January 3, 2024 - 12:35pm
Change was the theme of Richard Tice’s speech this morning welcoming the election year for Reform UK, yet much of his message was the same as that which failed to land last year. Reform’s leader tried to position his party as an alternative to Labour and Tory stagnation, the change that the country is looking for. It remains to be seen if anyone is listening.
Tice’s speech was bullish on the party’s chances. He pledged to run candidates in every seat in the general election, promising that nearly 500 were already selected and allocated. The coming election, he set out, was about “smashing the Tories” and offering an alternative to Labour. In particular, he warned the Right of the Conservative Party that there would be no non-aggression pacts when it came to standing candidates.
On policy, Tice set out Reform’s stall as an alternative to the big, “socialist” style of government offered by both main parties. Reform’s manifesto pledges involve raising the threshold for income tax to £20,000, cutting “wasteful” Government spending by 5%, slashing immigration, cutting EU red tape and abandoning Net Zero. It was a pitch framed against the high spending and taxation of Sunak and the “catastrophic cocktail” of “Starmageddon”.
Yet this approach involves the same mistakes which have seen Reform fail to capitalise on Tory weaknesses already. The party’s economic Thatcherism is largely at odds with the voters it is trying to chase. Brexit success and Tory wins in the Red Wall were based on the sort of voters who like Government intervention, rather than oppose it. They are often dependent on state services and support big spending, while remaining too low-income to pay much tax.
These issues hold especially true if the party is attempting to target Labour voters as much as disillusioned Tories. Tice said nothing of the NHS in his announcements, ignoring the problem of growing waiting lists. There was no comment on education spending or other aspects of the failing state. If he was trying to tempt voters who might be Labour-curious, but unconvinced about Keir Starmer, it was a curious pitch to swerve.
Reform appear to be still chasing voters it doesn’t fully understand. The red meat on offer is purely Tory in its flavour, with freshly unveiled Wellingborough candidate Ben Habib using his speech to praise Thatcher. This again ignores the very dynamics of the Red Wall, where it was the legacy of the Eighties which stopped many voting Tory until Brexit came along. Equally, Tice’s party ignores the realities of Boris Johnson’s landslide-gaining manifesto, which along with leaving the EU was a rejection of recent Tory economics, with pledges to spend more and limited promises on taxation.
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SubscribeIt doesn’t matter what their policies are, Labour are a shoo-in and if you want the Conservatives to consider actually becoming conservative again whilst in opposition instead of a high tax, high migration Blair continuity party then a vote for Reform is merely a signal for them to tac back to centre right policies.
Yes exactly. I may vote for Reform simply as a signal to Labour, Tories or anyone else who may be listening that net migration is the big issue.
And by doing so you will ensure that migration goes on at high levels (have Labour ever brought it down?) and that the last glimmering prospects of future conservatism are finally snuffed out.
Honestly, the last glimmering prospects of social conservativism will come from the prole descendants of immigrants from the third world. Where white Britons have failed on issues like transgenderism, the Muslims and Catholics of the future will succeed. It is the only upside of mass immigration, that the left is heaping up the tinder with which it will immolate itself like a sati bride.
There is no chance of migration being reduced from 1.2 million with Labour or the Tories in power. The uniparty must be eradicated.
Why “eradicate” the least offensive wing of the “uniparty” first? That’s an own goal, isn’t it? Go for Labour if you want to turn the country right. By destroying the Tories you’ll speed up an irrevocable journey over to the left.
Agreed. The current major parties are seen by many as smug. Not really proposing to do anything other than keep the machinery of politics ticking over.
Would Reform be any different? At least they don’t yet have a history of failing to deliver their promises, and they do provide an opportunity for voters punish the other parties for taking their ‘supporters’ for granted.
Thatcher was able to succeed because the country under Labour was manifestly failing to deliver public services so that even so of those who were reliant on state handouts were persuaded another government might be able to do better. We now have a supposedly right wing government that is manifestly unable to deliver decent public services despite high taxes and the public are likely to want to try another party.
