Election 2024: the race to the bottom

I certainly wasn’t intending to make a habit of writing about the Reform Party, but it seems to be in the business of routinely making my point for me, and it’s been an interesting couple of days. We’ve heard vague noises from Farage about a potential deal with the Tories, only to have Tice and Habib taking to Twitter to row back on it. Farage is playing his own game independently of Reform, and the party seems to spend half its time in damage control mode because they’re making it up on the fly.

Then today, out of the blue, we get a new Reform policy in which businesses would pay a higher 20% rate of National Insurance for foreign workers, up from the current 13.8%. Exemptions would exist for businesses employing five people or fewer and for healthcare and social care, the party said.

It doesn’t take too much mulling to see several problems with this approach, not least that the care sector is operating on a similar basis to universities, essentially as a visa backdoor. It’s one of the main avenues for fraudulent immigration. This tells us that policy is not derived from any serious research. Good policy has to address itself to the specific problems.

Reform further claims the change could raise more than £20bn over the next five years to be spent helping young people into high-skilled jobs through apprenticeships and training. This is yet another half-baked policy plucked out of the air. We need the government to stop immigration - not tax it. If it raises £20bn, then it obviously isn't having much impact in reducing immigration.

This, though, is giving me a serious case of deja vu. This was always Ukip’s problem and nothing has changed. The party hasn’t done any serious preparation or policy thinking, meanwhile their attack dog is off the leash creating problems for them. At this point, Farage isn’t advancing the cause of Reform. He’s just trolling the MSM debate. It may be entertaining, but it’s strategically useless.

As to how well it’s working, you pays your money, you takes your choice. Polls are in wild disagreement on Reform’s performance, so some are saying, rather optimistically, that Reform is poised for a breakthrough, while others are more downbeat. I don’t think, though, that anyone seriously expects Reform to win seats or tilt the balance of power. Reform just doesn’t have the leverage Ukip/BXP once enjoyed.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Labour isn’t faring too well either. Its electioneering has been overshadowed by internal bickering and expulsions. Starmer is having a clean out of hard left trouble makers and cranks, and the left is not happy. Though that probably makes him more electable in the eyes of working class boomers, it may bolster the ranks of Labour deserters who are looking to independent candidates, Greens, or Galloway’s Worker’s Party. That then neutralises any impact Reform has over the Tories.

If, as I suspect, the entire campaign is overshadowed by infighting on the left, it could very rapidly collapse Labour’s lead. My hunch is that the gap is already narrowing, and it was always going to. A hung parliament is looking like a safer bet by the day. And it’s even possible Labour could completely blow it. The more we see of them, the more we’re reminded how dreadful they are. Angela Rayner grovelling at the feet of foreigners to save her career is not a good look.

That said, this is less an election as a space-race to see who can present as the least electable - and we shouldn’t underestimate Sunak’s capacity to bring the Tories back into the competition.

Meanwhile, for what has been billed by Farage as the “immigration election”, very little has been said thus far about immigration by Labour or the Tories. Starmer doesn’t want to touch it with a barge pole, and unless the Tories have something radical to say, they’re left defending their own dismal record. The party would rather lose than commit to leaving the ECHR, so they’ll probably keep ducking the issue, leaving Reform to make the running on the issue. In this kind of chaos, your speculation is as good as mine.

What’s clear is that the mainstream election discourse is totally divorced from the conversations real people are having. It’s a ill-focussed talking shop among low grade nonentities. Meanwhile, over on X, the new Spaces system (tele-conferencing/radio chat) is surpassing the media in every way. There is no shortage of articulate, erudite commenters, but they’re nowhere to be found inside the bubble.

As such, the only reason Farage is controversial is because it’s the only time the media luvvies are ever likely to be exposed to an opinion held by an ordinary citizen. That, I suppose, is the sole utility of Farage, but if there isn’t a party that’s serious about winning power, it’s more light entertainment than politics.

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Elsewhere in the media, you can find me talking to TNT Radio about the lack of substance to our political parties (about thirty seven minutes in). Meanwhile, I’d like to thank those of you who have taken up a paid subscription or donated. It’s allowing me to do more. I’ll be doing more YouTube videos, and there’s more long-form content daily on X, and I’m appearing regularly on X spaces. I’ll keep you posted when I next host one. Not forgetting my long form interview with Nick Dixon of GB News is out next week.

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