Britain's in for a decade of hard Labour

Starmer’s popularity has already plummeted. That’s not going to matter in 2029 though. I just don’t see a way back for the Tories. There’s nobody who can secure the confidence of the right wing base, and no reason to trust them. But even if a credible right wing candidate emerged, the right will be split by Reform and the liberals will clear off to the Lib Dems.

Meanwhile, any hope of Reform overtaking the Tories is dead in the water. I’m calling it now. The party will never overcome its deep-rooted amateurism. The basic raw material isn’t there. You can’t make an omelette without eggs. There’s no way that they’ll shake off the lazy populism. It’s who they are.

I suppose if they play their cards right they can double their MPs to ten in 2029, but in power terms, it’s still a nothingburger - and if it happens, the average ability of the party’s MPs will decline.

I’ve made my case as to what changes Reform need to make, but ultimately it’s the Farage problem that cannot be solved. He can only get the party so far, and it feels like this is the high water mark for him. Meanwhile, the chances of finding a credible successor seem remote - and they need rid of Farage sooner rather than later.

My views on the man are well known and well documented, but there’s now a more fundamental problem with Farage. He's a man out of his time; a product of the pre-Brexit era. He’s a faded novelty act who’s increasingly out of his depth. There’s a certain levity to him that simply doesn’t translate into these times.

I say this because politics is turning darker and it’s leaving the centre ground far behind. Farage usually follows sentiment on the right rather than leading it, but it will lead him to the outer rim of his comfort zone. At heart, he’s a late boomer Spitfire nationalist who fears to blur the cordon sanitaire between his vehicle and the “far right”.

That has served him well up to now, but the penny is slowly dropping on the right that immigration is more than just a problem at the borders. Reform only dabbles in the subject matter, focussing most of its attention on small boats - which are only a fraction of overall immigration.

Most can now agree that the dinghy crisis is unsustainable, and requires a more radical approach, but when we have British born Muslims joining armed Islamist gangs and taking to the streets, the problem is far more acute than dysfunctional border policies. The dysfunctionality is endemic to society now.

Meanwhile, the establishment would rather talk about the phantom far right than the Islamic sectarianism creeping into our politics and winning influence in Parliament. We're simply not meant to notice ethnic minority tribes warring with each other on our own streets. If it's talked about at all, nobody gets near venturing a solution.

There's a reason for that. Only bold policies will cut it. We need to confront Islamism in Britain. We need to shutter and demolish the mosques spreading hateful extremism and misogynist ideology. We need to deport those who refuse to integrate. We need a whole raft of measures to put a stop to subversive Islamic separatism.

The Tories won't take on this task, and I don't see the Muslim-led Reform party getting its feet wet either. So what does that leave? This certainly isn't Farage's bag. He's gone to extended lengths to distance himself from this kind of politics.

That kind of civic nationalism is now an anachronism. That may be the optimal place ideologically for the British right, but these are not optimal conditions. Whichever way I look at it, I only see continued decline and low-grade civil war in our future. If any party is serious about averting such a depressing outcome, then immigration must not be treated, essentially, as a defence and national security issue.

But then as much as the Tories and Reform aren’t ready to make that leap yet, the wider public aren’t either. Keir Starmer has said that things will get worse before they get better but he doesn’t quite understand the real meaning of those words. The crime, disorder and political unrest that goes with mass immigration is only going to get worse, but it needs to get worse for politics to catch up with reality.

Maybe under new leadership, Reform could be dragged to the right, but it seems unlikely with a civic nationalist Muslim chairman (and future leader, perhaps). He’s going to have to pick a fight with Islam. It seems more likely that Reform will simply plod along, chewing up political bandwidth until its popularity begins to recede and more voters simply withdraw from the process.

Maybe it’s going to take another Islamist atrocity on British soil and another round of riots, but there’s a lot more decline to come before we see the reinvention on the right that we need to see. We’ve seen in Germany how events have a way of transforming politics. AfD is rewriting the rulebook and the liberal consensus is collapsing. Though Britain was ahead of the curve in leaving the EU, our political realignment has yet to take form.

This, I think, is a job for a new generation of politicians. Nobody wants has-beens from the old Tory regime, and a bunch of clapped out, incompetent Brexiteers are simply not going to capture the public’s imagination. Meanwhile, the electorate knows there’s just no point in chucking Labour out until the right comes up with the correct medicine. As such, we could be stuck with Starmer for the long haul.