Those who can see that the conservatives are failing because they are pursuing high tax socialism policies may look to Reform but as the article points out large sections of the population now rely on the state for their income and policies for a smaller state is potentially threatening and they will hope that a Labour government might actually improve their prospects even if it is at the expense of the non-state sector. Reform has nothing to attract them. Unfortunately, where too many rely on the state things have to get pretty desperate under a state supporting party before the attractions of a smaller state become worth the personal risk to state beneficiaries.
The same is happening with the Republican party. The old people who have voted Republican their entire lives have found out that they actually quite like big state free handouts paid by other people. Team Trump have used fiscal conservatism like shrinking Medicare as attack lines against other right wing candidates.
I just don’t think the votes are there any more for Thatcherism. The aged tory core who drank the Koolaid back in the 80s like all their handouts and the young are still steeped in the Corbyn Koolaid and for some reason are happy to subsidise the disproportionately wealthy older generation while our schools and infrastructure crumble and the health service doesn’t work for people who actually have jobs and pay for it.
This all started with the Tax Credits system introduced under Brown, Darling and Balls in the aftermath of the 2008 Great Crash. Tax Credits, whichever way you look at them, are a massive back-door subsidy for Big Business, where corporates can employ more people than they otherwise would be willing to, while the incumbent government can claim artificially low unemployment numbers – which is no doubt why Osborne, while talking tough with his mouth, did the three card trick with his hands, to simply entrench the system (with politicians, always watch the hands, not the mouth, I am now convinced, the Tory boo-villain persona Osborne projected was an act, to distract from what he was really doing). The cost of Tax Credits of course is bourne by large numbers of working people, who don’t notice because this frog has been boiled very very gently. The net effect is of a completely distorted economic landscape. The problem is, from here, it will now be the devil’s own job to unwind this horrible pernicious system because a very large number of people are now locked in, and quite understandably, they not going to vote for anyone who says they will undo the subdies, because they can see it would instantly make their already precarious lives even more difficult.
The boomer right policies are killing this party. Social conservatives don’t want a small government and low taxes, they want an effective government that protects their interests vigorously. A return to the 80s is impossible, particularly with 10 million migrants here that weren’t present four decades ago. Reform has failed to outflank the Tories, appearing more like a confused tribute band than a vehicle for a new, powerful ideology.
And this has always been a paradox at the heart of the Brexit vote. People knew what they were voting for, yes, but they didn’t know what they would actually get.
We had at least 3 schools:
1. The Mogg/Redwood/Farage/Reform school – Thatcherism v2. Shrink the state, open borders to trade, cut regulations, cut workers’ rights, basically roll back all the post-war soft socialism stuff.
2. The Corbyn school – The “Lexit” ideal. Leaving the EU to rid ourselves of all that post-Thatcher soft economic liberalism stuff. State aid, state ownership of companies, less free trade, limiting immigration (perhaps…) to improve the lot of workers.
3. The Red Wall / Boris school – “Everything is rubbish now and I blame the EU. Let’s take back control and Britain will be great again somehow.” The first school adopted this line to ram through their ideal.
What has actually happened pleases no one. We are loosely aligned with the EU, have European levels of taxation without the services and we still haven’t done much in the way of deregulation or free trade.
Now Reform are trying to win an election based on the political ideals of School 1 but there is no evidence that anyone in the country actually wants this.
There’s certainly no majority for it. The young operate under the delusion that tax isn’t so bad because it pays for public services and the old are quite happy relying on the state for pensions and healthcare without having paid or being asked to pay anything like enough to cover the burden they represent. Who exactly is going to vote for a small state?
No one that votes for Labour these days can be described as a ‘worker’
Shirkers of the world unite!
An article in this week’s economist shows that tories lead only amongst those over 65. Labour lead massively amongst the working aged population.
So do you think that the workforce is made of people 65+ and the vast majority of working age adults don’t work or work non-jobs?
Sorry but I think the polling shows that actually the tories are the favoured party only of the retired. A party of and for the workers would not have invented and maintained the pensions triple lock.
It’s probably better therefore for you to say that chances are that no one who votes tory can be described as a worker.
Cracking analysis!
Really, the moderation system here is beyond crazy – it seems to hold things up for “approval” on no discernible principle at all!
Some truth here.
