How do you want to spend you political capital in 2029?

I’ve been away for a couple of days. I went down to Oxford to speak at a local New Culture Forum event. Very much enjoyed it. NCF has an important role to play in building real-life social networks throughout the country. My speech was on the lack of vision, policy and planning on the right, with a particular focus on ECHR withdrawal.

As it happens, I'm not the best public speaker. I'll never be a rabble-rouser. My speeches are mystery bus tours with interesting stops and diversions along the way, and even I don't know how they'll play out because I sometimes hit upon ideas that need further exploration.

The central theme of my speech, though, was essentially the same drum I bang on here all the time. The "it'll do for now" mentality on the right always has a political cost later down the line. The right blames remainers and the civil service for the way Brexit panned out, but nobody is more to blame that Brexiteers themselves for their lack of planning and preparation. All the thought went into how to win the vote, and no thought went into what we would do if we won. Anyone who did put the thinking in anticipated that Brexit would end up down a cul-de-sac.

This is why I do not have great hopes for a Reform government because they're just not doing the necessary ground work, and when they realise they do actually need policy, they will hurriedly cobble it together, asking the same old Tory grandees for intellectual direction - most for whom are fantasists.

The base (flawed) assumption is that once a government is elected with a healthy majority, it can do pretty much anything it wants. But it can't. Keir Starmer has a majority larger even than that of Boris Johnson, but Starmer doesn't enjoy a unified majority, nor is there much in the way of public consent for a radical left wing agenda. Labour didn't get in on merit and they know it - which is why they haven't even attempted half the things they'd like to do. The same will be true of Reform.

As such, much of the right wing agenda is pure fantasy. Most of the right is agreed that we should leave the ECHR with all the subsequent domestic repeals, but nobody has put any serious thought into how that plays out politically, or what could possibly go wrong. Here it should be recalled that most polls show that there is no majority in favour of leaving the ECHR and will face Brexit levels of opposition. I can actually envisage plenty of ways it could go wrong, and I can easily see it presenting complex political, legal and technical dilemmas which are simply beyond the abilities of the right to satisfactorily resolve.

While I was explaining this to the NCF meeting, it occurred to me that any future right wing government doesn't even have a full term to make an impact. The trend from the last decade suggests that no prime minister has the mandate or the political capital to see out a full term, and it's unlikely that Farage or his successors will fare any better. If then, we accept the notion that nothing can be done until the ECHR exit process is concluded, that's two years of more dinghy arrivals and another lame duck prime minister.

Essentially, "What do we want to do with power" is a good question to ask, but you also have to ask "How do we want to spend our limited political capital". That second question is a game changer - especially when you appreciate that the job is not only to get elected, but also get re-elected. You're not going to get re-elected if you make a total hash of leaving the ECHR.

I say this because undoing Blair-era constitutional reforms is actually quite a niche hobby horse that doesn't really speak to young people who are having to navigate a moribund economy with a wildly out of kilter social contract. It is for these reasons, particularly as the boomers die out, that the electorate could easily swing to the far left. Watching Suella Braverman banging on about the ECHR is not all that compelling to people who are struggling to pay their bills - especially if the ECHR exit process ends up being derailed by the politics of Northern Ireland - which it almost certainly will.

As it happens, I'm ambivalent on whether we should leave the ECHR. There is a principled case for leaving, but the "how" defeats the "why". I don't think it's as significant an issue as we've been led to believe by the right wing press. Most of the reporting from the Telegraph, TalkTV and GB News is flat wrong, and the research around this subject is poor. Lord Wolfson's paper is the only one worth reading, but even that stops short of exploring the politics of ECHR exit. Braverman's paper essentially boils down to "I'm sure it will be fine" - which is what they all said about Brexit.

But this is why I'm a marginalised voice on the right. It's not the done thing to poke holes in the ideas of your own side, and you're meant to uncritically praise people like Braverman, Farage, Habib, Lowe and Frost. You're meant to say they're doing a great job even when they're not. I refuse. They're not going to listen so there's nothing to be gained by being deferential. When we get to 2029, I won't be the least bit surprised at how rapidly it all starts falling apart, and it will all stem from the original problem of failing to plan for power.

Looking at the polls right now, the 2029 election could be wildly unpredictable. The vote is massively fragmented and we'll see a lot of tactical voting, and that could result in a hung parliament with a left wing alliance, or a Reform-tory coalition, but it could just as easily result in a Reform landslide. If it's the latter, the right will again be jubilant, just as they were in 2016, and will cheer as Farage move his pals into influential posts, but it won't take eight months for the cracks to show. In fact, the larger the win in 2029, the bigger the hammering in 2034. They're not getting a second term unless they can make a meaningful difference - which is not going to be easy.

Energy is one particular thorny problem. Even ten years ago we'd already left it too late to avoid a serious crisis and any decisions taken in 2029 will take another decade to make a difference. A Reform government could scrap green taxes and renewables subsidies, but that's going to have consequences. There is a cost to ripping up contracts, potentially leaving Britain uninvestable. And if we're scrapping carbon taxes, the are hard decisions to be made about what to cut or how to replace the revenue. The positive effects are not immediate.

Similarly, it should be recalled what happened to Theresa May in 2017 when she tried to make tough choices about paying for adult social care. Everyone agrees welfare needs reform, but with so many cohorts sucking on the public teat, you're going to have to think very hard about which voters you piss off. How do you keep boomers and Nick (30 ans) on side?

Keep in mind also that nothing gets fixed without first anticipating the opposition. Opposition comes from within the civil service, academia, the unions, the courts, the councils, NGOs, and from diplomatic pressures from the USA and the EU. I would be looking at spending the first term in power levelling the playing field a little before embarking on anything radical. Suffice to say, you need a plan, and a lot of contingency plans.

I would like to see a much greater depth of thinking on the right, but I don't see anyone making any serious attempts at it. Moreover, I don't see anyone in the right wing sphere who is even capable of thinking at this level of sophistication. There are a few bright young things around but the right wing ecosystem has a way of ensuring they're kept out of the tent. Right wing politics is moving towards gerontocracy - which in part explains the rise of the Green Party among young people. For my part, if I were under thirty, I categorically would not vote for a party like Reform when it's comprised of all the same faces who mess up Brexit and did nothing with an eighty seat majority.

This is why I just can't get excited about 2029. All I see is history repeating. The same mindsets and the same people will produce the same results. They will mess it up, lose in 2034, ushering in a radical left-wing government, and it may not swing back to the right because we'll have had two bites of the cherry, and twice made a pig's ear of it. We won't get a third opportunity, and we won't deserve it either.