Reform needs a reality check
I can’t imagine being Keir Starmer at the moment. You’d imagine, with 403 MPs, that it was easier than ever to be Prime Minister: with that many backbenchers, bills amount to decrees. Reality begs to differ. Having promised not to raise taxes on working people, the nearest available method to filling the “black hole” — cutting spending — has been scuppered too. A revolt by Labour backbenchers has gutted his ministry’s attempt to reform welfare spending. In the most recent edition of Prime Ministers’ Questions, following this U-turn, he failed to confirm that Rachel Reeves would keep her job, leaving the Chancellor in tears.
Ordinarily, a series of Labour faults of this sort would put the ball firmly in the Tory court. In the 70s, “Labour isn’t working” meant “Vote Conservative” — the implication was obvious. However, the trends of the past twelve months suggest that Reform has been best positioned to capitalise on Labour failures. National popular vote polls of today see Reform at 34% in first, a twenty point surge for the Farage outfit since last year’s General Election. The Conservative counter-attack has come to near nought.
Reform, however, is not without issue. Burdened with the responsibility of having to govern a suite of local authorities, the party’s initial appeal — anti-establishment and unsullied by failures of the British state — is wilting. Winning elections stops the “what if?”s — voters can no longer amuse themselves with fanciful hypotheticals and must reckon with the more concrete questions of whether things are working.
While we like to think of democratic politics as world-historical clashes of ideas, systems, and ways of life, governing is far more mundane. This is especially true of local politics. A world away from Whitehall, local authorities have libraries to staff and roads to repair. We measure their performance by comparing council tax bills to the frequency of bin collections. In light of this, running a council does not require a Metternich or a Machiavelli but the concerted efforts of conscientious middle managers: people who can write reports, balance budgets, and identify where obvious administrative errors have been made. A party which fails to fulfil these basic functions will quickly signal its unseriousness to voters, and will be stymied in more consequential elections. This is reasonable: if you can’t write a bin collection schedule, I despair at the possibility of you taking on the Russians.
The need to prove that they are a party of competent people is particularly acute for Reform. Until now, Reform has benefited immensely from the stardom of Nigel Farage. The architect of Brexit, he would have retired one of the most successful politicians in modern British history even if he had never been elected to Parliament. Reform’s Farage-supported success is, like a great column, also the means by which the party might be brought down. In the rush to fill constituency races with candidates’ names in both this year’s and last year’s elections, we learnt that it is not too difficult to stand for Reform: waves of councillors resigned within weeks of winning local elections, having clearly not actually planned on winning and governing; last year, a heavily doctored image and his absence at the count led some to temporarily believe that the Reform candidate in Clapham and Brixton Hill, Mark Matlock, did not exist. The party’s dependence on Farage is not sustainable.
The party’s Farage fixation is already causing splinters, both within the party and across the right. Following accusations that Farage had a “messiah complex”, Rupert Lowe was cast out into the cold. Reform, though, marched on, replacing Lowe in its parliamentary group with Sarah Pochin, the newly elected Member for Runcorn and Helsby. One interpretation sees Reform’s handling of the Lowe situation, a sequel of sorts to the run-in with Ben Habib, as evidence of their political mettle. The Conservative government learnt the importance of party discipline all too late and so demonstrating the ability and willingness to cull lone actors, even if it comes as the outgrowth of Farage’s ego, is meaningful.
The breakup does mean, though, that there are even more political parties and pressure groups vowing to reverse the country’s decline. The parties of the British populist right occupy an increasingly congested space, with hundreds of shops setting up, each selling barely discernible policies and competing for the same voters. The parties and groups appear, one after the other, from the same production line. In addition to old players on the far right, such as UKIP and BNP, Advance UK, Homeland, Heritage Party, and the National Housing Party have all made their entrances, though their legitimacy as electoral outfits is yet to be proven. In more mainstream politics, Reform (Farage), Reclaim (Fox), and Restore (Lowe) appear as bickering triplets: if you can think of a verb beginning with “re-”, you too might be qualified to head a populist right party or pressure group.
The political free market is rapidly dispersing the abilities and efforts of right-wing actors. Restore’s status as a cross-party pressure group, rather than a party in its own right, goes some way in building right-wing ecumenism, but for voters interested in a competent right-wing option, there are still far too many voices. All attempts to build a challenge to the Starmer government should acknowledge the following truth: voters, before any ideological considerations, care for competent government. Tussles over how many people to deport and the method of transportation best suited to do it don’t mean anything if the people who fill your rank and file are idiots. The median voter does not think about policymaking. Who can blame them? They would, then, much appreciate it if the people who claim to be politically minded and who resemble each other in perspective worked together to fix the country for them.
Farage, like a turquoise-tied Cato, will not turn from the view that the Tories are to be destroyed. In his eyes, his concession not to run Brexit Party candidates against the Tories in 2019 was betrayed: no substantive right-wing policy came from it. Despite this, Farage is unwise to wish to raze the Conservatives to the ground. The Conservative Party is a behemoth; ugly, perhaps, but large, limbering, and not killed by human hands. It has thousands of volunteers, the infrastructure necessary to support researchers, and still commands support in the major newspapers and magazines. The Tories continue to outperform Labour and Reform with respect to donations, raising £2 million in the last quarter of 2024 compared to £1 million and £280,000 for the other two parties. The oldest party in the Western world can survive a bad election, however bad the performance. Given the Tories’ resources and historic position, Farage should see the party as new allies to be made, rather than a foe to be felled.
The Reform leadership, all one of them, is free to ignore this. But given they have yet to show themselves capable of fielding a roster of serious candidates for an election, it is clear that a dose of institutional memory would serve them well.
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