Of course, before the sundry distortions brought about by the Blair-Brown disaster, the Conservatives held a sort of balance between welfare, markets and patriotism based on reasonable degrees of governmental efficiency – most recently represented by Lord Maude who, under Cameron, kept public sector waste to a remarkable minimum
In this way they could fund “welfare” and keep taxes relatively low. The EU was making this very difficult, of course – a point to which I suspect you’ll be blind – so perhaps the centre right balancing act was (deliberately?) doomed anyway. Now, however, we have “Reform” types getting so hot under the collar about current Conservative squirming (and how desperately they under-estimate the forces which cause that squirm!) that they’re planning to let Starmer in just to punish Sunak. Can stupidity go any further? There’s an old cant-phrase, “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face”, and the perfect epitaph for the would-be intellectual right of Great Britain.
Reform are by no means perfect, but they are the best on offer. The country has been led by an “elite” of incompetents and liars for decades now. We need Net Zero immigration, and robust defence of our culture and interests. You’d think a party with “Conservative” in its name would suffice for that, but there we are.
Give it a few more years in the current direction, and articles will be about armoured cars along Whitehall rather than psephological acumen.
Farage must lead. Then he must forge an electoral pact with Rishi to defeat the Party of the Blob by demanding the following in lieu of withdrawing his 15% following from blue on blue self destruction. Reform of Equality Act and excess DEI bureaucracy. Overturn Human Rights abuses with the long promised new Bill of Rights. A crackdown on the gross abuses in welfarism and legal migration. Proper restraint on the CCC and Net Zero diktat. Launch the overdue NHS Reform initiative and cessation of excess tax on enterprise. If the forces of the Centre Right united around this manifesto, there is half a chance we might be spared the horrors of SNP like rule by the ultra progressive Identitarian pro Blob Labour Party.
When Farage was leading the Brexit Party he gave Johnson a deal; he stood down candidates in every Tory-held seat.
Johnson smilingly pocketed the votes and gave absolutely nothing in return. Do you think Reform will fall for it again this year?
I think you may be underestimating how popular the promise to abandon net-zero might be, should Reform pitch it the right way.
The climate change act was the most expensive piece of legislation ever enacted, and promises to bankrupt us for no other reason than historical guilt about the industrial revolution, while India, China & most of the U.S. just ignore it.
Thought that said something else for a moment, which would have nailed it. As the article suggests, this will be well received by the right wing, who are already inclined to vote for them.
I’m struggling to vote for anyone right now, but these policies are not attractive in any way and just make them sound like extremists and failed Trussites.
In what way is raising the threshold for income tax to £20,000, cutting “wasteful” Government spending by 5%, slashing immigration, cutting EU red tape and abandoning Net Zero extremist.
Show your working….
Easy promises to make when they know they’ll never be in power. I’m not ruling out Farage joining the tories and Reform standing down. Might even be worth a punt.
The key issue for the Red Wall type voter Reform (or Tories) need to attract is Tice won’t say what he means by wasteful and whether it’s removal gets anywhere near the £60-70b the 5% cut represents. No doubt some waste in all organisations/depts but indicating you’ll have a process but can’t be clear on outcomes not going to inspire as many as they hope. Same with raising threshold for tax – ok so what expenditure are you reducing at same time or are you about to do a Kami-Kwasi/Trussite repeat?
Cutting EU red tape – we’ve left so what is the red tape? Please say. Again Tice, and heard him on Radio yesterday, v unspecific. And he’s probably one of their better media performers.
The Author is thinking absurdly short term. Reform probably won’t win a seat at the next GE. Notwithstanding, Reform will get my vote for two reasons.
Firstly, I wish to signal my support for its policies. More importantly, however, it will contribute to an electoral routing of the Tories that I hope is so devastating and comprehensive, it destroys the party.
When the Tories are reduced to a fractious, irrelevant rump, it will open up the opportunity for Reform to surge and become the natural repository of the centre-right voter.
Reform is sensibly positioning itself for the long term. Its policies need to be not where the country is now, but where it will be after five years of Keir Starmer’s Labour.
Labour may defy my expectations that it will take our country from ailing to being on life support with the Last Rites being read, but Socialists are nothing if not predictably stupid.
