect the state to kiss all their problems and make them better, and were quite happy to have their freedoms taken away to protect them against a virus which was unlikely to kill 99.6% of them. Perhaps Klaus Schwab is right when he says “you will own nothing and you’ll be happy”.
When the lights start to go out, or inflation rockets to Turkish or Argentine levels, or the JIT food system breaks down because Russian diesel isn’t around because the idiots who think Russia has no reason to fight the Biden family’s pet oligarchs in the Ukraine have sanctioned it, one may find that reality dawns on those who think more Government is the answer.
I have little faith left in humanity, so I cannot imagine that even this sorry state of affairs will change things. To me there’s only only solution, and its another R word, somewhat distant in tone from Reform.
Hugh Bryant
3 months ago
The one thing that Reform could do to change the game is develop a policy to reform the housing market – whose dysfunction is the single most important root cause of discontent among the young and the blue collar classes. Not by offering to build more (there is no shortage) but by addressing over-occupancy.
How?
Put a surcharge on council tax bands G and above, with a 100% discount for families with children under 18 or still in education. This will incentivise the conversion of large properties into apartments (which is what many of them were 50 years ago, particularly in cities). It will also incentivise and facilitate family formation. And it will go some way to remedying the unprecedented upward transfer of wealth that has taken place over the past twenty years.
Introduce the surcharge slowly and progressively so that people have time to adapt.
You show a complete lack of understanding of the housing market, particularly the claim that apartments have been converted into “large properties” when in fact the opposite is true; larger houses demolished and “town houses” crammed onto their sites, or crudely converted into HMO
I disagree. Taxing people out of the houses that they’ve lived in and raised their children in will not be a popular move and will lose more votes than gain them.
Taxes are the problem. Government screws almost everything it touches. We should be looking to reduce taxes and stop deficit spending, stop QE and I’d scrap the BoE. How does it know what the value of money (ie interest rates should be?) As for a desire to create inflation and keep it at 2%, why? So Governments can screw us with another tax we have no control over? There are now some economists in the US saying that 2% is arbitrary and too low, Central Bankers should aim for 4% inflation! As for giving tax money to charities, why? Leave me with the money and I’ll chose what charity I want to donate to. The list of tax waste would occupy pages.
“Government screws almost everything it touches” I’m struggling to think of a single thing that has benefited from having the government sticking it’s oar in.
Jerry Carroll
3 months ago
Pundits are always wittering on about populism without ever explaining what it is or why it is wrong, and please don’t bring up Mussolini or Hitler. Those dogs don’t hunt anymore.
Perry de Havilland
3 months ago
The people who turned a notionally conservative party into a centre-left party & deposed two PMs in the process are the “insurgents”. It was Sunak, Hunt and all their enablers who made it clear Tory Party was no longer a “broad church”.
I don’t vote Labour because I don’t want high taxes, an ever more intrusive state & ludicrous ruinous green energy policies.
I voted Tory and got high taxes, an ever more intrusive state & ludicrous ruinous green energy policies.
Now that Corbyn is gone, a Labour govt at next GE is a forgone conclusion because there’s no reason for an actual conservative to vote for Blue Blairites for fear of Red Blairites.
John Greatorex
3 months ago
In the City of Chester by-election on 1st December, Reform UK won 2.7% of the vote. It seems to me that we are still lacking a genuinely interesting and populist party of the sort that one might see on the continent, unless you consider Farage’s appeals to deregulation and a small state as really capturing the imagination of the disaffected and patriotic British.
…. Especially if they have an IQ in double figures and some knowledge or experience of how stuff actually works and can see through the flim-flam spouted by the lobbyists and vested interest groups.
Agreed, while Farage is a charismatic campaigner, his politics only really aligned with the majority (in my opinion) on the EU and illegal immigration. His brand of neoliberal Thatcherism wouldn’t be popular electorally
Dave Smith
3 months ago
I really could not care if the tory party vanishes for good . It is no way conservative. Under johnson it turned into an oppressive instrument of state control and loved it. . Under Cameron and May it joined in enthusiastically with what we now call ‘woke’ politics. Under the currrent lot it is just useless. It cannot control our borders or guarantee that our energy supplies remain sufficient to run the country. It is to all intents dead in the water. But that applies to all 650 of the MPs. There are very few exceptions. I notice that the Commons is rarely attended by many. What are we paying them for? The recent debate on the safety of the vaccines was noticeable in that there were a handful of MPs there . On every serious matter it is the same. They are not there. I will not vote again . They have wrecked my faith in democracy . Time to find another way of running this country .The MPs are not up to the job. Cromwell kicked them out and that was nearly 400 years ago. We need to learn from that. This lot there cannot seem to understand that it is our Commons and our country. In the end we will have to make it clear to them .
Clarence Clemons
3 months ago
The Tory’s are toast next time round. Just look at the mess they have created.
Whether Reform benefits from this enough will depend on how much Farage gets involved. Tice is ok but has no audience
Paul Vic
3 months ago
Lot of words here by commenters, let me cut to the quick. I am a long term Tory voter but no more. Immigration is a disaster, law order and whole justice system (including easy going prisons) is shameful, talk of pensions getting hammered (again). I will no longer vote for the current left wing Tories. I see a push to the right coming as the only way out, it will be the fault of the Liberal establishment.
Deb Grant
3 months ago
Covid, its aftermath and war driven energy crisis destroyed the ability for any swift levelling up measures or early capitalisation on Brexit. It’s dumb to think much could have been achieved in the time and downright deceitful of politicians on the make to suggest otherwise.
Christopher Elletson
3 months ago
On the title, I sincerely hope not.
Nicky Samengo-Turner
3 months ago
” Windsor knot and Schoffel”..?…. Errrr.. no.
James Kirk
3 months ago
About Reform UK. They have no boots on the ground. As mentioned social media likes are not votes. They give the wrong impression. A new Party needs to be able to dig you out of the snow, drain floodwater, organize protesters on Kent beaches, angrily pointing the way back to France.
