Restore Britain: the sound of white noise
You're going to whinge at me for criticising Lowe and Habib. That's fine. I'm used to it. But I was right about Reform, you all know I was right, and I'm right about this too. When it comes to sniffing out the pathological amateurism of the British right, my instincts never fail me. You don't need a crystal ball when you understand the mindset at work.
So let's break it down. The first question is, in what way do either of these ventures answer the complaints their progenitors made about Reform?
This is where you have to go back to first bases. Habib's complaint about Reform was the lack of transparency, authenticity and internal democracy. This mattered because in the 2023 election the party was denied several seats because it had no local ground game to speak of. The existing structure of Reform means that local branches have no autonomy and no influence in how the party is run.
There's actually a lot to be said for keeping it that way IF the party has a competent and supportive central office that provides useful campaign material, advice and support. But that's not happening and candidates are left to fend for themselves, unless they show any sign of succeeding at which point Farage will parachute his mates in. This isn't right or fair. This has caused enormous disillusionment among the activist base, but the party doesn't care because it's relying on churn, believing there will be a fresh supply of activists as the party grows. Put simply, Reform treats its members with contempt.
The task, therefore, was to transition Reform from a brand name to an authentic grassroots movement. Zia Yusuf said that would happen, but it didn't happen. Very little has changed. As such, that party isn't growing strong local branches, and doesn't know how to direct activists. The party is looking at the midterm polls and doesn't see any problem with their existing approach.
The extent to which this matters is all contingent on whether it still matters to have a ground game. That's a more complex question. It matters where there is stiff competition for a seat. It makes the difference between winning a seat and losing it. But Reform appear to be banking on such widespread disaffection that they can win just as Labour did on low turnouts, and that they can win on the sole quality of not being Labour or Conservative. This is a gamble based on the assumption that the Tories will continue to freefall in the polls.
And you know what? They might be right. And if they are right, there's no real reason worry about the structural problems as far as just winning elections is concerned. In my view it has longer term implications and the party cannot afford not to democratise because the lack of accountability and affinity for its base is what will cause it to lose touch. We're already seeing signs of that. Their strategy is also risky in that the Tory party may yet climb out of its hole.
Rupert Lowe's concerns about the party, though, go further than Habib's discomfort with the structure. He we have to go back to Lowe's statement in April when he said "I simply cannot endorse a party that has put so frighteningly little thought into what it would actually do with power. Reform’s plan is to ride the protest wave, faced with two obscenely unpopular mainstream parties, but offer absolutely nothing constructive - chasing power for the sake of power. To ‘win’ the game, and it is a game to them". He really does have their number.
So let's go back to the question, how do their respective ventures satisfy their own complaints about Reform? Well, I'm not going to dive too deeply into Habib's party, not least because there is so very little to go on, but I think we can take him as sincere in his intentions. I think he genuinely does want to build a democratic organisation. But the problem for him is that he doesn’t really know how to do it. You have to build grassroots movements from the bottom up. It takes time and costs a lot of money, and Habib doesn't have enough of either. He'll be competing for donors in a crowded field, in which Reform is in pole position, because to many, it looks like it might win, and Habib just doesn't have enough profile. There simply isn't room for an upstart right now. I think Lowe probably understands this.
Where both Lowe and Habib come to the crunch though, is on the matter of policy and direction. Neither of then really know or understand the criticism about Reform. It's not just the lack of policy. It's the lack of a philosophical underpinning. They have ideas about what should be done (as do we all) but they lack an ideological framework. Habib thinks he has one, based on national sovereignty and independence (and the war on woke), which informs his subsequent shtick, but it's very much Brexit-brained headbanging. It has yet to be distilled into a firm ideological construct - without which, it will look like another disorganised Boomer populist party. This is the definition problem I was talking about last year.
