Every other week, Reform party leader Richard Tice and his “shadow cabinet” meet in central London to go through party business. The party’s deputy leaders David Bull and Ben Habib are usually there, as well as Ann Widdecombe, who comes in from Devon. The party chairman, Paul Oakden, sometimes calls in on Zoom from the organisation’s headquarters which — uniquely — are not in London, but in Ashby de la Zouch in Leicestershire. Together they discuss the party’s policies and strategy for the months ahead, in preparation for a general election they now believe is “40% likely” to happen on 2 May 2024.
The one person who does not attend these meetings, however, is the man who is not only president of the party, but its founder, spiritual leader, chief electoral asset and, crucially, owner. That man, of course, is Nigel Farage, who is currently 10,000 miles away eating blended cow anus in the jungles of Queensland.
Farage, it is fair to say, is no ordinary politician. Here is a man who tried to enter parliament seven times, failed every time and still became one of the most important political figures in post-war British history. This is what you might call the Farage paradox and it runs as strongly today as ever. As he sweats it out in the I’m A Celebrity jungle, Farage is being held aloft as a prospective future Tory leader, while also being president of a party apparently committed to the Tory party’s destruction.
Welcome to the strange world of Reform UK.
Just as Farage is no ordinary politician, Reform UK is no ordinary political party. In many ways, it is less a political party than a company, with shareholders and an ever-growing number of customers. Tice may be the leader of the party, but he is ultimately answerable to those shareholders — and the majority are owned by, you guessed it, Farage himself. Originally, the idea behind this set-up was simple. At Ukip, Farage had grown increasingly tired of the party’s internal bureaucratic struggles. When he set up the Brexit Party in March 2019, he was determined to avoid a repetition of this, and so created a company he could control, rather than a party he had to manage. This allowed Farage to focus all his efforts on the campaign for Brexit.
Most of those in Reform UK whom I spoke to believe this was the right decision at the time, but also that it is coming to the end of its sell-by date. “You couldn’t have had a genuine insurgency if we’d been democratic at the start,” Habib, the party’s deputy, told me. “We needed to move quickly.” It is certainly true to say that the Brexit Party was born in extraordinary conditions. In March 2019, when it was created, it looked as though Brexit might not happen. Theresa May’s exit deal was being blocked by parliament and momentum was growing for a second referendum.
But within two months of its founding, Farage’s new party won the European Parliamentary elections, pushing the Tories into fifth place. Then, the day after the vote, May resigned as prime minister. Suddenly, Farage was standing on the brink of something extraordinary — the very real prospect of not only defeating the Conservative Party, but destroying it. Within six months, however, Boris Johnson had not only been elected Tory leader but had secured a harder-edged Brexit deal and won over his most Eurosceptic backbenchers. Farage had a choice: reluctantly back Johnson’s Brexit deal or persist in the battle to destroy the Conservative Party? On 11 November, less than a month before Johnson’s “Take Back Control” election, Farage stood down 317 Brexit Party candidates to give the Conservative Party a clear run at power. For the first time in his career, Farage blinked.
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With Britain’s withdrawal from the EU in January 2020 and the delivery of Brexit, what was the need for a Brexit Party? The challenge remains to this day. Farage, I am told, had long believed “Reform” was the perfect name for a political party, and so within a year — which included a legal battle with a think tank by the same name — Reform UK was born, with a new mission to overhaul the electoral system and oppose lockdowns. Farage stepped aside in March 2021 to allow Tice to take over, with the new party barely registering in the polls as Johnson crushed all before him. It looked like it was game over.
In the two years since, though, Reform UK has steadily risen in popularity, first as a result of Partygate and Johnson’s removal, and then when Liz Truss was removed a month into her time in office. Today, Reform UK regularly polls between 7 and 11%. On the day it hit 8% earlier this year, Farage rang to congratulate Tice. “Mark this day,” he told his successor. “It took Ukip 18 years to get to 8%, you’ve done it in 21 months.” Over the past few weeks there have been six different polls putting the party at between 10 and 11%. Tice believes by Christmas the party will have hit 12%. Put bluntly, these are figures the Tory party simply cannot afford.