As it is they come over as grumpy retirees meeting down at the allotment shed. Their policies, manifesto is on their website. They seem to have lost the fire in the belly seen with the Brexit Party at the euro elections.
Anyone who follows politics and sees the problems wants someone to explain exactly how they will deal with immigration, the nettle the Tories will not grasp and Labour see no need to. Reinstating fracking and building nuclear power stations will not happen immediately. Action now, the element of net zero taxes scrubbed, raising the tax threshold etc.
The unions and the left controlled institutions like teachers, lecturers, the Police and the Civil Service will just disobey and down tools.
Au Contraire
3 months ago
Ironically all such a rabid right wing party will achieve is a Labour win. Cameron should have braved the challenge but he succumbed to what has become a slippery slope for his party and arguably the nation. Sunak may well be forced into short term tactic to continue feeding the beast but it will not salvage them!
Last edited 3 months ago by Au Contraire
Frank McCusker
3 months ago
Good balanced article.
Feminism spins itself as being merely about equality.
In reality, much feminism is animated by an animus against men.
Similarly, “populism” spins itself as a salt-of-the-earth approach which merely refers to political activities or ideas that claim to promote the interests and opinions of ordinary people.
In reality, that self-serving definition of populism, beloved of many commentators here, is self-pitying pish.
In reality, “populism” refers to simplistic, slogan-based “solutions” to complex issues (such as “get Brexit done” (without even defining how lol), or “take back control”, or “too many foreigners”), and usually proffered cynically, in the knowledge that the “solution” won’t work in reality – but it will build up enough of a head of emotional steam (in a socially fractured internet age) to create short-term political changes.
Farage is a master at this side-line expert schtick – full of simple, megaphone solutions, but without the guts to take part in real politics himself. Shouting beery slogans from the side-lines is as good as it gets for this 7 times loser. We saw what happened when Truss attempted a populist solution – chaos, and the world’s fastest u-turn lol.
My sincerest wish is that “Reform” win a thumping majority and actually get into power, instead of [b/w]anking endlessly on the sidelines. It’d be the most fun spectator sport ever, watching choleric armchair theorists trying to govern on the basis of emotion.
And how ironic is this:
“The party is a strange beast — not even a party in the truest sense, but a registered company with centralised control. It had been a Farage vehicle, but is now led by Richard Tice, a property investor turned political agitator.”
That is, the man who advocated that Britain should “take back control” has set up an unaccountable apparatus ran primarily by a small cabal.
Smells like the 1930s folks.
j watson
3 months ago
Just a microcosm of the problems the Right has faced in squaring the inherent Brexit contradictions without coming ‘clean’ with the electorate.
Reform won’t mobilise itself sufficiently. Too many keyboard warriors and too old a demographic. The hard yards won’t get done.
Farage making too much money as a programme host? Why risk actually having to take accountability for the contradictions when you can make a mint as a Commentator?
Tories will stagger on.
“…looks to take votes from the populist end of the Tory spectrum…”
There it is again. The last time I checked, “populism” meant “offering people what they want (to hear)”
In other words… Politics.
And then this: “The Brexit Party didn’t make much of a dent in 2019 (perhaps because of the Tories’ embrace of Brexit)”
Er, no. It was because leavers knew that brexit was threatened unless they voted Conservative. Farage knew the same and stood down half of his Brexit Party candidates.
And this guy calls himself a political commentator?
So, since anyone can obviously have a go, here’s my tuppence worth. I think there are going to be some very big surprises for some “political commentators” at the next general election
Well said. Populism is a word invented by political commentators to describe politicians who propose policies they don’t approve of (which happen to be popular) or whom they can’t pigeonhole into one of their neatly-constructed socio-political categories.
If they got out more they’d realise that issues cut across social, economic, political and class boundaries, and voters turn to what they term ‘populists’ because they home in on the particular issues of the day that matter to people and that the mainstream parties have shown themselves incapable of dealing with. Immigration is certainly high on the list, but Net Zero, wokery and the dystopian agenda of the WEF are also major concerns of everyday people across the board.
It’s just such a lazy word to use. Is the NHS populism? Is it populism to collect our rubbish bins?
But the bigger issue, as you say, is how the Tories have failed to understand what that 52% Brexit vote and 2019 General Election vote, were asking for. Probably not one million immigrants a year, would be my populist guess.
Populism – extolling policies popular with a sizeable segment of the population in order to get elected but without explaining the required trade-offs inherent, hence deceiving the public at the same time. Then crashing head first into reality
If anything this aptly describes the US Democrat Party.
How about this for a “narrative”, John?
Legacy parties of all colours have invested themselves heavily in the delusion that the dominant model of corporatist “stakeholder globalism” is going to be forever stable, sustainable, and beneficial to mass affluent populations. They are no longer, if they ever were, aware of what it is, how it works, or who an attempted perpetuation of it in a world of limited resources is likely benefit – or harm.
They defer their judgment, and so our country’s political sovereignty, to self-proclaimed so-called “thought leaders” such as Carney, Harari, and (yes) Musk because they don’t have an original idea or the courage to pursue it themselves.
They subscribe, sheeplike, to the utopian crackpot vision of a green, digitised, AI-dominated future in which a disenfranchised, infantilised population is happy and they know it and they clap their hands (or take their pills) when they are told to do so.
They think they live at the end of history and they are the vanguard of second Enlightenment which is going to liberate humanity from its history of violent wars, hostility, and prejudice and solve the “tragedy of the horizon” with a utilitarian ethics which effortlessly sciences the optimal answer to everything.
They are terrified of their own mortality because they don’t have any religious faith; the universe, to them, dies when they die. They project that fear on to the rest of us. Apart from their own death, what scares them most is stepping out of the consensus and the temporary comfort it brings them.
Increasingly, more people are becoming aware of this. They understand that neither the technocratic political mainstream nor the angry populists of left or right have the answers – the former have a plan that won’t work, and the latter don’t have a plan. They will start to organise. Politics is downstream of culture. A lot could change, and sooner than you might think.
“Politics is downstream of culture”
… and both are downstream of technology.
Quoting Andrew Breitbart shows his arguments are based on reason.
