Is Reform the Right Future for Britain?

One of the characteristics of older age, is that one tends to drop being old into conversations frequently enough to force people to ask how old you are. The expectation is that when you tell them they will gasp and say “no, you can’t be. You look at least 10 years younger”, and your ego is boosted by this polite fib.

There are those that tell you that age is just a number. They are entirely correct, but it is a number that indicates exactly how old you are.

My great age means that I remember the socialist governments of Harold Wilson, Ted Heath and Jim Callaghan back in the 1960s and 70s.

I include Ted Heath, because despite leading the Conservative Party he falls into the same sort of category of Neo-socialist “one nation Tories” as so many Conservative MPs in this and the last Parliament. As does former Prime Minister Theresa May, aka The Great Capitulator because of her habit of giving in to almost every demand of the EU during the Brexit negotiations.

Conservatives, at least since the 1950s, have not always been very conservative. When Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and defied all the naysayers by privatising British Telecom, British Airways, British Leyland, the utilities etc, Harold Macmillan who was Conservative PM from 1957 – 1963 accused her of “selling the family silver”. Opposition from within the Conservative Party to right-wing social and economic policy continues to this day.

Thatcher is still viscerally hated by the Left. Not only because they disagreed with her policies, but because they were manifestly successful and demonstrated that socialism fails, that it impoverishes people, and fatally weakens the country. By challenging the conventional wisdom of the time, that the UK’s decline was inevitable and that the most government could do was to try and mitigate some of the most damaging impacts of that decline, Mrs Thatcher will be eternally despised, not just by the Left, but by the Establishment that championed such philosophy. The left-wing of her own party never forgave her for proving them wrong.

Those of us who lived through the revolution of the Thatcher years remember how the country was transformed, however painfully, from being an economic failure, the “sick man of Europe”, to having a dynamic, successful and vibrant economy, and to once again being respected on the international stage.

Those days are long past.

At the recent general election, on a 60 percent turnout, Labour only received the votes of 20 percent of those eligible to vote. They have a majority in parliament of 158. This means that they will be in charge for the next four years and 10 months.

It is quite clear from the policies that have been announced and the hints being given about what will, will not and might be in the forthcoming budget, taxes, both personal and corporate, will be increased. Pensioners are already being targeted with the removal of the winter fuel allowance, and it is rumoured that they will lose the free travel concessions for local public transport, and that the 25 percent discount on Council Tax for single occupiers of a home will be removed, something that will disproportionally affect pensioners. Corporate taxes are likely to skyrocket.

It is blindingly obvious that Labour’s policies will destroy the prospect of economic growth.

In normal political times, we could expect the Conservative Party to mount a spirited opposition to such left-wing policies, especially when only a charlatan would claim that Labour’s plans have the endorsement of the electorate. But with the Tories engaged in choosing a new leader, it is internal fights that occupy their minds.

Many attribute the Conservative’s devastating defeat at the election to its failure to deliver on its promises. It did nothing to control immigration (both legal and illegal), raised taxes to levels not seen since war time, imposed regulations on businesses that hampered expansion, refused to take full advantage of the opportunities presented by Brexit, refused to tackle issues such as trans-activism and woke intolerance of free speech, and doubled down on Net Zero, a policy that is costing the nation billions.

To many traditional Conservative voters, the party looked more like Tony Blair’s New Labour than a truly right-wing Conservative Party. They refused to vote Conservative in their droves.

In essence, the Conservative Party is seen to have abandoned right-wing politics.

It is tempting to describe the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK as a bright spot on the horizon. It garnered 4,117,610 votes (14.3% vote share) at the general election, but that translated into just five seats. Contrast that with Labour, which gained 9,708,716 (33.7% vote share) and 412 seats; Conservative with 6,828,925 votes (23.7% vote share) and 121 seats. The Lib Dems won just 3,519,143 votes (12.2% vote share), but a whopping 72 seats. These numbers demonstrate the vagaries and some would say unfairness of the First Past the Post electoral system.

For me, the most interesting question about how politics will develop in the UK is whether Farage and Reform UK are able to construct a platform from which they can build a truly national alternative to the Conservatives, demonstrate that right-wing politics can be popular, and challenge the Tories to be the principal party of the Right in the UK? Reform can certainly win lots of votes, but do they have the political and organisational nous to translate votes into seats by consolidating success in winnable constituencies?

Farage’s previous major political success was Brexit. In the 2019 elections for the European Parliament (the last before the UK left the EU), his Brexit Party won 29 seats, more than any other national political party in the parliament. Few would deny that David Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum on the UK’s continued membership of the EU and the result of that referendum were entirely due to Nigel Farage’s relentless campaigning.

More recently his target has been illegal immigration, highlighting how the Conservative government has allowed many thousands of illegals into the UK and failed to stop them coming across the English Channel.

But, single issue politics won’t win elections.

Reform is now in the process of building a network of local branches that could give it the volunteers and money it will need to become a serious political party, and a threat to the Establishment. But it also needs to demonstrate that it can produce a programme for government with policies for every area of national government from taxation to education, foreign policy to the NHS.

I have little faith in the Conservatives willingness to take up the mantle of the Right, to champion capitalism and free speech, to campaign for a much smaller State, to return freedoms and rights to citizens, to tear up regulation and to trust ordinary people to take decisions about their own lives. The late Douglas Jay, who served as a minister under the Labour governments of Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson once said “In the case of nutrition and health, just as in the case of education, the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people know themselves”. That sort of twaddle is now believed again in the corridors of Westminster by Labour, Tories and the civil servants who make far too many decisions about our lives.

If an upbeat, enthusiastic and optimistic Reform UK can show the nation that they trust the people to make their own decisions and that economic freedoms will make us all prosper, perhaps the right-wing of British politics will see a renaissance.

Prime Minister Nigel Farage? It certainly isn’t impossible.

Warren Alexander spent most of his career in the not for profit sector woking in fundraising and marketing for causes including overseas aid, higher education and medical research. His final role before retiring was as chief executive of the Charity Retail Association, the UK trade body for charities that operate shops.

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