UK politics is an irredeemable mess

Back in June, I was saying we should give Kemi Badenoch a stay of execution. It wasn’t exactly an endorsement, it’s just that her more measured tone bought her a little credit. The ECHR issue must be handled with care - and she was right about that. The problem is, though, nobody is listening to her. It’s not that she isn’t saying sensible things, it’s just that nobody sees her as PM material. And let’s be honest, she isn’t.

As such, whatever she might have to say at the upcoming Tory conference is not going to matter. There is a general sense that she is done and this seems to be reflected in some of the latest polls. It seems likely that the party will make a move on her before Christmas. If things go on as they are, the party is looking at extinction. Only Robert Jenrick will make the right take a second look at the Tories - and even that’s a moon shot.

That said, if Jenrick is installed, it seems plausible to me that the Tories could stave off extinction. Reform seem to be doing a premature victory lap without having put the work in. There is still every chance they could blow it. This week we’ve seen Farage rolling out a new policy to end benefits for foreigners and close down Indefinite Leave to Remain, but already his policy is coming unstuck.

There seems to be pattern with Reform where they’ll launch a half-baked policy then row it back one clarification at a time. Moreover, this latest one puts Farage where he instinctively doesn’t like to be, lumped in with the anti-immigration right. He won’t be comfortable with it, and will water down the policy until there’s very little left of it. I have a hunch that Farage doesn’t think the Boriswave is reversible, and he certainly wouldn’t go as far as retroactive revocation of ILR.

All the same, this hasn’t stopped Zia Yusuf from taking to the airwaves to talk tough about immigration. I was listening to him on Talk TV on Monday and, to be fair, he sounds a great deal more focussed and on top of the issues than Farage, but all that tells me is that he’s making a play of his own. I don’t think Farage wants to go down in history as one of the worst PMs of all time so it seems likely he’d do a six month victory lap and pass the reins over to Yusuf. Reform could land us with our first Moslem PM.

For me, there is no reason to trust that Reform will do anything much on immigration. When Farage talks about “mass deportations” he’s thinking somewhere in the region of 600,000 and won’t even manage that. Meanwhile, he could easily turn off the party base by allowing the party to morph into the Tory party. There’s a reason soldier ants march other ants infected with a brain fungus out of the colony, but Farage seems to be accepting any Tory deadbeat defector. The Reform benches could end up looking a lot like the Tory party under Boris Johnson.

As ever, I don’t put too much stock in the polls where Reform is concerned. They consistently over-egg Reform as they did with Ukip. If we were to take the polls at face value, Reform is heading for a comfortable win, but Reform still isn’t winning over the middle-of-the[road boomers who still watch the BBC - the kind you need to win elections. Emulating Trump isn’t the vote winner Farage thinks it is - and superficially hardline immigration policies are only to reassure the base rather than expand Reform’s appeal.

Consequently, if a Jenrick-led Tory party can claw back some support, we are still looking at a Tory-Reform alliance, and one that could still be beaten by a liberal-left coalition if we see a repeat of the 2024 slide in to apathy.

What’s been interesting lately, though, is the switch in Labour who now consider Reform the main opposition. This leaves Starmer not knowing where to jump. He knows that he must address immigration because almost everyone wants something down about it, while the progressives want him to take the fight to the enemy and sing the praises of Britain as a diverse, multicultural, progressive utopia. Which is about as tone deaf as you could possibly get.

With Starmer being generally disliked, and facing rumblings in his own ranks, unable to please anybody, his approval ratings can only ebb ever downwards, while the party is left to reckon with the fact that they have nobody to replace him with. Andy Burnham is the name that keeps floating to the top, but he isn’t even an MP.

A change of leadership, though, would not fare any better against Reform. The left misunderstands Reform support. The left thinks Reform supporters are stupid, gullible saps who fall for Farage’s shtick. It’s true, a great many of them are, but it’s been my experience that most Reform supporters know precisely who and what Farage is, and are only voting for Reform because of who they aren’t. Farage is just a figurehead, and the objective is to give all the incumbent parties a bloody nose - for what that’s worth. If Labour fights Reform on the basis of who they think Reform supporters are rather than who they actually are, they will only make themselves more unpopular.

With all the parties being in a state of disarray the 2029 election looks far less pivotal than many assume it is. There doesn’t look to be any part in the mainstream capable of arresting the decline. For my part, I would be more enthused by Reform if I thought ejecting the incumbents would get us anywhere, but like I say, I don’t see Reform doing what needs to be done in terms of immigration, and I think they’ll govern so poorly that they’ll cause a constitutional crisis and market meltdown in the space of a year.

With that in mind, I take the view that if we are going over the cliff, it’s better for the right if the left are at the wheel when it happens. It might well be politically preferable if Reform doesn’t make a big breakthrough.

That, though, presents its own dilemmas. If Farage has to bow out then Reform finds itself in much the same predicament as Labour and the Tories. Reform without Farage is a rudderless mess and there are no obvious successors. That’s when we see a complete and irredeemable collapse of party politics and the country falls apart. Any which way I look at it, it does not look good. If anyone has some good news, I’d quite like to hear it.