I would definitely subscribe to your Substack.
Aside from criticism and dismissal, what’s your solution? Can you point me to a place in the World, a time, or even just a coherent theory, that emodies or sets this out?
“They are terrified of their own mortality because they don’t have any religious faith; the universe, to them, dies when they die”
To my experience you have that back to front – the religious ‘answer’ to the fear of death is a form of avoidance or denial – ‘it doesn’t really exist, because there is an afterlife’. This is a fragile, childlike notion, which easily crumbles upon inspection – leaving the religious wide open to anxiety, until they admit, afterall that they do not know. Anxiety that non believers were exposed to early on, an opportunity to process the fearful unknown without fantasy.
I have never noticed this anxiety among religious people. My experience of religious people is that they are much less anxious than non-religious people. The least anxious of all are those that are faithful, patriotic and traditional.
You state that faith crumbles on logical inspection but faith (like tradition and patriotism) does not have a rational basis. You can’t persuade someone to become a Christian any more than you can convince someone that Britain is the best country in the world. It either comes to you as a revelation or it is what you are born into and you choose to embrace it.
But once you do, everything is sorted. You know which side you are on and you don’t worry about things not working out for you. You are British and God is looking down on you. Your job is to try to live a Christian life and do you duty to your King and country and take care of your family. Worrying about “the Patriarchy” or global warming or “structural racism” never enters into it.
Our dear, late Queen was the perfect example of this way of life.
You should try it.
“You state that faith crumbles on logical inspection but faith (like tradition and patriotism) does not have a rational basis”
You say that as if it is a good thing. I prefer my perceptions, mindset, and actions, where-ever possible, to have a rational basis, or at least to know the rational basis of my irrationality. I am agnostic. Each to their own.
I think you are probably right about the anxiety though – a soothing fantasy, unbroken, is a very effective anxiolytic (as far as I know, Narcissa Florence Foster died with the happy sense that she was a great opera singer). It’s just that I do ask questions, not really unusual, and was brought up to – it’s the European way, enlightenment (the Woke have claimed this as a definitive aspect of whiteness). Some supposedly anti-woke people seem to want to backtrack on that part of out history – a desire they share with the woke (see Murray’s, War on the West).
The enlightenment view on religion is that it very much does have a rational basis – every thing does, or it is random, meaningless. The religious deny reality in order to make their supernatural God become true….for the most mundane and human reasons – to try & deal with fear and confusion (oh, that reality). It is a soothing myth, just don’t ask too many questions, otherwise you’ll lose your faith, or end up asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Thanks Dominic. Nothing I can argue with there. Each to their own as you say. I am not anti-enlightenment, I just believe that philosophical questions don’t yield to rational enquiry. I follow scientific method when trying to describe the natural world but I use faith to understand why we are here and how to behave. It works for me.
I also learned a new word: anxiolytic and about Narcissa Florence Foster. Thanks!
Scientism at its best (which is the same as its worst), but do continue crowing from atop the dung heap.
A populist sentiment – though not at it’s worst. My posts are about philosophy ( ‘101’ at that) not science. Take a point and debate it. I’ve not shown excessive trust in science – I simply stated undisputed facts without drawing absolute conclusions (as I said, agnostic). Seems like you’ve taken a superficial understanding of scientism, and are wielding like a cudgel, to try and destroy things that disturb your emotions.
Since you say much about philosophy, may I enquire what is a ‘populist sentiment’. As several of the comments here have complained, and I agree, the word ‘populist’ is hopelessly undefined and best seen as a pejorative like racist. I am assuming you don’t mean what it might be read as – a sentiment typically held by the uneducated hoi poloi!
I think the definition of populism is where a where a group’s passionately held, ‘common-sense, and wrong mindset/beliefs is catered to by politicians and others, because it is a route to power. Wokery is one form of populism, and Trumpism another. For example a total Mexico/USA border wall is not and never was viable as an effective deterrent (too easy to dig under, climb over etc, and horrendously expensive to build and maintain) – yet Trump preached it and sold it because he knew he could get the herd to vote for him that way. No-one else serious was pushing it as a solution, because it’s daft – but for the uninitiated it sounds common sense – ‘wanna keep ’em out? Build a wall’
In other words, forget reality and live as though god just wants you to live a Christian life (whatever that might be) and do your duty etc. trouble is, few nowadays have that ‘revelation’ and fewer still are born into it.
I couldn’t have put it better myself!
Those who subscribe to the “comfort” view of religious belief know in their heart of hearts that it’s just that – a comfort blanket.
How that translates to the article is the knowledge that the universe does not disappear upon one’s own demise, and that a party ineptly named Reform (even if successful) can only do one thing: reform the present and therefore condemn itself to irrelevance beyond the short term.
Those that believe seem happy enough to die for those beliefs. However, that apart, who cares, Reform may or may not be ineptly named, but it is where my vote will go, every one of the GreenLibLabCons is fraudulently named. They are in fact ALL The GreenLibLabCons and the following major influences that are about to tip Western Culture over into a battle for survival, being
QE/0 interest rates/deficit spending/Zero Covid/Net Zero/Wokery (epitomised by the concept that ‘believing you are something means you are so contradicting knowledge hard won over centuries using the Scientific method) are ALL the policies of the GreenLibLabCons.
One other point, which potentially still has relevance 5 years after the event. IF all leave voters voted for The Reform Party, they would, on the basis of the 2016 referendum voting stats, return 410 Reform Party MPs. No tactical voting by the Remainers could stop it, because the Leave vote was spread widely and the Remain vote concentrated.
Now for me, I couldn’t give a toss IF Reform struggle to achieve anything, the fact that it is possible to more than decimate the current House of Commons removing 410 of them at one sweep would be sufficient. So I vote Reform and then hope!
Yes, fair comment. In tying the fear of mortality into voting intentions, i was probably stretching a point too far!
Thank you for the thought-provoking responses to my comment.