Despite the fact that the country is already heading for national insolvency, we can expect more crippling taxation, reckless borrowing, inflation, endless union disruption and idiot woke nonsense.
But the two issues that are redrawing the political map of Europe – immigration and Net Zero – will be in all probability be Labour’s downfall and Reform’s opportunity.
Despite Starmer’s recent apparent ideological moderation, I’m not convinced. Immigration and Net Zero have become matters of quasi-religious devotion for the Left and I can’t see Starmer becoming a heretic.
Five years of Labour will have catastrophic economic and social consequences. Voters at the present can’t seem to see that. But at the end of it, a party offering the end to Net Zero, taking Britain out of the ECHR and assorted refugee agreements, committing to years of net zero immigration and reducing taxes and bloated government will be exactly what voters want.
Labour’s downfall will be the power cuts that both parties’ energy policy since 2008 have made inevitable. Labour will be left holding the baby when the lights go out.
“Five years of Labour will have catastrophic economic and social consequences” – your words; and yet you wish to let them in by attacking the only force which stands in their way – the Tory party. The questions you must therefore ask yourself are: are you really prepared to take the responsibility for helping precipitate “catastrophe” with all the pain, premature death, abuse of the elderly, inadequate care, inadequate transport, slanted schooling and so much more that it means? And just how much “catastrophe” can this battered, ageing nation take? Finally, do you really imagine that imposing such a catastrophe will make the task of emerging from our current problems easier? Wouldn’t it be wiser to support the Conservatives whilst applying pressure in this or that clutch of constituencies in order to shove them back to the right? I have to observe that arguments such as the one you advance here are horribly reminiscent of Lenin: “the worse, the better”. No – the worse, the worse – for most of us. Only fanatics can disagree, for they wallow in suffering and chaos.
No, the Tory party does not “stand in their way”…the Tory party is exactly the same way.
The current Tory party has to be taken down first, then the current Labour party…there isn’t any difference between them.
Nonsense. The Tory party is not planning to pressurise private education out of business. It is not planning to raid pension pots all over again. It is not led by persons who “take the knee” and it has no plans to lower the voting age. Moreover, if the two parties are as bad as each other why not attack Labour, too? The attitude you present reeks of the sort of spiteful tantrum which attacks the weaker, less awful entity because it flinches from the task of tackling the true source of the evil. Take down the Tories and the left will rule the roost indefinitely. But perhaps, in your incoherent rage, this is what you are after?
Your phrase “the less awful” is partly right…because they are both equally awful.
The opportunity to destroy something awful must be seized when it presents itself…particularly when that awful thing is effectively preventing attacks on something more awful.
Only then can the other awful thing be confronted.
Of course, the Tory party had opportunities to be much less awful; once with Johnson who reverted to awfulness after Brexit (Brino..)…and once with Truss who wanted to go for growth but wasn’t backed.
And no, she didn’t trash the economy…the BoE did that and the Tory party said nothing.
But since Labour is worse, why not use the Tories to destroy Labour first, thereby obviating five years of accelerating sorrow and destruction? Then you can change or – if necessary – destroy the Tories region by region with Reform candidates in clusters of constituencies over a period of years? That’s how the Labourites themselves did it, winning seats from the Liberals in the 1920s; and that’s the only way to do it under FPTP.
Simply giving the country to Labour in your anxiety to wreak vengeance on Sunak is – at best – insanely “high risk” and – at worst (and most likely) – the motorway towards the final abolition of the Britain we cherish.
Cameron promised to reduce immigration to the ‘tens of thousands’ and May said the same. Johnson promised to ‘take back control of our borders’.
With that mandate what did the Tories do? They increased migration to levels never seen or dreamt of in our history.
They may have had little control over illegals in the Channel, but the legal migration was facilitated by vast numbers of visas granted to Indians, Nigerians and Chinese.
And after that betrayal you want to vote Conservative again in the hope that they’ll be better than Labour? No, the Tories aren’t the answer, they’re a big part of the problem.
What does that really mean? What would you do in the Richmond branch to pull Sunak to the right? Or any branch? Do you think local party members have any control over big things?
