Forgive my mischievous use of a Rupert Lowe picture…
Answer: Reform.
I hope that doesn’t lose me too many subscribers. Please read on. I’m going to give a nuanced answer!
Why Reform? Several reasons. Not because they’re perfect (they’re not).
Recently, for instance, I was sent into a moderate whirlwind of despair by Nigel Farage announcing that they would keep the triple-lock on pensions. In one sense, this announcement is madness. In another, it isn’t.
It is mad because it is literally unaffordable in the long term. It will bankrupt the country. Because how could an ever larger amount of people (pensioners) getting a hike in income higher than the shrinking amount of people (workers) paying for it possibly be feasible over decades? It can’t be.
It isn’t mad in electoral terms. This is because most people are not good on economics; because people look after their own interests, and what’s rational for the individual is often not rational for the wider group; and because there are loads of pensioners, and pensioners tend to vote. As a strategy to get votes, maybe it’s reasonable. Then again, wouldn’t many pensioners vote Reform anyway, and doesn’t the party need to attract the support of younger voters? Wouldn’t more sensible pensioners realise that the triple lock is unsustainable? Maybe some would, maybe not enough of them.
Then there’s Reform’s policy on the similarly unaffordable not capping child support paid to families with more than two children. Actually, what is Reform’s current policy on this? I lose track. They seem to have been in favour of the cap initially, and then in favour of removing it, and then saying they would only pay out to British families. But the concept of a ‘British’ family means little now, following decades of unfettered immigration. So how would that work?
Reform’s partial retreat from Thatcherite economics – which, contrary to what the likes of Paul Embery or Rod Liddle say – is wrong. Never have we needed welfare reform, private enterprise, less regulation, tax cuts and incentives to build businesses more, along with trade unions and HR departments reined in.
Reform policies I like include deporting illegal migrants, leaving the ECHR, scrapping Indefinite Leave to Remain, scrapping Net Zero, cutting foreign aid, supporting farmers and slimming down the civil service.
When it comes to Restore, I agree with most of their policies too. I agree with most of what Rupert Lowe says. But here’s the thing: they won’t get any MPs at the next election. It’s a wasted vote. It will split the already split Right and let in a coalition of the most unhinged Leftist lunatics this country has ever seen.
Lowe strikes me as an egotist who had his nose put out of joint by Farage. The two were always unlikely to exist in the same party for long. Possibly Lowe sees Restore as Revenge.
As bright as they are, young bucks like Restore cheerleaders Charlie Downes and Harrison Pitt seem to be gripped by a Gen Z kind of thinking that says ‘if it’s not perfect, it’s not right’. They are too fussy. They have been brought up in a consumerist world where they can get pretty much anything they like in an instant. Perhaps they think that way about political parties too. Young Downes told Nick Dixon he’d never seen such a rush of support for a political party before. Yep. I can believe that.
It should be remembered that the 1979 Conservative Party manifesto only gave a hint of the radicalism that was pursued in the following decade. Also that many of Mrs Thatcher’s more radical policies were not enacted until after a second General Election victory, in 1983. Patience is a virtue. There is no way Reform would be able to say before the election everything they want to do. Don’t forget that the legacy media and the political class will do everything they can to stop them.
I’ve written before that Britain is probably beyond saving, but Reform would offer a sliver of a chance. To fetishize Restore, and imagine that they will win seats and not fragment the Right’s vote further, is the deluded view of the Online Right. To repeat: I support most of Restore’s policies – such as reversing mass immigration, rewarding the nation’s grafters, safeguarding election integrity, promoting a pro-British education system, and more – but to imagine they could be implemented without a supernova of civil resistance that even Reform won’t face, is for the birds.
One possible benefit to Reform of Restore’s existence is that many voters might regard Restore as too extreme and plump for Reform as the more ‘acceptable’ option. I personally don’t regard Restore as extreme but they are considered so by most mainstream opinion-formers. We are where we are. It’d be good if we still had sane, small-C conservative education, media and political establishments and for Restore to thus seem ‘normal’, but we don’t.
Restore should – but won’t – pack it in and be accommodated into Reform. I’d give the same advice to Advance, Reclaim, the SDP, Ukip, the Heritage Party and others. As Mrs Thatcher said, a party is like a bird, it needs two wings to fly. And it’s not as if the policies of the two parties are wildly different. They are slightly different in some respects.
We need the articulate, well-known and astute Farage in Downing Street. Maybe, just maybe, he could move the country Rightwards, as Orbán did in Hungary. It’d be a start.
Russell David is the author of the Mad World Substack.
If you enjoy The New Conservative and would like to support our work, please consider buying us a coffee or sharing this piece with your friends – it would really help to keep us going. Thank you!
(Photograph: ©House of Commons / Laurie Noble, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