I don’t profess to know what happens to us when we die. But I do know there are things that we don’t know and won’t ever know eg (if you subscribe to the theory), what happened “before” the Big Bang? And I do know that, at its root, all science ultimately requires a leap of faith because you have to have faith that what you are seeing is “real”.
The Enlightenment allowed humans to make enormous progress. But the problem with progress is that it never stops. Just because it might be possible to use positivist science, for example, to work out the tensile strength required to build a bridge or how to split an atom doesn’t mean that it can be used for example to work out how optimally to structure society, or decide what is and is not “equitable”. If all you “believe” in is rationalist or positivist science and “progress”, either at the individual or the societal level, for its own sake – and you (therefore) take the view that the universe is essentially a cold moral vacuum – in my opinion you leave yourself very vulnerable to making big, ethical and logical mistakes that your very supposed rationalism blinds you to. The history of eugenics is a case in point, as is the more recent outbreak of virulent, destructive scientism in response to SARS-CoV-2.
That doesn’t mean you have to go to the opposite extreme into a full-on Nietzsche-woke denial of objective reality or completely trash the scientific method. You just have to acknowledge its inherent limit, and recognise who it can be perverted by human avarice.
That set of over-reaching pseudoscientific beliefs includes, in my personal humble opinion, the belief that the world is essentially well ordered, that our systems are sustainable, that we can just keep on going & course-correcting and all will be fine. It won’t – but not for the same reasons that the net zero crowd would have you believe.
I do not profess to have the answers. But what I do want to see is a more intelligent, respectful, grown up debate in which the limits of science, faith, politics, economics, and technological progress are acknowledged; and in which reasonable people may agree to differ from, and speak and listen to, each other in good faith and without falling out. But sadly I don’t see that anywhere in mainstream or fringe UK politics at the moment. All I see is (perhaps well-intentioned but delusional) groupthinking consensus-making, narrative management, egoism, fear, and greed.
Is it too much to ask for something better?
The thing to understand about solipsistic atheists is they cluck like bantom roosters before the crow.
Thanks for the folksy wisdom. Real enlightnin’ Jerr. Do you know what agnostic means, or are you choosing to redefine me to fit your simplistic narrative?
I’m certainly not disputing what you say, but when you say, ‘they will start to organise,’ I have some scepticism. Organise into what or around what? To an extent the referendum on the EU could have provided some sort of realignment but I’m not convinced it actually happened.
Western voters (not just in the UK) have been very good at saying they want ‘change’ or ‘something different.’ But I don’t think anyone has really come up with anything. Indeed the closest I can think of is Macron – a reminder to everyone who wants ‘change’ to be careful what it is they wish for.
Demanding ‘change’ in itself isn’t much of a demand. I just have a feeling that if something in the UK was going to emerge as ‘something different’ then it would have done so by now. There have been flashes – nationalists to the small extent they are not mainstream, UKIP where PR and circumstance helped in the EU elections. Arguably Jeremy Corbyn was an organised effort at something different. But none of it has really stuck.
Certainly I am gloomy about the prospects for Reform or SDP.
I’d be interested to hear your thinking on what it is that people may start to organise around.
Yes I am gloomy about their prospects too. Corbyn, and Truss too, were attempts at “change” from the ideological left and right. And you make a good point about Macron – be careful what you wish for!
I suppose what I think I want is just a bit more intellectual honesty and humility from people who are not necessarily front line politicians (but also from them too). To have a genuinely liberal and pluralistic politics you have got to have a shared understanding of the basics of the reality that we all inhabit and share. What I perceive is that one class – a very small and wealthy class – is trying to gain a near-monopoly on what people like John Oxley like to call “narrative”, or to put it a different way, what people believe to be “true” to some extent or other. Because that class, to some extent or other, pays the salaries of those in the broader influencer class. That is polluting our culture, and our politics; and they are for sure using technology to do that.
So I don’t think the answer is in one or other political party. It’s more in a wave of reawakening of individual consciences and, frankly, people in literally all walks of life growing a pair and saying what they really think instead of just going along with it even if they think it might dent their promotion or job prospects in the short term. Downstream of that improved awareness of reality and therefore their own self interest will come political organisation; yes there will be conflict but at least it will be honest, informed, and negotiable.
The ‘¨People’ will organise around nothing. TPTB have learned very well from the Covid 19 experiment, that they just have to create a new ‘fear’ and the ‘People’ will do exactly as they are told.
“…it generally opposed Covid lockdowns and has been sceptical of vaccines — an odd line for populists to take when both measures were widely popular…”. Perhaps they were. But the inevitable consequences of lockdown – rampant inflation, severe economic damage, lower educational attainment, and a healthcare system collapsing under the weight of non-Covid related conditions neglected during lockdowns – are not popular. In the past mainstream politicians looked ahead at least as far as the next election. Governing by opinion poll and focus group – with the public wound up by an hysterical media – is not the path to sustainable popularity.
Of course a six-month-long duvet day was always going to be popular with corporate and government bureaucrats – but for blue collar workers and the near two thirds of the workforce who are now either self-employed or working in a small business it was a disaster. Problem is, we don’t have a voice in either the media or government so people like this writer didn’t notice.
It isn’t proving so popular now that the truth is getting out, and the lies SAGE told to frighten us to death are being exposed. The same for the largest vaccine trials in history. Though if you read the MSM you wouldn’t know how much the vaccines have been discredited and the ‘conspiracy’ theories supported. Even the scientists who attacked Trump for claiming it was ‘out of a Wuhan lab’ aren’t widely condmned for their politics overcoming their science despite their private emails showing they believed the virus was ‘manipulated’ but publicly slated Trump for claiming it was.
3 points to cheer folks up. Firstly the NHS isn’t primarily creaking because of stored up non Covid demand. It’s creaking because of 12 years of Tory under-investment, a staffing crisis because a national workforce plan was repeatedly blocked and a failure to sort Social Care meaning hospitals are bottlenecked. Secondly whilst Lockdowns were not good for vast majority of us, they seem to have been v good for fraudsters with c£14b disappearing in useless PPE and Covid loans. Remarkable how little the usual Unherd commentariat comment on that – maybe because it was administered by a chumocracy of non public sector crooks? And thirdly cast an eye across to China if you want to see what a proper Covid mess looks like too and watch carefully the next few wks.
