The slop right needs to grow up

Following my earlier exchange with Carl Benjamin, I think I’ve got the measure of the man. He’s come back at me with a creative bit of psychoanalysis rather than addressing the actual point.

No, this is clearly about vanity for you. "I'm not like the other girls" syndrome, and so instead of being constructive you are petty, snide, and uncharitably snipe at people without being at all critical of yourself. Obviously Restore can't fulfil the ridiculous standards you set within the first two weeks if its existence, and yes, social media is the name of the game. A reasonable person would make allowances for such things, but this isn’t about being reasonable for you, it's about trying to carve out a niche for yourself so you can bask in your own self-righteousness. Everyone can see it and we're tired of it, which is why you are getting so much pushback. If you framed everything you said in the language of "hey guys, is this a good idea do you think? I think it would really help" you would have zero critics. But you don't do that because this is about your own need to feel validated by someone else's failure. Knock it off, man.

As it happens, I've been plenty constructive with the whole of the right. On request I’ve advised Ukip, Homeland, Reform and even the SDP on occasion. Readers will also recall I made many of criticisms of Reform prior to the election in 2024. I criticised them for their absence of a reform agenda - which is problematic for a party called Reform. There was nothing approaching policy as we were racing up to the 2024 election - just a load of recycled tract from the Brexit Party.

I put many of these points to the then chairman, Ben Habib, who invited me down to London to discuss it. When it was explained to him in person, he was receptive to a lot of it, and he certainly understood the the necessity for an intellectual foundation even if he himself is incapable of creating one. I subsequently documented what we'd spoken of and I had some hopes some of it might sink in. The reason I went to the trouble is because I desperately wanted an alternative to the Tories.

But then Farage returned to the fray, and with that died any hope of Reform becoming more than just a slopulist party. Dozens of people have tried in vain to give Farage led-enterprises an intellectual foundation, but all have failed because policy is always contingent on what side of the bed Farage falls out of. That's why I was among the first to be calling for a new party, recognising that Reform was a non-starter. You will recall that I predicted well in advance that Lowe would be forced out of the party. When you know how Farage thinks and behaves, everything else just falls into place. You don't need to be Nostradamus.

As it happens, I was completely vindicated on that score, with one Rupert Lowe echoing many of my own sentiments about Reform. In a blistering attack on Reform, Lowe concluded “I simply cannot endorse a party that has put so frighteningly little thought into what it would actually do with power”. As such, that became the benchmark by which he is measured. It's the same criteria I apply to Rupert Lowe.

I soon came to realise, though, that you can take the man out of Reform, but you can't take the Reform out of the man. The exact same pathological amateurism persists in Ben Habib's party and in Restore. It's the exact same "It'll do for now" mentality and it will yield similar outcomes.

Benjamin says "Obviously Restore can't fulfil the ridiculous standards you set within the first two weeks of its existence" - but he ignores that Restore has existed in the guise of a policy unit and pressure group for eight months, launching its own replica of GBPAC's policy consultation early on. (Both of which produced nothing of value for entirely predictable reasons). I saw this coming in July last year when Restore launched.

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.

As predicted, instead of a viable policy framework, we have one paper from Harrison Pitt, some disjointed bullet points on the website, and a collection of the leader’s half-arsed ranty tweets. This is that exact “it’ll do” mentality. No care taken. No thought invested. Everything is done on the fly, and liable to change at any moment. Just blurt out any old crap, hope nobody notices, and attack anyone who complains. Remind you of anyone?

Benjamin says I set "ridiculous standards" but Lowe didn't seem to think they were ridiculous when he slammed Reform. But y'know, I don't even demand particularly high standards. Just a bit of effort wouldn't go amiss. I've seen what can be done in a short time with zero resources so I do expect better from reportedly intelligent people who have more money than they know what to usefully do with - and so should you. It's not even as though they have to start from scratch.

On more than a few occasions I've offered help and advice in good faith (which is sometimes welcomed). I've trogged down to London dozens of times to make the case, offering my time freely, with no expectation of reward or even acknowledgement. I just want to see *some* indication that some structured thinking is applied and that some care is taken. As yet, there is scant evidence of that. Ultimately, they are to be judged by what they produce. And what they produce is low effort crap which sets the tone for everything else they do.

I've learned the hard way that mollycoddling these people does not yield results, and any critique, however mildly framed, is still treated as unconstructive and an attack. This lot, Carl Benjamin included, are adamant that lazy slop is sufficient. I simply do not agree. I will not make excuses for it.

Benjamin prefers to police my tone and offer his gifted insights into my psychology than apply himself to any of this. In this entire exchange, he doesn’t actually refute any of my points - chiefly because he can’t.

My detractors have instead settled on the familiar gaslighting themes from Brexit where I’m too “abrasive” or “unconstructive” or that I “just don’t understand the politics”, - not forgetting the all time great “You can’t expect a new party to have things like policies” (even though Restore is essentially a Ukip derivative, and the movement is more than twenty years old). If they applied as much creativity to their political thinking as they do their excuses, I wouldn’t have cause to complain.

The fragile little boys on the slop right need to get used to the idea that in politics, people will attack your party. You get attacked from all angles to see what sticks. As such, it pays to think in advance what sort of thing you don’t want to stick. If you’re sharting out boilerplate rightwing slogans then you will struggle to shake off the perception you’re a slop factory.

This is not to say I am not the least bit self-aware. I know I’m direct. I know my language is sharp. I know I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. But I honestly can’t envisage anything more pathetic than to disregard well-founded criticism on the basis of tone. The mark of an adult is being able to accept when your critics have a point. I guess that excludes Carl Benjamin.