The thing about this blogging game is that you can go from writer’s block at the height of Silly Season to being spoiled for choice. Naturally, Reform UK Ltd. is the gift that keeps on giving. Their conference has been less than successful, with attendees caught on camera physically assaulting a protestor, car crash interviews all round, more slop policy, and Farage digging the hole even deeper. On the face of it, Farage & Co are looking at a criminal investigation.
This, of course, is not outside the realms of expectation for anyone familiar with the territory but I've now seen a few Telegraph staffers perplexed as to how Reform could have walked so easily into an ambush. They’ve learned nothing over the years about Nigel Farage. Every single Farage-led enterprise has been a squalid, debauched, amateurish, sleazy, incompetent shitshow, and it all down to the fact that Farage has the morals of an alley cat.
That's one thing Rupert Lowe is absolutely right about. Farage is a pathological liar who prizes sycophancy over competence in the people around him, and has always been surrounded crooked stooges. Ukip was a gang, not a political party. The culture at the top of Reform is an exact reflection of his personal ethics. He is a dishonourable turd of a man with zero redeeming qualities - and you have to have lived in a cave for the last two decades not to notice it.
I certainly expect that applies to James Frayne, who writes in the Telegraph “The party must go further and purge the inner sanctum of the amateurs and clowns who have created a culture of perpetual stupidity”. Is this a longwinded way of saying Reform should wind up as a party? I mean, who would be left?
The one lesson in all this is that an organisation will ultimately follow the example set by its leader. If you have a grasping narcissist at the top, the organisation will take after him. Ironically, this is a lesson Reform could apply to its civil service Reform policies.
Meanwhile, you might have seen earlier this week that Danny Kruger has jotted down what he asserts the intellectual direction of Reform. It enjoys no official standing so more than likely it is just his fever dream and his boss won't even read it. And to be fair, I wouldn't even blame him - because you can take an educated guess what this boilerplate tract will say.
That said, some intellectual direction is better than none, and its as good a starting point as any being that the man is in the right ballpark, but that still isn't good enough. What's missing is technical policy competence and political nous. Reform has neither.
One example of this is the latest welfare and housing policy from Reform, dealing with foreign-born entitlements - when their data shows that more than half the problem is settled-status EU citizens, thus you are talking about relitigating/renegotiating Article 50 at the same time as upending the GFA by leaving the ECHR - without anything approaching a plan B for trade.
On that score, leaving aside how politically unpopular this will be, we can take an educated guess as to what their plan B looks like on the basis of the crap they churned out during Brexit - from idiotic blether about trusted traders to wilfully distorted interpretations of WTO law. You wouldn't let these morons run a whelk stall.
But that is not to say the Tories are any more capable. Fore sure, they do have a few half-serious MPs, but they've entrusted defence and foreign policy to Tugendhat and the ineffably stupid Obese-Jecty - which will leave Britain defenceless. What you have there is a Ukraine obsessed neo-con psychopath and a Galaxy Class moron.
I've been watching Obese-Jecty for quite some time, trying to discern what, if anything, makes him a conservative. I have to say, I've drawn a complete blank on that score. Whenever he counter-signals Reform, he defaults to leftist talking points. He is midwit liberal of the ilk that made it necessary to kick the Tories out in the first place. As such, whatever progress Badenoch has made, at the stoke of her pen, she's reset the clock and once again made her party unelectable.
Essentially, what will happen is that they'll be surrounded by similarly indoctrinated people - ex-army brass and defence consultants, all marinated in the latest fashionable battle formation dogmas and, like Labour, will throw vast sums of money at the defence industry to procure unproven and largely useless unmanned toys that WILL go over budget, and they will gut existing capabilities to pay for it. Neither party is fit for office.
Worse still you won't get better out of Restore Britain because they think the same way, and about half as deep. The entire British right is bereft of technical competence. Ironically, they could do with recruiting some senior civil servants as governmental advisors, because they routinely demonstrate they do not understand what is possible, or even viable. Sadly, the one thing that does unite the right is their allergy to strategic thinking.
That, though is just as well, I suppose. One of the reasons the right shouldn't want to win in 2029 is that Britain is actually too buggered to fix for the moment. I've just been going over Reform's welfare policy again (because it has some basic statistics in it), and I think they're wildly optimistic about the potential for savings, and the political capital it will cost them just to make marginal cuts. If the electorate has to choose between sate handouts and a functioning state they will opt for handouts every single time. Socialists designed the system that way.
