Making Britain great again

Traditionally I’ve been quite sniffy about other bloggers who devote energies to American politics as though we don’t have enough problems of our own. I can see why they do it though. British politics is boring at the best of times, but in recent years it’s been wholly tedious. Nothing ever changes. It just gets a little bit worse every day, with no sign of abatement.

It is then something of a relief to look upon American politics right now. At least we get to know what winning looks like (for someone, at least). Brits have only known false dawns. Anyone who was really paying attention found little cause to celebrate on morning the news broke that we were leaving the EU. By that point it was virtually a foregone conclusion that our politicians would make a pig’s ear of it.

Similarly, when Boris Johnson took office, though no-one could have predicted the Pandemic arriving at that moment in history, it was wholly predictable that an oaf like Johnson would fail to measure up.

That’s not to say that Donald Trump fared much better in similar circumstances. On both counts, the pandemic robbed politics of its momentum. For America, Trump 2.0 is unfinished business.

Now that Trump is unhindered by Covid, he is back with a vengeance and he’s not taking any prisoners. So far, he’s has sent the army to the borders, taken steps to take on the cartels, declared an open war on illegal immigration, ended UNRWA funding, quit the Paris agreement and the utterly corrupt WHO, ended the abuse of minors by the "trans" movement and ended trans ideology. He's restoring free speech and meritocracy.

He's cleared out divisive DEI practices, and is now conducting a massive audit into government corruption and waste. He's revoked the disastrous EV mandate. He's mobilised a massive relief effort for wildfire victims. He's fast-tracking new energy exploration. He's acting to put an end to the scourge of fentanyl. He's restored women's sports and he's balancing the budget.

He's putting the whole West on notice to get their act together. He's done more in three weeks for the average American than the last three presidents put together. So far, it doesn't look like he's put a foot wrong. He might even end the war in Gaza and Ukraine. Moreover, he's given America and the world hope that things really can get better. More importantly, he’s bringing back plastic straws and you can call people retards again. I'm really not seeing a downside.

Trump is saving America and the West especially, because without America as a beacon of liberty and enterprise, there is no West at all. I pray I live long enough to see this happen in Britain.

The question for Brits is how we unshackle ourselves from the corpse of liberalism. Many are looking to Nigel Farage and Reform for salvation, to complete the job of Brexit, and do for us what Trump is doing for America. I’m less hopeful.

For starters, Farage isn’t Trump. Trump’s “common touch” is not an affectation. There’s a warmth and humour to Donald Trump. He’s sincere. Farage, on the other hand, is a parasite. Farage likes being in the public eye. He likes being a folk-demon. He likes the lifestyle, and he likes the attention. He wants the position, but none of the responsibility that goes with it.

Then there’s Reform itself. It is a populist party to the core. Amateurism is in its DNA. We are told they are in the process of professionalising, but I’ve seen no evidence of that. Those who say the party is professionalising think that professionalising means professionalising the campaign machinery, i.e. investing in data analytics and viral media content.

I have no doubt that vast intellectual resource is going into the presentation layer of Reform, but that’s never been the problem. Even without the glitz and a the glam, Farage can always fill a town hall meeting. He will always be the star attraction for the media. The problem is substance. Or the lack of it.

My sources (for what they’re worth) claim that Reform is consulting with serious people, but I have my doubts if anyone in Reform knows what constitutes a serious person. This a party that’s all too happy to have Tim Montgomerie and Andrea Jenkyns on board, and if the profoundly unserious Priti Patel defects, Farage will welcome her with open arms. As such, when my Westminster insider sources tell me Reform really is upping its game behind the scenes, I’m afraid I can’t take them seriously.

My view remains unchanged. The pervasive amateurism that haunted Ukip was entirely down to Farage. It followed him to the Brexit Party, and is abundantly present in Reform. It keeps making the same basic, unforced errors that could be avoided with just a little bit of attention to detail.

Despite recent polling, putting Reform in the lead, I don’t think Reform has any chance of forming the next government. They’d have to convert all the places where they came second in 2024, and achieve a pretty hefty swing in harder to crack seats. They could be in a position to form a Tory-Reform pact government which would put us back to where we were in 2019, where the supposedly right wing in parliament is a dysfunctional coalition of varying ideologies. This is made all the more unpredictable since Reform MPs will be unvetted wildcards, many with agendas of their own.

Supposing Reform was in government, though, I imagine they’d soon hit the rocks. Zia Yusuf has announced that "Reform is drafting detailed plans to identify, immobilise and remove all elements of the Blob hostile to the interests of the British people". That would certainly be a first for a Farage-led enterprise. The question is whether anyone in Reform, or anyone close to it, would have the first idea where to start. This is certainly no small undertaking and requires a certain clarity of thought.

First of all, you have to define what the interests of the British people are, and what constitutes "the British people". Without functioning basic definitions, every subsequent decision will be faulty.

If you take the view that the whole system is rotten, and you've taken the decision to go to war with it, you are essentially going to have to replace that system - and you need to have half a clue what the replacement looks like. I take the view that the first action should be to introduce proper separation of powers so that the executive can choose ministers from outside of parliament, otherwise the recruitment pool is limited to parliament, and limited to the largely unvetted mouthbreathers who'll become Reform MPs. You could, I suppose, recruit individuals to the Lords, but that’s stretching a convention to breaking point.