Bravo. The worst thing about UnHerd is the views of most of its commentariat. It always makes me wonder why they bother reading UnHerd articles at all! A committed trolling mentality might explain it…
If you vote Conservative in the next election, just before you place your cross, say out loud… “I fully support mass immigration and the destruction of my country’s heritage.”
If you vote Labour, just before you place your cross, say out loud… “I fully support mass immigration and the destruction of my country’s heritage.”
If you vote Lib Dem, just before you place your cross, say out loud… “I fully support mass immigration and the destruction of my country’s heritage.”
This will help you decide who to vote for, and will leave you under no illusion as to who’s fault the country’s ruin was when you look back in 30 years time. If you voted LibLabCon….. it was yours.
So very true!
Perhaps this is because Britain has always been in flux, a mongrel country, and they are simply trying to maintain the advantages that accrue from not getting stuck in the mud, pickled in aspic…
Ah, the old ‘nation of immigrants’ fallacy. You do know of course that more people have arrived in the UK over the last 20 years than the last two thousand? That claims of… ohhh look at the Huguenots.. they came here in large numbers didn’t they!? Yes.. around 25,000 over 15 years. Twice that amount have crossed the channel in dinghy’s this year alone. 20 times that amount have arrived here legally… this year alone!! It is not only unsustainable, it is an act of self destruction, of reckless cultural vandalism, it is an act of unmitigated evil perpetrated by successive Blairite governments. And as for being stuck in the mud.. I’d rather be stuck in the mud, than drowned in it.
Odd to make no mention of Net Zero which Reform – uniquely among nationwide parties – opposes. As people die of cold unnecessarily this winter, expect the Reform surge to grow.
I thought Net zero was liked to the mass of knowledge in our Politicians brains.
What’s the definition of a political commentator? Someone who is flummoxed that water flows downhill, surprised that bears sh*t in the woods, and did not expect the Pope to be Catholic.
I can only think it is because they spend their days scribbling thoughts and debating with everyone else in their bubble. No time for research when their grand opinions need to be published. Not so much an ivory tower, more a flat with no windows though the result is much the same
(I don’t think this pope is, though).
Couldn’t agree more
Agree with what?
Does your comment have a substantive, arguable point? All I can see is a lot of anger about opinions you disagree with.
“an effective showing from Reform might not win seats but could cost the Conservatives dozens.”
I accept all the points about Reform’s policy deficiencies. But I will vote for them anyway. Because the “Conservatives aren’t remotely “conservative” and I want to administer a bloody nose for their unprincipled cynicism. They will tell literally almost anyone what they want to hear. Tough talk on immigration, accompanied by 1.3 million visas and immigration of almost 1 million, extreme green policies that are going to immiserate millions and switch out the lights, anti growth, big state, high tax, unwilling to push back at “woke”, indifferent to Brexit, which is anything but “done”. They need to be wiped out. And Reform needs to be an important part of that. If the party survives at all, it will, I hope, return to its conservative roots.
Yes I look at Grant Shapps and think what the f….
I have voted for the Conservative Party for (almost) 40 years. Joined Reform UK this year. I will never vote for the Conservative Party again – ever! Whatever Sunak does, or does not do, will be too little and it is way, way too late. Current plan on “illegal” immigration is to fix it by December 2023. Which planet is Sunak living on? Another 12 months of boats coming from France; no more hotels to house them; Local Authorities refusing to accept them due to lack of resource and funding; latest plan is to use holiday camps (good luck with that); more case officers (you don’t need a case officer if you are automatically rejected); and, new staff at Tirana Airport (think the Albanian’s are coming by boat, not Ryanair!). And, Immigration is just one, repeat ONE issue. The entire poltical class are completely deluded. And when pollsters ask me who I’m going to vote for I always answer “Labour” – which is never going to happen.
Too late guv’nor – it all went wrong when the Italians come over in 55 BC with their heathen Gods, opened the door to the Irish and the Germans I reckon. What did the Romans ever do for us? Well I suppose they did that build wall, keep out the smelly-socks. Picts? Iberians more like. Mind you, those Romans were gentlemen compared with the Norwegians with their rapin’ and pillagin’. Thank Gawd for the Italians bringing in a good bit of Palestinian religion to keep us English, Then just as the Vikings give it up, along comes the Normans with their fancy continental ways, only the beouf for them. Took out 75% of the North they did. At last Henry, bless im, brings in proper British Christianity all the way from Eisleben! And don’t get me started on the East India Company forcing their foreign tea and spices on us – coronation chicken, that’s just not right is it?
England ain’t never been the same since, and don’t get me started on those the Royals – nary a drop of English blood in em.
The day foreign tea leaves, spices or coronation chicken get to receive benefits is the day wokery really has reached its final conclusion. 😉
I believe this piece misses a crucial element. So many people I talk with mention that politics seem to be heading off in a different direction than the people. The situation is worsened by the fact that Labour and the Conservatives are just about standing on the same ground. They say that they no longer feel that our establishment represents the public (democratic?) will.
These folk may see a party that will claim to listen to them very attractive, even to the point of forgiving a weak political manifesto. The current political system is broken and may well need reform.
Would you say that Brtain neds a white strongman to put an end to this wet democracy caper? What is your solution mate?
Re our “broken political system” (of FPTP) do you mean reform like Proportional Representation? So that we have representative democracy at last?
PR is the only way to get rid of the Tory-Labour duopoly: which relies on suppression of minority parties by forcing people into tactical voting — at an estimated 30% of all votes cast in the 2019 General Election.
PR could give Reform 8% to 9% of MPs in a general election: if the incoherence of its policies and its lack of organisation survived more serious scrutiny, especially by a possibly hostile media with a preference for established parties.
But with PR, the currently suppressed votes of LibDem and Green supporters would hugely outnumber any votes for Reform.
If the Tories can stop the boats and cap total net immigration below 100k by 2024, they will win re-election.