You’re not getting the message, are you? You’re so fixated on this fulminating narrative of “betrayal” and disappointment that the bigger picture might as well be on the moon. So let’s spell it out: yes, Labour will be worse, for all the reasons spelt out by me and by others (e.g Jordan Peterson); the fact that they’ll be worse should morally and prudentially override any disappointment with the Tories; and a Labour vote now will only accelerate the implosion and final disappearance of the Britain or England which people used to call home. All the demographics are against any possible resurgence of the right. And it certainly won’t arise from the provocations of Labour oppression or inefficiency. The right is old and the old are resigned. Now do you at last understand? Or are you so committed to a spot of spiteful, self-righteous grandstanding that practical considerations are totally ignored? As to your last remarks, they completely misunderstand my point, which is – to make it crystal clear – that “Reform” should focus on edging out its rivals slowly, constituency by constituency – because (as you may be aware) we have an FPTP system here. I know that many on the right have gone nuts – influenced by the likes of Whittle and Steyn who should certainly know better. But they should nevertheless be told that they are – very stupidly – playing for the left in the left’s chosen end-game.
With that phrase you admit that the position is hopeless.
Who’s been in power for 14 years, and allowed unprecedented illegal migration, and encouraged unprecedented legal migration?
How are they going to do that if, as you admit, the right are old and resigned? How many electoral cycles would it take, and how could it be done by old members who die off faster than they are replaced?
Right, you’re getting there. The situation is – on balance – hopeless. But whilst the solution I am proffering holds out a range of tolerable outcomes from slowing to mitigating the forthcoming disaster, yours will accelerate and intensify it with no possibility of recovery. The facts, which you seem to be accepting at long last, mean that such is the choice before us. Among many sour feelings prompted by this sorrowful era of ours, I regret that so many on the right are – from motives of pique, panic and desperation – opting for accelerated, intensified destruction instead of a careful, tactically successful fighting retreat.
There is no possibility whatever of the current Tory party winning the next election…none at all.
Therefore the necessary change can only be precipitated by them losing seats to Reform. The recent by elections would seem to indicate this…Tory voters stayed at home.
The Tory party was lost when the “heir to Blair” aka Runaway Dave Cameron became leader and side lined the local party organisations…and imposed libdem candidates.
They won’t lose seats to “Reform”, “Reform” will lose them seats to Labour. That is the message of the by-elections.
And if the Tories stayed at home when they might have made the protest you ache for at a by-election, they will probably do the same at the general election – more fool them.
And why do you suppose Cameron and the wets took over in the first place? Because having lost they thought they had best go left. So they’ll do it again, won’t they?
And they’ll probably have to given that Starmer will shift the whole country left by naturalising illegals and even lowering the voting age.
So your preposterous, desperate, pique-ridden thesis falls at all points in a cloud of venom, doesn’t it?
You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few corrupt eggs.
You won’t make omelette you’ll make disaster.
No…the Tory party has done that…
Bilge. The Tory party has merely sought to mitigate the disaster brought on by Labour – when it should have contradicted that disaster entirely. Your howling failure to understand this point shows how deeply the knee-jerk desire to kick the nearest thing, instead of taking the fight to the real villains, has distorted your vision and clouded your judgement. You are now a thorough going puppet of the hard left.
Yep the same Right Wing contradictions yet again. This is getting painful.
Essentially Reform need to reform and become a low immigration SDP type party and they might be onto something. Golf club bores may not like that though.
Thatcher wasn’t all bad, but the decimation of UK manufacturing, the North-South divide and over-dependence on London accelerated under her Govt. That’s what is also well remembered. The consequences have been playing out for 3 decades.
Was always likely the moment Reform clowns exposed to serious questioning the low calibre troops it sends into action would be shown up as fairly clueless. Still their one saving grace is we aren’t adverse to voting for the clueless.
Nailed it again JW
Absolutely not. The decimation of UK manufacturing had already been written by the time Thatcher came to power – it was the unions that were squeezing the wealth out of the rest of the economy that kept those old industries going. We all paid for that, Thatcher pushed them out the way and allowed things to take their inevitable course. The same now needs to be done with the NHS and most welfare. Thatcher was also brilliant on Money Supply and how inflation impoverishes working people whilst rewarding those already holding assets. We need Tice or Farage to play Millei for us.