Both Lowe and Habib have launched their websites, but neither have any real content. These websites are placeholders, and we are meant to wait and see what they're really about. They have not yet done the thinking about the vision or the principles. They think what they've put up will do for now and they'll backfill it later. This is the rank amateurism that infects everything they do. It's the Ukip disease. Both Lowe and Habib are carriers.
Where it really comes unstuck, though, is policy. Habib doesn't know how to think about policy and Lowe doesn't either. There is every reason to believe their output will be more of the same "hang em and flog em" bullet point slop. A tweet yesterday from Lowe, describing his organisation, reveals something of the mindset. "Issue-based campaigning, ratified by the movement, to deliver real change both now, and in 2029". In other words, like GBPAC, members will suggest things (like bring back the death penalty), and they'll have a a little vote on it - and if it passes, that's what they'll do because that's all very democratic. They equate habitual voting rituals with democracy.
As such, it is unlikely we will see detailed, thorough, realistic policy. I don't think they really know what policy is, or the utility of having it, and will settle for lightweight right wing tropes. That's all they know how to do. Three dimensional thinking is beyond their abilities.
I know this because we've seen them in action during Brexit. They were all fired up for a WTO Brexit, and when people pointed out that this would have complications and consequences, they either denied there would be a problem (evasion) or just made up some fantastical nonsense of how they would solve it (delusion). This often relied on creative interpretation of international law. Something Habib is still prone to doing on the matter of Channel pushbacks.
Whether Lowe is any more sophisticated remains to be seen, but his recent paper on deportations doesn't fill me with confidence. The success of his venture is then contingent on who is directing the policy process, and whether there are serious people in the room who will have the background to cross examine and poke holes in it. But that tends not to happen on the right. Pointing out flaws is being "uncooperative". The done thing is to lavish praise on whatever they produce, because anything else is "punching right". They very rapidly turn into affirmation bubbles, and serious people quietly peel away, rolling their eyes as they go. You then have a congregation of mediocre intellects like GBPAC.
Since the architecture of Restore Britain is much the same as GBPAC, with many of the same people and much the same mindset at work, there is no reason to believe it will be any different. There won't be much direction from the top because they don't know what they're doing or why, and whatever it does produce will be a the work of a handful of dedicated individuals doing their best but ultimately, lacking the ability to do it well. There will be a flurry of activity and enthusiasm, but without leadership it will quietly die a death, or just chug on in the background not really making waves.
In many ways this is a replica of Lowe's grooming inquiry, where he's blundered into something which seems like a good idea, but having no idea what to actually do, he's reliant on whoever he delegates it to to give it form. To be fair, there are some good people around him, but Lowe likes to keep things quick and simple, and doesn't see the need for a more considered approach.
On that basis, neither organisation really satisfies their own criticisms of Reform. Reform's essential problem is the institutional amateurism that runs through it like a stick of Blackpool rock. This is less to do with organisational structure, and is more to do with who these people really are, and how they think. Since Lowe and Habib are of that same slopulist mindset, there is zero chance of their endeavours producing different results.
Hi Pete, I have been an avid reader of your Substack for a while now and over the past few years, as well as reading your blogs and listening to every interview you have given. I have also been doing the same with David Starkey and I think you may be wrong about your assertion that restorationists are delusional sufferers of ‘90s brain.’ I get that some of Blair’s constitutional reforms were a ratchet and are politically impossible to reverse. Particularly the hereditary peers he got rid of. Trying to persuade the public that Lords who owe their position to accident of birth and privilege are better than Lords who are political hacks or donors who owe their position to a political party is a fool’s errand, even if I think it’s true because of independent thought and, usually, a kind of knowledge and noblesse oblige with regards to their corner of the country. It just won’t wash and will be seen as retrograde and blatantly elitist and unfair. Expending political capital on this isn’t worth it and putting it in a manifesto gives a free hit to political enemies.