If they don’t, they won’t.
Neither Farage, Tice or Starmer have any influence over the outcome, only Sunak, Braverman and their MPs.
Do you really think that is possible!
Even today the wretched BBC is shrieking about an English Scallop Dredger, fishing in the English Channel*, rescuing a boat load of illegal immigrants!
So far over 45,000 of these b*ggers have made the crossing this year! That is slightly more than the Roman Commander, one Aulus Plautius brought with him during the Roman invasion of 43AD.
(*An astonishing event in itself! Let alone the illegal immigrants.)
I think it is entirely possible. What the King-in-parliament decides is law. No court can overturn it. The Tories have a substantial majority, They can easily rule that anyone entering the country illegally will be detained and then deported – home or to Rwanda etc. This is what Rishi Sunak said he was going to do on Tuesday. He knows it is make-or-break. If he has the nerve and the gumption, he can make it happen.
On capping immigration. This is even easier. No court can challenge parliament on this because we have already left the EU and so the ECJ writ no longer holds.
All it needs is the will to do it, hard work, preparation and nerve. Can RIshi do it? We’ll see.
Cameron said he’d accept the referendum result, he didn’t, same with parliament. The Tories are forever claming they’ll do something, but they don’t. When the reality of the catastrophe the Western woke elite and their Central Bankers created plus virtue signalling over a fight we have no dog in, comes home to roost, the Tories are toast. The only question is, will there be the lowest voter turnout ever or will there be a massive backlash against the current established parties masquerading as different parties?
So, your Brexit failed on the immigration aspect too. LOL
What Brexit?
Sunak and the Tories won’t do it. They’ll say they’ll do it, but they won’t and there are only so many times the cry of ‘Wolf’ when there is none works.
You may be right but time will tell. The election isn’t for a couple of years. Let’s see if they can do it. If they can’t, vote for Reform, someone else or sit the election out.
But if they can’t or don’t do it, it is not because of courts or lawyers or treaties. It is because they don’t want to do it. If they did, they could.
Why don’t they set up a declaration of Emergency for the illegal immigration crisis. They did for Covid.
Generally speaking there is a lack awareness by the populace that our political system is broken and the main stream parties are no longer the answer.
As a former Conservative activist who recognises we need radical change there is only one party (semi formed though it is) that I could vote for.I doubt we shall break through in 2024 and our immediate best hope is that a Labour or Lab-Lib coalition introduces PR.
But that’s a long shot.The real prospect for change comes after 2024 when the next government also fails and the penny begins to drop for voters; the need for root and branch reform
I disagree. I think ‘the people’ are all too aware of how broken our political system is. They just aren’t sure what they can do about it.
As far as Proportional Representation, Labour was all in favour of moving to it, until they won a landslide election victory, then they opposed it. Until they lost an election, then suddenly realised again how attractive PR was.
Odd that, innit?
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It’s not a bug, it’s a feature of the system. Neither party in the Tory-Labour duopoly will want PR if they’e just won a majority of MPs on a minority vote share.
However things are changing. A majority of Labour voters, members, constituency Labour parties and even unions (tipped by members of Unison and Unite, the two biggest) now want PR.
It’s Keir Starmer for whom PR is “not a priority” and who has banned it from the Labour manifesto.
But that’s because the really perceptive and smart people, like you, don’t bother to tell the rest of us. Please spell out exactly what is broken and what your solution is, so that we may one day become as enlightened as you.
Reform is a right-of-centre “none-of-the-above” party. Well I, and I suspect many others, are in a none-of-the-above mood so guess who I’ll be voting for at the next GE!
The term ” right wing” here is as incorrect as it is outdated. The Tories and The Labour party are now on the verge of racism/LBGTQ/ global warming driven National Socialism, and dramatic curtailment of freedoms and free speech, now actively aided and abetted by an out of control Police force nationwide: this is right wing and is what libertarians must fight against with all the moral courage that each and every voter has a duty to summon in order to save this country from totalitarianism.
If only the malcontent Tory, and indeed other MPs could only lift their eyes from the ” fifth column” media and internet and actually see and realise that the vast majority, most especially of working class, voters abhor the woke racialism/ lbgtq/ eco agenda, and have to guts and courage, moral fibre, backbone and sense of service and duty to join and support The Reform Party, and make it electable?
“Right wing”? I am not right wing yet I have always voted Conservative, when I have, as the least worst option and I will next time not even consider voting Cons (gender rubbish, lockdowns, vaccine mandates etc etc).
I expect I shall have to vote Reform as the, by far, least worst option.
IF only all Brexiteers and the disillusioned would vote for them. They would do two things that are needed. a) They’d scrap Net Zero and that may save millions of lives b) The very act of voting would remove approximately 410 of the current 600+ MPs in the HoC.
The second fact would be as fantastic as the first and sufficiently ‘reformist’ for my liking!
Extract from the Uxbridge English Dictionary:-
Popular: The people like it and it is in the interests of ‘The Establishment’.
Populist: The people like it, but it is not in the interests of ‘The Establsihment’.
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Wait until the Wokery get hold of the editors of that dictionary. I hear one of the big dictionaries now defines a woman as whatever the biological entity thinks it is.
As I read a comment recently, it’s surprising that a belief system that would readily mock Roman Catholic belief in the transubstantiation of the flesh by a ritual, can claim to believe so fervently in being able to change sex by simply deciding to.
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Indeed – or that people who believe that a wafer turns to maji flesh in the tummy, think it ridiculous and impossible that someone may change gender
After Ms Truss’s defenestration I looked at the Reform web site to see if they were a viable alternative for my support
Totally incoherent policies put me off an immediate choice
Come the next election I’ll have a choice, vote for a failing Tory party I no longer support or for Reform who are probably more aligned to my views even if I can’t make sense of some of the policy details
Starmer doesn’t look particularly dangerous, he can’t tax wealth much more than Sunak and he can’t be much more anti entrepreneur
so if my Reform vote causes the Tories to loose, it might at least put a rocket up their a**es to return to Tory values with minimum damage in the mean while
a vote for the present lot will only encourage them to drift further left.