Here again, though, Reform’s definition of serious people falls short. The populist shtick says that we need entrepreneurs and boy geniuses. They’re infatuated with Elon Musk and DOGE, hoping to emulate the Trump administration. They are forgetting one small detail though. Britain is not America. There is no system of sweeping executive orders. That’s not how we do things. We should recall all the legal shenanigans we had just to invoke Article 50. Imagine trying to do anything more elaborate with a deadlocked parliament and a slim majority.

We should also recall from Brexit that entrepreneurs and CEOs were no more qualified to comment on the intricacies of modern trade and governance than someone dragged in off the street. A British revolution is going to need more brains like Ivan Rogers who know how to navigate the system. This machine has bested every challenger for centuries. It is not to be underestimated, even if front line politicians and gatekeepers are barely a cut above plankton in terms of talent.

You then have to start with the obvious. The British establishment sees parliament as subordinate to the "rule of law" and international law. That's going to require the withdrawal from a dozen major international treaties, and repeal of several major instruments, not least the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act as a starter for ten. Only when this is done can you even attempt something like immigration and energy sector reform.

So not only do you need detailed policies, you need a plan of execution and an idea of what the alternative framework looks like. Just rolling back Blair's constitutional tinkering isn't going to cut it. The constitution has evolved, as have the institutions.

But then if you're taking on "the blob", you also need to define the blob. What are we talking here? The civil service? NGOs? ALBs/Quangos? The unions? Councils? All of the above? You're going to need a strategy for each.

Certainly nobody will object to a British version of DOGE, and few will complain if foreign aid is gutted, but after an orgy of cuts, you're left with the more difficult job of running things.

Here we find the courts are a mess. The police are a mess. The armed forces demoralised and broke. Welfare is a mess. Pensions are a mess. Brexit is a mess. Dentists are a mess. The labour market is a mess. Planning is a mess. Local government is a mess. Health and social care is a mess. If you're planning on being in government by 2029, and you're only just thinking about the basic structures, you're not even close to being a serious proposition for government.

This, ultimately is the problem with populism. Their egos are writing cheques they can't cash. They think it will all fall into place for them just so long as they're holding the reins. They have a nasty shock ahead of them.

Moreover, unlike America, Britain is not in a position to put a bit of stick about. Withdrawal from international treaties and rolling back Net Zero will have consequences. It’s less of an issue for America. America is a massive country with massive natural resources, and is perfectly capable of sustaining itself without "free trade". We can safely assume that taking equivalent actions could collapse the TCA, and the Northern Ireland settlement, which could derail any momentum.

Then there’s the Reform mindset. Tice and Farage both believe we can simply deploy the Royal Navy in the channel and turn boats back. Tice even believes we are within international law to pick up dinghy migrants and dump them on the beach at Calais. He’s wrong, of course, and will likely spark a showdown with France that could result turn into a minor trade war over fishing which then results in in port blockades by French unions. This doesn’t play out very well.

Part of governing effectively means scoping opposition and potential reality barriers. This thought exercise was not done by Brexiteers ahead of leaving the EU, and it had wholly predictable results. The same is true for Part Two of the Brexit revolution.

This is something I attempted to address when I wrote a manifesto last year. I will admit to running out of steam on that. In some areas it was an exercise in finding out what I don’t know, and would need additional time and research resources to understand more. Reform with all its money and contacts could do this. I can’t, especially since I’m an ADHD/internet-addled blogger who’s losing the will to live.

From that exercise, though, I at least know what I don’t know. I hit upon some interesting ideas, but some of the best ideas are simply not things you can sell to the British public who, for right or wrong, have certain red lines. Therein lies the danger of attempting to impose American ideas on the British public.

Though American politics is energised by the flurry of activity that flows from the presidential pen, and from Elon Musk’s DOGE, we are already starting to see pushback from within the machine. Trump’s executive orders are likely to be met with legal challenges, and resistance from the Washington blob, and Trump may yet get bogged down in process. It’s reasonable to assume that Musk and Trump can mobilise an army of lawyers to get the job done, and there are serious policy units around Washington that have the ideas and policies to keep the Trump machine rolling, but it’s unlikely Farage and Reform can say the same.

Having not done the preparatory work, and in many cases, not even seeing the need for it, Reform don’t even know what they don’t know. Worse still, they can’t fall back on Westminster think tankery since much of it is as intellectually debased as Westminster itself. It is a nest of nepotism and cronyism. We saw this on the first morning of Johnson’s administration, when knowledgeable SpAds were kicked out in favour of pretty young girls and ambitious Toryboys whose collective knowledge of policy would fit on a postage stamp.

You can argue with some seriousness that Reform’s amaterish fumbling couldn’t be any worse than the professional class of politicians, but we should recall what happened to Mrs Truss when she set about making even marginal changes to the way things are done. She walked into every ambush and was tossed aside within days. They saw her coming, and they’ve seen Farage coming too.

They do say that no plan of battle ever survives first contact with the enemy, and there is no possible way to anticipate every eventuality, but the exercise at least prepares you for some of the possibilities. Plans can be adapted accordingly. To expect results from unserious people who don’t recognise the need for policy, though, is unlikely to yield results.

Trump’s shoot first and ask questions later is a viable approach for an economic and cultural superpower. Especially so when you have a thumping mandate. Britain’s path is more arduous, and this is a mess we have to think our way out of. Serious people are already in short supply, and Reform is more likely to push them away than embrace them. As such, Britain’s salvation is more a long march than a glorious revolution, and if Reform makes a pig’s ear of it the way Liz Truss did, we may find ourselves going backwards. History thus repeats itself in the same lamentable way.