Just what is the Reform party now?

It’s been a while since I did any serious analysis of Reform. There hasn’t been that much to report unless you’re taken with the soap opera of defections. I think there’s more to be said now the dust has settled for a bit.

My main criticism of Reform, pretty much from the outset, is that it has no intellectual foundation. It is an empty husk of a party with no policies and no ideological anchor. It is loosely a right wing populist party that trades primarily on disaffection. Reform is defined through a process of triangulation. It is defined by what it isn’t, rather than what it is.

Here it helps to understand a little but about the psychology of Farage. His long term plan has always been to replace the Conservative Party. The mission is to position Reform as a fresh centre right party, breaking out of the Ukip mould. The party line is to give the ethno-right a hard swerve and maintain a cordon sanitaire between Reform and Tommy Robinson. That, though, still leaves the question of what Reform would actually do with power, and as Jeremy Clarkson observes, nobody really knows.

On this matter I’ve seen a number of pundits suggesting that recent Tory defectors like Danny Kruger would give the party some intellectual heft. If memory serves, The Spectator certainly seemed to think so.

I wasn’t so sure about Danny Kruger. He never really popped up on my radar before, but I was assured he’s an intellectual heavyweight. Readers will recall that I wasn’t all that impressed. And I’m still not. Kruger has been doing the rounds, attempting to put his own personal stamp on the party, and it would appear he’s freelancing. He’s appeared on the Winston Marshall Show and the BBC. In both instances, Kruger sets out to define Reform as a civic nationalist party, while conceding the BBC assertion that Tommy Robinson is a far-right extremist.

This is all completely in line with Farage’s mission to sanitise Reform, and it may surprise readers to learn that I don’t think he’s entirely wrong. The average normie still thinks of Tommy Robinson as a rabble rousing thug who can’t stay on the right side of the law.

The problem, though, is that Britain doesn’t need a milquetoast centre-right party. We could have done with one circa 2016 that did something useful with Brexit and didn’t fling open the borders to the third world, but now we need something much more robust that will go on the offensive. Of course, I’m not saying Reform should be as rabidly right wing as me but we still need to see some actual red meat, otherwise what’s the point?

The concern here is whether Danny Kruger really is giving definition to the party, or whether he’s just filling airtime on his own initiative. If it’s the latter, he’ll soon be contradicted and undermined by Farage since the party is whatever he says it is - which is always contingent on what side of the bed he falls out of. Alarmingly, I think I prefer that to a party defined by Danny Kruger who is very much of the Badenoch mindset - that we need integration measures. According to Kruger, in the context of civic nationalism, Afghans born to first-generation migrants are equal heirs to those whose heritage is traced exclusively to these isles.

As you might expect, this has gone down like a bucket of cold sick with the online right, particular since Afghan migrants were surreptitiously imported (by Robert Jenrick no less), many of whom have since committed serious sexual offences. There is zero likelihood of successfully integrating those who are not wanted. Afghans should be included in the very fist wave of any remigration measures.

This does not bode well when you consider that Farage is now looking to tap into the Moslem vote. We now see him exalting the virtues of diversity within the party, reinforcing the view that Reform is transforming in the Tory Party 2.0. What you're hearing here is calibrated messaging on the basis of electoral analysis. As such, it is a party that will say or do anything to win power, and say or do anything to stay in power. It is no longer driven by what it believes, if it can even be said that it believed in anything at all. The uniparty transformation is complete.

It seems that when Reform was told it must professionalise, they took that to mean sanitising their candidates, moderating their message, "broadening their appeal", and investing in data analysis to calibrate thier targeted messaging. Electioneering as a marketing activity. What you're seeing is the product of some very expensive consultancy, which is why Mr Farage has been toadying up to foreign multi-millionaires.