I’d be more inclined to vote for the SDP personally, centre left economically and centre right socially they seem a much more coherent option than Reform to me
Neither party has won a seat in a general election but have gained votes by grappling with issues such as immigration and Brexit where the Tories have often looked weak.
Just for the record, this statement is not correct. Douglas Carswell, who defected to UKIP (then Brexit Party) from the Conservatives in 2014, won the by-election he called on defection and then regained his seat in 2015 at the general election. In that election UKIP got more votes than the SNP and Lib Dems combined. UKIP got 1 seat and the SNP and Lib Dems combined had circa 60+ seats/MPs – such is ‘democracy’ under the first past the post system.
Regards
NHP
The author states that Reform will suffer from a lack of local workers.
“Hard work on the doorstep is essential for turning voter intentions into crosses on ballot boxes.”
From many comments I’ve read in papers like The Telegraph, I’ve seen many people who claim to have been Tory campaigners, door-knockers, for the Tory party, say they will definitely NOT be doing so for the Tories any longer. Indeed, many have said that they intend to the same work, but to support Reform.
Whether they actually do so for Reform or not, surely if the author is correct, it is the Tories who are going to suffer from this weakness.
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The author, like most other commentators, needs to drop the lazy use of the “Right” to describe parties and voters that are actually on the Left.
The media labelled UKIP/BP as right-wing because in their eyes anyone who dares to treat uncontrolled immigration as an issue worthy of discussion must be of the Right. They were forgetting, or choosing to ignore, Gillian Duffy who spoke for many Labour voters when she confronted Gordon Brown on immigration in 2010.
Look at UKIP’s GE manifestos and you will find left-leaning economic policies combined with social conservatism. Exactly what Red Wall voters wanted when they abandoned Corbyn’s offer in 2019 in favour of Boris’s free-spending version of Conservatism.
So the suggestion is that the country can choose only between a left-wing party under Starmer, or an extreme ‘Open Borders’, ‘Net zero’ left-wing party under Sunak?
Now, let me think…
Why so negative about Reform? Why such words as ‘spectre’ and ‘threat’ when they offer policies rather than vain promises and lip service to curb illegal immigration, to not waste bribery on failing countries for influence (Yes, we know the money seldom if ever gets to the intended beneficiaries), etc. etc? A dose of realism rather than self-serving political ambition would not go amiss!
Maybe it’s just me, but John Oxley is beginning to sound desperate.
“issues such as immigration and Brexit where the Tories have often looked weak.”
Weak? The party has been utterly useless. Illegal immigration is increasing as well as legal. The Conservative Party spent years fighting to stop Brexit and settled on a deal that left the country half in. Since then, they’ve done nothing to cut tariffs and regulations to obtain the benefits of Brexit. On other fronts, they’ve gone completely woke in the civil service, policing and the military. Taxes? The highest since world war 2. Spending? The same. There’s no point for anyone to vote Conservative anymore. They’re the same as the Liberal Democrats and Labour.
I question whether is sufficient appetite for any reform (small r).
Most people are just fine with the way things are. Of course that doesn’t mean that they are happy, or content, or lacking in problems. But both reform and Reform means change, and change, nowadays, means uncertainty and risk.
People will vote for greater and greater state involvement in their lives because their priority is safety. Most people care about nothing else and both the Tories and Labour know this.
Sadly I have to agree with you. The fact that we not only accept but strenuously defend ‘our NHS’, a totally broken and dysfunctional healthcare system, shows how resistant most people are to any kind of change.
They expect the state to kiss all their problems and make them better, and were quite happy to have their freedoms taken away to protect them against a virus which was unlikely to kill 99.6% of them. Perhaps Klaus Schwab is right when he says “you will own nothing and you’ll be happy”.
Isn’t that the way the people of Malmo would have thought?
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When the lights start to go out, or inflation rockets to Turkish or Argentine levels, or the JIT food system breaks down because Russian diesel isn’t around because the idiots who think Russia has no reason to fight the Biden family’s pet oligarchs in the Ukraine have sanctioned it, one may find that reality dawns on those who think more Government is the answer.
I have little faith left in humanity, so I cannot imagine that even this sorry state of affairs will change things. To me there’s only only solution, and its another R word, somewhat distant in tone from Reform.
The one thing that Reform could do to change the game is develop a policy to reform the housing market – whose dysfunction is the single most important root cause of discontent among the young and the blue collar classes. Not by offering to build more (there is no shortage) but by addressing over-occupancy.
How?
Put a surcharge on council tax bands G and above, with a 100% discount for families with children under 18 or still in education. This will incentivise the conversion of large properties into apartments (which is what many of them were 50 years ago, particularly in cities). It will also incentivise and facilitate family formation. And it will go some way to remedying the unprecedented upward transfer of wealth that has taken place over the past twenty years.
Introduce the surcharge slowly and progressively so that people have time to adapt.
You show a complete lack of understanding of the housing market, particularly the claim that apartments have been converted into “large properties” when in fact the opposite is true; larger houses demolished and “town houses” crammed onto their sites, or crudely converted into HMO
A spell working for Royal Mail as a parcel delivery driver would dispel that myth, but I doubt he needs the money.
I disagree. Taxing people out of the houses that they’ve lived in and raised their children in will not be a popular move and will lose more votes than gain them.
Taxes are the problem. Government screws almost everything it touches. We should be looking to reduce taxes and stop deficit spending, stop QE and I’d scrap the BoE. How does it know what the value of money (ie interest rates should be?) As for a desire to create inflation and keep it at 2%, why? So Governments can screw us with another tax we have no control over? There are now some economists in the US saying that 2% is arbitrary and too low, Central Bankers should aim for 4% inflation! As for giving tax money to charities, why? Leave me with the money and I’ll chose what charity I want to donate to. The list of tax waste would occupy pages.
“Government screws almost everything it touches” I’m struggling to think of a single thing that has benefited from having the government sticking it’s oar in.
Pundits are always wittering on about populism without ever explaining what it is or why it is wrong, and please don’t bring up Mussolini or Hitler. Those dogs don’t hunt anymore.