However, the call you make in your manifesto for a codified constitution is, I believe, a recipe for catastrophe which will, contrary to your assertions, diminish democracy. I take your point that a pre-1997 reset will hand a lot of dispersed power back to politicians and do nothing to ensure they won’t simply give them away again. But a written constitution, no matter how well-written, will eventually hand unaccountable power to judges who we can’t get rid of. I think the history of the US Supreme Court is instructive here. The Founding Fathers were intellectual giants, and their constitution was still undermined and warped by ‘imaginative interpretation.’ The nature of judicial activism is that it changes the meaning of words and clauses, so it doesn’t matter how long a constitutional convention is, how many sections or clauses are put to referendum, once it’s locked in, and only amendable with a supermajority, that is when judicial activist will get to work. Given that you think that the last 28 years has changed the British psyche so much that some mechanism through which the redress of grievances regarding ‘human rights’ will be demanded by the electorate, it will be impossible to draft a codified constitution which does not include them. This will provide much for leftist judicial activists, people wounded by the success of a resurgent patriotic Right, to work with. For all its faults, a sovereign Parliament restored largely to a pre-1997 state (with some caveats, as mentioned above), would likely be a better arrangement than a separate executive and a new codified constitution with a separate Supreme Court.
Another archaic arrangement, the restoration of which would be difficult to sell to the electorate, is the Law Lords. But, unlike the hereditary peers, I think it must be restored. Or, failing that, we would have to suffer the vulgarity of US-Style confirmation hearings and a vote on judicial appointments. Our teenage Supreme Court (the fact that it is only 16 years old is a point I would hammer on about if I was trying to argue for the restoration of the Law Lords) hasn’t sunk to the depths of the US Supreme Court in the 20th century yet, but it showed the first sign of power-grabbing in the prorogation decision, and considering the conveyor belt of radical leftist law graduates emanating from our universities, it is likely only a matter of time before we have an activist Supreme Court here too (see recent dissents of Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson in the US, along with Marbury v Madison, Roe v Wade and countless other decisions for a taste of it). Without a kind of British Federalist Society (not something I would want), we would in effect have a supreme third legislative chamber of unaccountable and militant leftists. Considering all the alternatives I think the restoration of the Law Lords is the least worst option and worth the political capital.
In the end, we have to trust the people. Blair’s constitutional reforms were successfully implemented due to stealth and the fact that their consequences were unpredictable. Opposing forces in Britain will have their guard up if a similar power dispersal was attempted in the future. It is also wrong in principle to tie the hands of future generations by trying to lock in things we think are desirable. Conservatism is, in my view, a reverence for the gradual, the empirical and the traditional. This was criminally violated by the Blairites and a restoration would return us, more or less to a settlement that was created by these three sensible and cautious principles. If future generations want to throw it all away again, more fool them, but we can’t and shouldn’t imprison their political aspirations. We must have faith that the policies and principles we favour work and produce a happier society. And that a restoration would return us to the core democratic principle that what the majority wants, it gets.
I agree with you on almost everything you’ve said about Reform, Restore, Advance and ‘slopulism’ but I don’t think restorationists (certainly not all of them) are delusional or haven’t thought about implications. Certainly not Starkey. Please forgive me if I have mischaracterised, misunderstood, or straw-manned any of your positions. All the best Pete!
Give them a chance. You are wrong about leadership. They both have better understanding of real leadership than the cheerleading shallowness of the much adored Nigel.
Remember the first principle of leadership is that boring quality, “Consistency”. (Principles of Leadership MOD). Both Lowe and Habib have that in spades. They have never changed their tunes nor deserted their posts.
Nigel flunks things at the last minute time and again, which is why thinking people don’t trust him. We’ve looked at his past record, including his performance on EU Parliament Committees and found him seriously wanting.
Reform is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and will likely be engineering to bring us our first Muslim Prime Minister. That doesn’t preclude them winning strategic votes from doubters but don’t dismiss the dissenters. They may be the only ones to save us later on. They may be the only ones with integrity.