How the insurgent right can save itself

To my considerable irritation, the article I wrote the other day was surprisingly well received on X. It irritates me because it’s nothing I haven't been saying for months (and possibly years now) - and I usually get abuse for saying it. It just takes Reform’s current woes for it to sink in. I’ve seen two polls in the last couple of days that show a two point drop in Reform’s poll lead, which is part of a stagnation trend for the party.

Whether or not this is terminal remains to be seen. Reform’s performance is tied to the performance of the ruling party, and I don’t think it will take very long for Burnham to make an enemy of the British electorate. All the same, that doesn’t make Reform any more of a viable prospect for government.

My hunch is that Reform’s underlying troubles mean that it is no longer poised to overtake the Conservatives. The polls tend to flatter Reform but it is not winning by-elections and is not nurturing any new talent. Meanwhile, Badenoch is turning the disarray to her advantage. The next election is wide open.

In my view, it is (in theory) entirely possible for them to turn it around, but that would require leadership abilities that simply aren’t present anywhere on the right. What irritates me especially is how these tiresome party political shenanigans are completely neglecting the issues they could turn to their advantage.

Yesterday Farming UK reported that Britain now has fewer than 200 abattoirs thanks to onerous regulation. Britain’s shrinking network of small abattoirs is leaving livestock farmers with fewer routes to market and raising fresh concerns over the future of local meat supply chains, the NFU has warned. This is an issue I’ve raised countless times, not least because it’s one of those areas where hard policy would make all the difference.

One of the reasons policy development is so vital for parties of the right is so that they can identify issues (and corresponding solutions) and mount campaigns on those issues to win over the people who care about them. You can't just mong on about immigration all the time.

This ought to be prime territory for a party like Reform - especially since it is one of those areas that would most benefit from deregulation enabled by Brexit. Clarkson's Farm has already raised awareness of this issue, along with the injustice of the farm inheritance tax and the dismal TB testing regime - and they could secure much wider backing to advance their own policy ideas. Similarly, when Rupert Lowe is notionally a farmer, why hasn't he made an effort? If they want an agriculture policy, here's a starter for ten. It seems like the right has completely forgotten how to do politics, and spends most of its time harvesting social media engagement, then wonders why it is failing.

If I were in charge of Reform/Restore, I would make a point of putting a shadow team together, comprised of people with relevant sector experience (and not the usual blowhards), and give them each a research budget and two months to come up with a comprehensive policy to form the backbone of a manifesto, and then I would identify the most urgent issues and have each of the shadow team mount their own issue specific campaigns to promote their own policies.

I would be looking to win over entire sectors with specific policies. Farmers would be an easy hit by addressing IHT, OV fees and TB testing, and then I would have a health spokesman making massive noise about the shitty state of Britain's maternity services with a view to securing the votes of women and new mothers. I would run a campaign on establishing proper truck stops and revising the stupid EU tachograph rules, in favour of something more sensible.

Then, instead of trotting out the usual hackneyed slop about Peelian principles and bobbies on the beat in smart uniforms, I would launch a police policy aimed at restoring police morale, and set out reforms that would have every copper and ex-copper in the land voting for me.

I would have my spokesmen going out to livestock auctions, trade shows, and anywhere else there's an audience for well crafted policy. I would make a big deal of defence policy and get all the veterans associations on side, and I would craft a sports policy that would get young athletes interested. I'd have an X account for every policy area to run their own respective campaigns and have the main account retweet them. I wouldn't have poor Laila Cunningham going on telly to improvise and make excuses for lack of policy.

More than that, I would make sure that everyone on the top team was absolutely fluent in the key points of every policy, to stop them making dicks of themselves, and I wouldn't let the main X account tweet any old slop. It would be there to promote hard policy to establish a reputation for competence and seriousness, and to look like I was capable of running a government. I certainly wouldn't spend all day tweeting about a sad old fart going on an American podcast. But that's just me.

Probably the most important reason to do this is to build a party that can stand on its own two feet without its leader. A party that actually did this would clean up. As much as anything else, it would be proof of leadership. Britain's biggest problem is that the people who engage with politics have forgotten how to DO politics.

The point here is that while immigration remains a leading concern, along with the cost of living, these are no all consuming issues for much of the country and parties have to demonstrate that they are capable of governing, and have a command of the issues beyond the usual narrow selection of populist gripes. They need to realise that their current approach simply isn’t working.

As I have illustrated so many times, policy is multi-functional. It provides an intellectual foundation for all your subsequent comms and campaigns while contributing towards a reputation for seriousness and expertise. If you don't have a plan for power, there is no point in obtaining power. Best of all, even supposing I'm completely wrong about this, there is nothing at all lost by producing it, especially when so much can be accomplished in a short time with the proper motivation.

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Meanwhile, you might have noticed I’m pressing quite hard for paid subscriptions at the moment. There is a particular formula you must follow to please the X algorithm, and it would seem that upsetting the populist right with things they do not want to hear is not making me any friends - to the point where I’m effectively shadow-banned and demonetised - just as we’re approaching silly season when politics tails off anyway. This is not optimal.

To me this pleading feels a lot like tin rattling, which is not something I like doing thus do not do it very often, but then I notice that Triggernometry and Matt Goodwin do it (both of whom are coining it), so why shouldn’t I? In terms of spelling out where the right is going wrong, and what can be done to fix it, this Substack has been ahead of the game time and time again, and is continually vindicated. Combined with the free-to-view work on manifestoproject.org, nobody can say I haven’t made a positive contribution.

I do appreciate that I can be repetitive, but as the reaction to the post I wrote the other day demonstrates, you have to keep saying these things in the hope that a moment will arise when the audience is receptive. All the same, with so much work now going into the Manifesto Project I’m going to diversify and write about a wider range of subjects. There are still some unresolved debates that would benefit from an airing. As such, if you would kindly share these articles, and take out a paid subscription (or donate), I would be hugely grateful.