The people who turned a notionally conservative party into a centre-left party & deposed two PMs in the process are the “insurgents”. It was Sunak, Hunt and all their enablers who made it clear Tory Party was no longer a “broad church”.
I don’t vote Labour because I don’t want high taxes, an ever more intrusive state & ludicrous ruinous green energy policies.
I voted Tory and got high taxes, an ever more intrusive state & ludicrous ruinous green energy policies.
Now that Corbyn is gone, a Labour govt at next GE is a forgone conclusion because there’s no reason for an actual conservative to vote for Blue Blairites for fear of Red Blairites.
In the City of Chester by-election on 1st December, Reform UK won 2.7% of the vote. It seems to me that we are still lacking a genuinely interesting and populist party of the sort that one might see on the continent, unless you consider Farage’s appeals to deregulation and a small state as really capturing the imagination of the disaffected and patriotic British.
Not much demand for neo-Thatcherite conservativism. The world has moved on – honest politicians who put country first would be a start.
…. Especially if they have an IQ in double figures and some knowledge or experience of how stuff actually works and can see through the flim-flam spouted by the lobbyists and vested interest groups.
Agreed, while Farage is a charismatic campaigner, his politics only really aligned with the majority (in my opinion) on the EU and illegal immigration. His brand of neoliberal Thatcherism wouldn’t be popular electorally
I really could not care if the tory party vanishes for good . It is no way conservative. Under johnson it turned into an oppressive instrument of state control and loved it. . Under Cameron and May it joined in enthusiastically with what we now call ‘woke’ politics. Under the currrent lot it is just useless. It cannot control our borders or guarantee that our energy supplies remain sufficient to run the country. It is to all intents dead in the water. But that applies to all 650 of the MPs. There are very few exceptions. I notice that the Commons is rarely attended by many. What are we paying them for? The recent debate on the safety of the vaccines was noticeable in that there were a handful of MPs there . On every serious matter it is the same. They are not there. I will not vote again . They have wrecked my faith in democracy . Time to find another way of running this country .The MPs are not up to the job. Cromwell kicked them out and that was nearly 400 years ago. We need to learn from that. This lot there cannot seem to understand that it is our Commons and our country. In the end we will have to make it clear to them .
The Tory’s are toast next time round. Just look at the mess they have created.
Whether Reform benefits from this enough will depend on how much Farage gets involved. Tice is ok but has no audience
Lot of words here by commenters, let me cut to the quick. I am a long term Tory voter but no more. Immigration is a disaster, law order and whole justice system (including easy going prisons) is shameful, talk of pensions getting hammered (again). I will no longer vote for the current left wing Tories. I see a push to the right coming as the only way out, it will be the fault of the Liberal establishment.
Covid, its aftermath and war driven energy crisis destroyed the ability for any swift levelling up measures or early capitalisation on Brexit. It’s dumb to think much could have been achieved in the time and downright deceitful of politicians on the make to suggest otherwise.
On the title, I sincerely hope not.
” Windsor knot and Schoffel”..?…. Errrr.. no.
About Reform UK. They have no boots on the ground. As mentioned social media likes are not votes. They give the wrong impression. A new Party needs to be able to dig you out of the snow, drain floodwater, organize protesters on Kent beaches, angrily pointing the way back to France.
As it is they come over as grumpy retirees meeting down at the allotment shed. Their policies, manifesto is on their website. They seem to have lost the fire in the belly seen with the Brexit Party at the euro elections.
Anyone who follows politics and sees the problems wants someone to explain exactly how they will deal with immigration, the nettle the Tories will not grasp and Labour see no need to. Reinstating fracking and building nuclear power stations will not happen immediately. Action now, the element of net zero taxes scrubbed, raising the tax threshold etc.
The unions and the left controlled institutions like teachers, lecturers, the Police and the Civil Service will just disobey and down tools.
Ironically all such a rabid right wing party will achieve is a Labour win. Cameron should have braved the challenge but he succumbed to what has become a slippery slope for his party and arguably the nation. Sunak may well be forced into short term tactic to continue feeding the beast but it will not salvage them!
Good balanced article.
Feminism spins itself as being merely about equality.
In reality, much feminism is animated by an animus against men.
Similarly, “populism” spins itself as a salt-of-the-earth approach which merely refers to political activities or ideas that claim to promote the interests and opinions of ordinary people.
In reality, that self-serving definition of populism, beloved of many commentators here, is self-pitying pish.
In reality, “populism” refers to simplistic, slogan-based “solutions” to complex issues (such as “get Brexit done” (without even defining how lol), or “take back control”, or “too many foreigners”), and usually proffered cynically, in the knowledge that the “solution” won’t work in reality – but it will build up enough of a head of emotional steam (in a socially fractured internet age) to create short-term political changes.
Farage is a master at this side-line expert schtick – full of simple, megaphone solutions, but without the guts to take part in real politics himself. Shouting beery slogans from the side-lines is as good as it gets for this 7 times loser. We saw what happened when Truss attempted a populist solution – chaos, and the world’s fastest u-turn lol.
My sincerest wish is that “Reform” win a thumping majority and actually get into power, instead of [b/w]anking endlessly on the sidelines. It’d be the most fun spectator sport ever, watching choleric armchair theorists trying to govern on the basis of emotion.
And how ironic is this:
“The party is a strange beast — not even a party in the truest sense, but a registered company with centralised control. It had been a Farage vehicle, but is now led by Richard Tice, a property investor turned political agitator.”
That is, the man who advocated that Britain should “take back control” has set up an unaccountable apparatus ran primarily by a small cabal.
Smells like the 1930s folks.
Just a microcosm of the problems the Right has faced in squaring the inherent Brexit contradictions without coming ‘clean’ with the electorate.
Reform won’t mobilise itself sufficiently. Too many keyboard warriors and too old a demographic. The hard yards won’t get done.
Farage making too much money as a programme host? Why risk actually having to take accountability for the contradictions when you can make a mint as a Commentator?
Tories will stagger on.