Reform likely won’t win, but the message needs to get out there – people almost always need to learn the hard way, and it’s coming at us.
Wellingborough isn’t in the Red Wall.
The article seems absurd. I’m sure Richard Tice himself doesn’t expect to actually win any seats. His strategy is probably to cause the maximum possible damage to the Tories. And then wait for Labour to mess up.
It feels to me like Mr. Oxley is complaining that Reform are not following the strategy that he thinks they should follow, whilst ignoring the one they are following – and indeed not allowing them any freedom to choose.
But if we’re talking about the Red Wall (which may not be Reform’s principal target anyway), Reform proposals to raise the income tax allowance to £20K and limit immigration to “one in, one out” will have some appeal. Just not to people like Mr. Oxley. But frankly, I care more for the opinions of Red Wall voters than commentators.
Labour’s “messing up” will involve raiding pensions. This means more misery and suffering for an ageing nation, which relies on its savings and provisions for the long decades of declining health. This alone is a reason not to allow Labour to “mess up”. Ultimately, it will involve deaths.
Yes, the Tories are far less courageous, competent and clear sighted than they used to be but they remain the better of the only two options on offer, thanks to FPTP.
Meanwhile, the long shot assumptions behind the ridiculous Tice / “Reform” policy of hurting the Conservatives, to hurt the country in order to provoke a rebellion are all utterly, utterly without foundation. Old electorates don’t even demonstrate, let alone riot. Bluntly, they are stupid assumptions which fly in the face of all the information about the way things are and the way things are going.
You could have expensive therapy to go back to your Eighties childhood. Or you could just watch the darts. The fireworks. The ring girls, although that’s boxing; what are they even called in darts? The utterly unselfconscious drinking. If they do not play Eye of the Tiger, then why not? They are hard lads in darts, though. Semi-final last night, final tonight. Only 24 hours to pack in all that gruelling training. Elsewhere in nostalgia for the shoulder pads era, things are not looking so bright.
You really despise the working class, don’t you?
And the Tory bloodletting begins – excellent!
I can’t wait for the swivel eyed loons (TM) to really get going after their evisceration in this year’s general election! I can’t wait for the race to the bottom leadership election and then hopefully a couple of years of watching Braverman try her best to finally kill off the Tory party.
Pass the popcorn!
In the meantime Britain will be reminded of what they have been missing by the success of a progressive, centre left government that will fix everything the clown car administrations of the last few years have broken. I’m sure everyone at Unherd will be very grateful!
If Labour policies work I will be first to congratulate them, but if they achieve anything by increasing government debt and expanding the money supply then it will be wholly illusory and will just cause more pain down the road.
I wish I could find the original source but vaguely remember Tice being asked a few years ago in response to him wanting to cut state spending about what he wanted to cut. He mentioned some absurd woke boondoggle I can’t remember the specifics of, which sounded sensible enough to cut, but cutting it would probably save a few million at most. Which in the grand scheme of thing will have no impact on anything. The impression I had was that either he’d not thought out the implications fully of what achieving a smaller state would be like or he simply knew saying he’d cut defence, the NHS, education, welfare and pensions etc (ie where the big money is spent) is electorally precarious.
I agree with the analysis but, speaking as a libertarian myself, I have to say that what Reform is offering is what the country actually needs.
No, people won’t vote for it, that’s true (apart from me and a minority of others). But Starmer’s Labour is going to carry on with a slightly more wasteful variation on the Tory economc plan, and with a few of the sillier cultural Marxist ideas (there will be some unlucky people going to prison for using male pronouns to refer to a man in a dress, for instance). The effect of this will be to continue the damage resulting from the failed-state model to which the mainstream parties have committed themselves. So, the damage will continue to be done.
Anyone who thinks either Labour or Tory will actually pull the economy out of the demographic nosedive it’s presently in, is nuts.
Still a weak protest vote. Populist or conservative-nationalist parties are waiting for the Parliamentary Uniparty to take us back into the single market and then have another go at the euro. Then Nigel can stage a proper populist insurrection again.