I’m still mulling the consequences of such a massive cash injection into Reform UK. In the wake of Channel 4’s sting operation, I’d have said the party was in deep trouble last week, but £72m in cash is something of a lifeline. Money has its own gravitational pull in politics.
That said, money doesn’t wash the stink of corruption off the party, and in some respects makes it worse. Now that the party is swimming with cash it will attract all the snake oil salesmen, and further entrench the culture of nepotism. The party will spend like a drunken sailor without anything approaching a strategy. A lot of friends of friends are going to get rich now.
What money doesn’t buy, though, is immunity from consequences. Reform might live to fight another day, but it is not assured that Farage will. Moreover, the sting operation didn’t just reveal potentially criminal activity. It's an interesting insight into the culture at the top of Reform, which is essentially a networking operation for those attempting to buy influence. What's notable is how Reform's own MPs are peripheral actors. They aren't in the inner circle and have no more idea what Farage fills his days with than the man in the street.
What that means is that it will be harder than ever for sincere and serious people to gain an audience with the leadership. Farage will be further ringfenced by gatekeepers, and that means policy, insofar as we can call it policy, will very much be a shopping list of its investor's priorities. People with any real knowledge or experience of the real world will still be on the outside.
As such, any notion of it being a people’s movement is dead. This is now the party of international finance. That’s problematic given how biddable Farage is. If an Indian businessman wants more tech visas, he’ll make the promise for the right price. We could even be in for a Farage-wave of immigration.
What particularly irks me about these donations is that the donors don’t live in the UK, and are thus too distant to detect the nuances in British politics, and are therefore propping up something they shouldn’t. Reform was backsliding for a reason and this latest intervention is like the state stepping into bail out Blockbuster Video in order to prevent a Netflix from emerging. That, mind you, is something of a moot point since there is nothing better waiting in the wings to replace them.
Where money doesn’t help is that the party is fixated with winning an election rather than thinking about what it will do with power. Consequently, it will piss millions up the wall on marketing and tech gimmicks, but the culture of the party is still such that it will not attract the serious people required to put meat on the bones. They'll build sophisticated marketing infrastructure without actually developing a viable product - just like Vote Leave Ltd.
Meanwhile, money is not going to address Reform’s seriousness deficit either. It’s not assured that Braverman, Kruger or Jenrick will keep their seats, and if the party is lining Yusuf up to replace Farage, they can’t expect a funding lifeline to save their political careers. Yusuf will want to eliminate the competition. What you then have is a party of unknowns with shady financial backers, led by a Marmite individual, surrounded by political novices. It’s unlikely to be a winning formula.
What the money does do, though, is eclipse Restore Britain - which is having problems of its own. In a lot of ways its fate is pegged to Reform. If it had a future at all then it was as a contingency party in the event of a Reform implosion. That was entirely plausible. Now, though, Restore is left treading water, still not quite making the grade, and still not able to present any new talent that makes them worth the attention. Meanwhile there is a sand timer running until Rupert Lowe runs out of steam. Any hope of building something significant by 2029 is dead in the water.
Regardless, I happen to think this is all noise now. The objective for the right is not winning an election in 2029. The objective is to have a capable and serious government that will last long enough to fix the country, and there is no such proposition on the table. Reform wouldn't last a full term under Farage/Yusuf because of the corruption and incompetence they bring with them. Without policy and a plan, all they're likely to do is over promise and under-deliver and make a bigger mess of things, only to wind up much the same as the Johnson administration.
I am left to conclude, then, that party politics is not our salvation for the time being. I think Britain will have to go to the very brink of disorder - and perhaps beyond, before the political class realises the state of emergency we’re in. Only then will they get serious. It’s going to require a broader realisation in the body politic and not just on the right.
Mercifully, I don’t think we’ll have to wait very long to reach that crisis point. The interim future does not look very promising. The National grid is ever more precarious, as are public finances, while the public mood is deteriorating. The government, meanwhile is led by a delusional fantasist who apparently has no idea what planet he’s even living on, let alone how seriously up the creek Britain is.
We are likely to see in increasing tempo of protests and a public becoming increasingly ungovernable. Any future government (of any stripe) is going to be in reactive mode for the foreseeable future, and we’ve left it far too late to fix the roof before the rains.
It seems plausible that we’ll see a renewed spirit of protest, with more spontaneous organisations rising up from outside the capital, who will be making demands of their own. They have a way of producing their own leaders - and if a party like Reform is unable to foster good relations with such a movement, they will be swept out of the way. For a long time now, the base political assumption has been that a right wing entity would knock the establishment of its perch, but a collectivist working class movement arising from patriot protests could end up being the new centre of political gravity. We are not in Kansas anymore.
I think you are right. It will take a broad realisation of the political class that we're basically heading over a cliff and it is imminent, before we will get the changes needed.
Like you, I expect we'll have to go over the cliff before that realisation dawns, so wedded are these people to their ridiculous ideas. Also like you, I don't think there is long to wait. We are just awaiting the spark that sets it all off and it really could be anything that does it and it could happen at any time.
Meanwhile, with Farage calling his own grass root supporters thugs, we can see where he really stands. He isn't prepared to do mass deportation or force countries like Pakistan to repatriate their criminals. With people like Andrea Jenkyns at the top of the party, any intellectual development is impossible to see.
Whilst working class movements like Tommy Robinsons and Danny Thomo's are laudable I would be worried if they went on the form a government. History teaches us that grass roots movements like this always go on the become despotic if they take power. They can however shape how any political party decides to govern by bringing pressure to bear.
What puzzles me is the solution to our woes is simple, we just need to undo everything Tony Blair did and return to common sense politics pre the turn of the century.