Anyone’s who’s bored of my Reform commentary should probably skip this one because I’m not saying anything especially new.
Breathless in its enthusiasm, The Spectator reports that ”After the Channel 4 sting in September prompted several key aides to leave Nigel Farage’s operation, Reform UK is rebooting their press team too”. The party is set to triple the size of the creative and social media teams.
This is quite typical of Reform. They’re backsliding in just about every poll and have concluded that it’s a communications problem. But a press team shake-up isn’t going to resolve Reform’s fundamental problem. The marketing team can only do so much when the product is faulty.
In this case, Reform still doesn’t have a product to sell. They can ramp up the messaging, but it still doesn’t present as a government in waiting because it doesn’t have the people or the policies. There is no intellectual underpinning. It is a populist noise maker. They are not a political party. They’re pundits.
I am unlikely to vote in the next general election because I see no party of the right comprised of serious people with a coherent idea of what they would do in power. The closest thing we’ve seen to a governing doctrine from Reform is a few blog posts from Danny Kruger, which are cursory and threadbare, and given how Farage operates, there is no guarantee that is the actual game plan. Kruger is expendable at a moment’s notice. What you’re then left with is Robert Jenrick and his list of generic right wing bullet points, and not a lot else.
There’s a reason Reform is backsliding in the polls and that’s because the public has got their number. It’s all glitz and glam with no substance behind it, and no press team on earth can shake that perception.
Meanwhile, the glam and the vibes are wearing thin. Farage is mired in allegations of sleaze and financial intrigue, and there’s still no obvious successor. Jenrick’s image of a confident and professional intellect has soured since he joined Reform, and everyone else in the line up is sub-mediocre.
This can only be addressed by fixing the fundamentals. The party needs serious, credible people promoting research-based policy according to a coherent system of values. That is a precondition of any successful comms operation. But that has always been Reform’s problem and it is not going to be solved with Farage at the helm.
Essentially, if you believe that “amateur hour is over” you never really understood Reform or Farage. Amateurism is in Reform’s DNA. It has allocated £9m to a new media operation along the lines of GB News which will be more of the same boilerplate populism from the same old faces, without addressing the fundamental absence of an intellectual foundation. It tells us that Reform has more money that it knows what to usefully do with, and will waste it by preaching to the converted.
In the end, if the party is to make a breakthrough, it needs to win over sceptics and convince opinion influencers that Reform is a serious proposition for government. This it cannot do. It is inherently repellent to serious people, not least because Farage will contradict and undermine them. Many have attempted in good faith to bring intellectual direction to Reform and all have concluded it a waste of time while Farage is at the helm.
Consequently, Reform is now fighting for survival, and will do well just to maintain its own base who are increasingly sceptical of Farage’s ability to deliver. Reform has gone off the boil even for many of its most ardent supporters. Cosmetic changes will not make a difference.
While regular readers will know I’ve been saying all this for the better part of three years, it bears repetition. Reform is not performing where it should. I had some confirmation of this over the weekend.
On Saturday I was invited to a local “patriots” meeting to discuss local protests, the proposed Linton on Ouse migrant facility, and related matters. It was not productive but a welcome opportunity to discuss politics with likeminded individuals. These were very working class people in a very working class pub, which ought to be turquoise to the core at this point, but the sentiment was broadly in keeping with my own assessment. Nobody is quite sure what Reform stands for, nobody trusts Farage, and nobody thinks they can win.
I inquired as to what the feeling about Restore was, but the sentiment was equally sceptical. Some suspect Lowe is working with the Tories, while others just think it’s a vendetta party that’s splitting the right. They like Rupert Lowe, but they don’t think Restore can achieve very much.
Predominantly the feeling on the ground is one of is dependency and impotence. voting isn’t working, and there is equal scepticism of Danny Tommo’s clan. There is plenty of anger, and plenty of will to act, but there is nothing approaching leadership. There are small cells like this around the country, they all know each other and talk to each other, but lack any useful direction. Morale on the right is at rock bottom.
This is something I’ve felt for some time. I look at the failures of Trumpism and strongly suspect a Reform government would play out much the same way, and I still don’t see any sign that Restore have any real idea what they’re doing. The right is not going to win in 2029 at this rate, and the Tories seem to be clawing their way out of the coffin.
I suspect this is because Labour is so bad that many voters will just do whatever it takes to get rid of them, even if that means backing Badenoch. It may even be that the dissident right has peaked and we’re back where we started.
Of course, a year is a long time in politics, and this winter may be the winter when we finally play the price for energy policy insanity. This may not be the winter when the national grid falls over but there are some eyewatering bills ahead that will eat into household discretional spending, and Labour is running out of sticking plasters.
Consequently, we are likely to see a summer of discontent followed by a winter of discontent. While that plays well for the right, the disunity carries its own costs. Even a declining Reform party can still cost the Tories dozens of seats, allowing Labour to win by default - especially if the right makes a feature of cutting welfare.
Back in 2024, the right set itself a target of retaking the castle by 2029, and the consensus seems to be that if we don’t win then it’s all over anyway. That is not a view to which I subscribe, but it does mean we’ve missed the off ramp to avoid a much bigger economic and social implosion. Maybe that’s what it will take for the serious people to come out of hiding. Until then, we are on our own.