As a result, the Tories are again fighting a war on two fronts — holding back the onslaught from Labour, while suddenly being attacked from the rear by Faragista forces many had assumed were no longer a threat. What is more, some in the party now believe Farage might not be the Tories’ enemy, but its saviour. Perhaps it is time to bring him home.
How seriously should we take Reform’s impact on British politics? From my conversations with senior figures in Reform, it is clear that the party’s primary goal is to deny the Tories victory in 2024 at all costs. For Tice, Tory defeat is necessary to create the conditions for electoral reform, which would then allow Reform UK and his form of Faragism into parliament. For some in the party, denying the Tories victory would force them to become “true” conservatives again, perhaps under the leadership of Suella Braverman. But for others, including Habib, the goal is to permanently destroy the Conservative parliamentary party as an electoral force. “It does not deserve to survive,” he told me. “You can’t reward failure with incumbency, the party needs to be obliterated.”
Here, though, lies the question at the heart of Reform: what is its ultimate purpose? This question is neatly encapsulated in the figure of Farage himself: the founder and majority shareholder who is not planning to stand for the party at the election but is flirting with the idea of joining the Tories afterwards. From his perch in the I’m A Celebrity jungle, Farage declared: “There’s a lot of speculation that after [the Tories] lose the next election maybe Nigel becomes leader of the Tory party one day. So, there’s a lot of chatter about it. Whether it’s going to happen, I’ve no idea. The important thing is to say this: ‘Never say never.’”
[caption id="attachment_492839" align="alignnone" width="960"] What won't he wade through? (Credit: ITV/I'm a Celebrity)[/caption]
So, is Reform UK a disruptive start-up that wants to eventually be bought out, its ideas taken on by the Conservatives? Or is it a disrupter whose ultimate aim is to grow so big it can launch a hostile takeover?
It is certainly set up like a start-up. While the exact details of who owns what percentages of Reform UK remain veiled in secrecy, according to one inside figure who knows the breakdown it is simple enough. In total there are 15 shares, of which Farage owns eight, Tice five, Oakden one and the party secretary, Mehrtash a'Zami, one. According to Companies House, this makes Farage — officially — a person with “significant control” over the company, which they define as having “the right, directly or indirectly, to appoint or remove a majority of the board of directors”.
Farage’s control has become a source of some internal unrest. Since he stepped down as leader last year, he has come under pressure to give up some of his shares as part of wider moves to democratise the organisation. Members of the party currently pay £25 to join and will, in future, get to vote in leadership elections, should there be any. So far, though, Farage has refused to give up his shares. “We each wanted a share but Nigel refused,” said one party insider. And for good reason, from Farage’s point of view. As things stand, Farage owns a company whose stock is rising without having to put any of his own money on the line. It’s a win-win.
It is Tice, not Farage, who has kept Reform UK afloat since Brexit, bankrolling the party to the tune of £1 million of his own money. The party is also receiving donations from businessmen such as the former Conservative Party donor Jeremy Hosking and the multimillionaire owner of the property company Panther Securities, Andrew Perloff. According to some inside Reform UK, Tice’s loan acts as a kind of insurance against Farage’s power. If — for whatever reason — Tice and Farage were to fall out, and Farage returned in some sort of reconquista, the party would still owe Tice the money. How much this would ever bind Farage in practice is open to question. He could, presumably, raise such a sum in donations — or, if forced, simply declare the company insolvent and move on.
