The British Right's never-ending civil war

There are now tens of thousands of former Reform supporters, many of whom feel utterly betrayed by the trajectory Reform is on. (The same people who feel betrayed by the Tories - and for much the same reasons). The closer it gets to power, the more it dilutes its message.

This is a rod they made for their own backs by promising that which could not be delivered, or would stunt their electability. Consequently, they're gradually shedding most of their original base - just as the Tories did.

This is why you shouldn't start off with lazy populist tropes you will later have to backtrack on, otherwise you end up spawning a breakaway group like Reform/Restore.

The problem for any breakaway group is that they're on the exact same trajectory. Most of the criticisms you can level at Reform already apply to Restore in spades and it will only get worse. Restore is trading on the same old bulletpoint slop they will later have to row back.

The only way to avoid this is to stand firm on your principles and go out to persuade people (as parties should) that your platform is the right platform. But that's going to be difficult when your party has no intellectual foundation and the people you need to win can see that you aren't really a serious party with credible policies. Just as we can all see that Reform doesn't really know what it's doing, there's no evidence of serious thought behind Restore either.

As such, they have two options. Either carry on being crap, or mature their policy base and repeat the same alienation process. If the choice is the latter, they need to invest the time in policy now before leading their support base up the garden path the way Reform has.

Reform's fundamental problems have always stemmed from the lack of a philosophical anchor, meaning supporters will project on to the party what it actually stands for. This is also true of Restore. This is why it’s taking on the same cultlike characteristics. Meanwhile the party runs on the same reactive model, where policy is whatever the leader says it is, issued by decree, and is as much a surprise to their own staffers as it is everyone else.

Given that Restore is run in the same way, using the same base rhetoric, with the same chaotic and lazy approach to everything it does, I have to wonder anyone expect different results.

I am told, though, the Restore is a new party and I should at least give them a chance. Many see it as uncharitable to be piling in on them now when the party is only a week old, but I’ve been in the game long enough to know that most of Restore’s shtick is recycled Ukip tract which was widely panned and ridiculed in 2014. The time to address this is now.

The problem is, nobody wants to do that kind of thinking. Virtually everyone on the right prefers to pump out generic right wing rage bait and slop than to turn their minds to the question of policy and strategy. I can see why too. It's fun, it's popular, and it's quite profitable. I wish my system of ethics allowed me to do it. All the same, though, you still need dedicated people turning that sentiment into a viable party machine with a serious prospectus.

If, though, you just have a lot of noisemakers wailing on X, preaching to their echo-chamber, never stopping to audit their own bullshit, you're never going to build a coherent movement. It's just going to end up a lot of people who already agree with each other recycling the same crapola and persuading nobody of anything.

As such, I do not see much future for Restore, other than to pressure Reform in the same way Ukip pressured the Tory party. That’s where it could succeed, and if Reform’s rhetoric from the last few days is anything to go by, it’s working. It all comes down to how much trust you place in Reform.

Meanwhile, though Reform publicly pretends Restore is nothing to worry about, Lowe could cause a brain drain of Reform activists - the very people you need to turn close second places into seats. Farage will have to think twice about antagonising local branches by parachuting his mates in.

With that said, Restore still amounts to a very online sideshow. The shape of Restore’s real world party infrastructure is still very much in question, and it’s going to take a long time to establish the kind of brand recognition you need to at least keep your deposits. Reform’s real headache is tactical voting.

One thing Starkey is right about is that the left is far more effective when it comes to tactical voting. It could lead to Reform losing key battlegrounds. As such, I still think we are on course for a Reform-Tory coalition with a fragile majority and a weak mandate, with massive organised opposition. There are any number of ways a right wing government will come a cropper.

This is what prompts a lot of my scepticism about the populist agenda. Certainly if the right takes it upon itself to repeal equality laws, they will activate all the disability charities and unions. I'm not necessarily saying it shouldn't be done, but some policies are a bit like invading Russia in the winter.

As such, any party of the right will have to think very carefully about what matters most, and how they will spend their limited political capital. Policy must be categorised into that which is essential, that which is desirable, and that which is nice to have, but not urgent.

Looking at the trends of the last ten years, it would be wrong to assume any PM will see out a full term. It seems to be that any PM has under two years to get results or they are out on their ear. As such, the priority will need to be policy that yields fast and visible results. It also means picking your battles VERY carefully.

That means anticipating well in advance the policies you will have to chuck on the scrapheap. This is partly what caused the downfall of the Tories. They made vague mutterings about a British Bill of Rights only to do the electoral maths and realise it was a political non-starter - along with many other contentious reforms.

If you properly anticipate where you won’t have enough political capital, it prevents you from campaigning on things you simply cannot deliver. You can set out your long term policy preferences and values, but you still need a real-world plan. That then brings us back to the original dilemma. How exactly do you hold on to your base when you have to balance the demands of supporters with the real world?

This is what brings me back to Brexit again. As I keep saying, this ain’t my first rodeo. While the public voted to leave the EU they did not vote for the radical free trade agenda as advanced by the ERG who insisted than anything less that an all out trade war with the EU was essentially Brexit in name only. The right has rather successfully weaved the narrative that Brexit was betrayed by Boris Johnson, Theresa May, the civil service, the WEF, and shapeshifting lizards from the fourth dimension.

As such, any party of the right must recognise that the hardline very online right are ridiculous people who simply cannot be appeased, and will turn on you the moment you try to deal with the complex realities of governing. You can see why Farage wants them out of the tent before the election. The question now is whether Reform now has sufficient internal heft to counterbalance the inadequacies of their leader. If they can put together halfway compelling policy package in the time remaining, they might look credible where Restore does not. That’s a very big if though.

What seems more likely right now is that the right will continue to rip chunks out of each other and it’s going to get very nasty - and neither faction will come up smelling of roses.

I’m of the view that Rupert Lowe is mainly motivated by the determination to stick it Farage. The armed police raid on his farm to seize his gun collection left him livid, and he is set on extracting revenge (as anyone would). He also plans to sue Farage. As such, Lowe will not develop his party beyond what it takes to provide a stick with which he can beat Farage.

From here, it’s going to get deeply personal and very ugly, and the outsider might very well conclude that neither should be touched with a barge pole. It’s even possible that the chief beneficiary of this intra-rightwing civil war is the Tory party. That would be the most ironic, and also hilarious, outcome - which makes the prospect all the more plausible. All of which could have been avoided by setting out a coherent platform in the first place.