As such, the party does not look to its own members for funding in the same way that third world kleptocracies look to oil contracts rather than general taxation. Thus it is not accountable to its members nor does it give a fig what they think, or whether they withhold their funding. This is an extension of the data-wrangling used in the referendum, and employed successfully in recent US elections. But that's exactly the kind of inauthentic politics that brings about authentic government. Their only metric of success is how well they're doing in the polls. Actual outcomes are a distant second.

That means that if you have to promise the Indian business lobby some visa relaxations, that's precisely what they'll do. They did that with Brexit and they'll do it again. If Farage now thinks the Moslem bloc vote is electorally lucrative (and he's not wrong), we can safely assume things like halal bans will go on the backburner.

In effect, the party becomes a microcosm of multicultural society where individual ethnic cohorts will look to get their feet under the table to push their own ethnic interests, and Farage will allow it if the donations keep flowing from wealthy businessmen. It has the secondary utility of being able to fend off accusations of racism, and the party will set great store by its own diversity virtue. This is how Reform becomes an establishment party - and if you're expecting different result then you really were born yesterday.

Elsewhere, though, Konstantin Kisin puts it in more stark terms. He asserts that the next election could be a choice between Zack Polanski and Nigel Farage, ergo voting Reform is a no-brainer. Certainly there are no brains involved. To my mind, however, this just takes us back to 2019 when the choice was between a vacuous oaf and a throwback communist. There is every reason to expect the exact same results, where Reform comes to power with no idea of what it would do, or how, only to walk into obvious ambushes and accomplish nothing.

As it happens, I still don’t think Reform has it in the bag. Reform keeps making a series of unforced errors, serving up more rotten meat than red meat, and the Reform base has certainly noticed. One might even go as far as saying that Ben Habib’s Advance UK is a unionised group of disgruntled Reform supporters, and though it’s small, it’s made up of Reform’s former passionate activist base. That tells its own story.

Meanwhile, supposing Matt Goodwin gets elected in the upcoming by-election, things could get messy. Between him and Jenrick, there's an intellectual axis there that eclipses the Lowe/Habib dog and pony show. It might be enough to put Reform back on an even keel, even with Zahawi on board. But it could just as easily go south.

This is a change of environment for Farage because he's never had to tolerate intelligent and ambitious colleagues before. Previously, he's been in a position to jettison them, but he isn't now. That's going to make for some pretty toxic chemistry. There are going to be some blazing rows between at least two of them and one of them is going to find himself in the McMurdock friendzone. Keep in mind what happened between Farage and previous Tory defectors - and keep in mind that Farage is still the same conniving snake. The more I think on it, there's no way in hell Reform gets to 2029 without another big name being shunted out of the gang.

Here you have to keep in mind the power core of Reform. It's the Tice/Yusuf axis, and their access to truck loads of money. I'm next to certain that Yusuf will rub up against either Jenrick or Goodwin. The thing about politics is that cordial alliances can very rapidly turn to enmity. I wouldn't even rule out a split. Clever ambitious men seldom collaborate well over a long time. (Magnetic repellence). There will be collateral damage, and possibly before or after 2029, we might see a defection to Advance. Never underestimate their capacity to self-sabotage. Bookmark this if you like, 'cause this is one of those hunches that usually pans out.

It may even be that Farage bows out before 2029 owing to health reasons, leaving Reform with a leadership contest in which the most obvious successor is Robert Jenrick, meaning the party goes into the 2029 election with a simmering rivalry with Badenoch, who will tear chunks out of Jenrick’s record, and by that point Reform will look a lot like the Tory party we chucked out of office in 2024 with more Tory MPs than elected Reformers. By then the Tory party might look like a more serious option.

All this is to say that Reform’s fundamental problems are no closer to a resolution, and though I am often told that it’s unreasonable to expect they will sort themselves out this far out from an election, there’s scant evidence to suggest they realise what the problems are, thus are unlikely to resolve them. The party is predicated on the electorate not noticing that Reform is just as much of a shambles as the rest of them. But if Jeremey Clarkson has noticed, we can be assured he isn’t the only one.