At best (and only with some serious statecraft) the near term potential for cuts over the course of a few years is about £30bn before they start pressing buttons that will cost them voters - and that won't even dent the problem. Suppose we gave Reform their due, and they met their £50bn target, it still doesn't put UK public finances in good order.
To get even close to rescuing public finances, one or two nuclear buttons will have to be pressed, and that isn't going to happen. Way too many vested interests. There's a lot we can do to to insulate ourselves form future liabilities like reforming public pensions and further disability claims, and by addressing the triple lock, but we're not cutting our way out of this mess. Meanwhile, there is not a lot to be saved by gutting the civil service either. Maybe there's about £4bn to be saved without drastically reducing state capacity. There's maybe £6bn you can snatch from foreign aid, but that still doesn't get us very far. It's hard to see where the cuts could come from.
While a (wildly optimistic) £50 billion welfare saving is large, it is not large relative to a £130 billion-ish deficit, a £110 billion of debt interest, and an ageing population that keeps pushing state-pension and NHS costs up as a share of GDP. Hard questions will have to be asked about what we can reasonably expect of the NHS, but even asking those questions within earshot of the average British voter will cost you a majority. Just ask Theresa May.
The optimal path for the British right is to wait for Labour to plunge Britain into a deep financial crisis that puts us on major austerity measures as the condition of a bailout. Such a crash is coming whether we tinker with welfare or not. We might as well let Labour carry the can for it. Ultimately it's going to take a raft of pro-growth supply side reforms, but even then there are no shortcuts back to prosperity, not least because even the most sensible energy policy will take up to a decade to take effect.
Meanwhile, correct me if I'm wrong, I also think there's probably a major housing crash on the mid term horizon that could put the banks back into crisis. There are multiple crises now locked in. The die is cast. Britain is massively, massively screwed, and the electorate is the main thing standing between us and the necessary reforms. Unfortunately, they're going to have to get what they voted for good and hard before they'll consent to a change of course.
Elsewhere in the news today, feathers have been ruffled by a masked “far right” demo against illegal immigration in Dover. Though completely harmless, perhaps intimidating to some, it has attracted widespread condemnation even on the right, from figures such as Nigel Farage and Julia Dunning Kruger. This, though, is what you get when voting achieves bugger all, and when a political solution looks ever more distant thanks to crooked Farage and the ineffably stupid Rupert Lowe.
Some remark that causing disruption and annoying ordinary British people doesn't help anyone but I’m inclined to disagree. I don't really have a problem with disruption. It's a public nuisance, but that's all it is. Unlike the climate clowns, none of these lads would dream of blocking an ambulance. It's actually heartening to see so many out on the street. I attended a protest at Linton on Ouse a few weeks ago and only ten people turned up.
That said, I can see the reason why. Linton is a backwater, so any protest has to be visible and make itself noticeable. Dover is the epicentre of this mess and so that is where the protest must be.
I would not be at all surprised to see such a protest moving growing in size and strength to the point where it could even shut down cross channel operations, and I can't say I'd have any objection to that so long as they weren't violent. After all, economic disruption is the only leverage we have, and not all that different to going on strike. It is totally legitimate.
I'm not especially keen on the black clothing or face covering, but it is interesting to note the two tier dynamic in play again where this is what it takes for the "respectables" of polite society to finally call for a ban on face covering. But despite my disapproval, I can also see why - since the plod will right now will lock you up for the crime of posting a meme.
I would rather this was handled some other way, but the electorate has spoken often enough on the matter of illegal immigration, and yet the government still enables it. These chaps are done asking nicely, and if it wasn't a 300 mile drive, I might even join them. I may do in the future - and I won't be wearing a face covering. I don't have to share their grotty politics to recognise the threat this immigration poses.
What's interesting about the march is that it accomplished more in terms of sending a message than the last half dozen Tommy Robinson jamborees. I never could see the point of a street movement unless it struck fear into the hearts of pantywaist liberals.
Well done Pete, another banger haha. By Julia Dunning Kruger, do you mean Hartley-Jewer? lol
This would be serious, if it wasn't so funny.