In practice, the party is majority-owned by Farage but run by a kind of oligarchy of Eurosceptics under the congenial leadership of Tice the CEO, who has built up a large equity stake in the business himself. And this current structure is not sustainable. “We do have to democratise,” Widdecombe said. “There’s no doubt about that, but we can’t be navel-gazing now, before the election. We are structured as a company. After the election we should change that to become a party.” For now, though, Farage is like some kind of hands-off chairman, promoting the party’s interests — or perhaps his own — on GB News and I’m A Celebrity, ultimately able to remove Tice but with no reason to do so as the party keeps growing.
So far, the partnership between Tice and Farage has worked well. The pair speak regularly and share the same political instincts: hard-line, anti-woke Eurosceptic conservatism. Both were members of the Conservative Party who now loathe it. While Farage is in the Jungle, Tice has stood in for him on his show on GB News. There is no tension between the pair that I detected in my conversations.
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Yet it is possible to detect a faint grumbling about Farage’s power within the wider party. There are many, for example, who believe it was a fundamental error to give up “The Brexit Party” for “Reform UK”. The Brexit Party was a successful, established brand with national name recognition. Reform UK has had to start from scratch, and with a name that could just as easily be a progressive think tank as a conservative political party. “If we had our time again, would we change the name?” reflected Tice. “Perhaps not.” To partially unwind this decision, the logo that appears on people’s voting cards will now read: “Reform UK: The Brexit Party.”
The tension over the name is not just a question of branding but also of political judgement. In essence, by standing down his candidates in 2019 and changing the party’s name, Farage was accepting the Conservative argument that Brexit had been delivered. For some of the hardliners in the party leadership, this was a fundamental strategic mistake. Brexit, to these figures, has not only been half enacted because Northern Ireland remains tied to EU law, but also badly enacted with the trade deal that replaced the previous relationship. By standing down in those 317 seats, the party dipped its hands in the Brexit blood, leaving it unable to make political capital out of people's frustrations with how things have worked out since. “We said we were going to change politics for good,” said Ben Habib, “but we embedded the old political system.”
Tice is known to be sympathetic to this argument but insists Farage’s decision was necessary. “We had to stand down to make sure Brexit was done legally,” he told me, “even if it has not been done properly.” But given the sentiment in the party, Tice has promised his leading generals that he will not replicate Farage’s decision at the next election and has committed to standing a Reform UK candidate in every seat in Britain — though not, ironically, in Northern Ireland.
Essentially, Farage is criticised for being too soft — and now he’s being too soft on the Conservative Party. He was not sufficiently Eurosceptic, unionist or strategic. Ultimately, he was lazy and missed his chance. Now, instead of leading an insurgent political force opposed to open borders and Net Zero, Farage is messing around in Australia and flirting with the idea of becoming a Tory prime minister.
So are the Tories worried? Among senior Tory strategists, there is palpable relief that they are facing Reform UK, not a still-angry, Farage-led Brexit Party. “They have two big problems,” one senior Tory explained to me. “They don’t have Farage and they don’t have an obvious mission.” And yet there remains a real concern among the Tory hierarchy that a combination of immigration and Net Zero could light a fire under Reform, turbo-charging its support. Tice, for what it’s worth, now believes the next election will be a straightforward “immigration election”, the perfect terrain for his party to outperform expectations.
One obvious problem for Reform UK is that, according to the pollsters and party strategists I have spoken with over the past few weeks, the party’s support base largely comes from disaffected former Conservative voters. It is, as one Conservative strategist put it to me, “a hardcore Conservative Party”. In many respects, Tice perfectly reflects the party that exists today: he is a wealthy, no-nonsense Tesla-driving businessman who applied to be the Tories’ London mayoral candidate as recently as 2018 and hates what his old party has become. He is for low taxes, a small state, stopping the boats, cutting immigration; and against wokeism, gender ideology and Net Zero.
This, indeed, is what Reform UK supporters believe in — and what Ukip voters believed in. As such, it is no surprise that the party saw its first big surge in membership when Jeremy Hunt was brought in as chancellor at the height of the Truss crisis last year. It then saw a fresh batch of members join up when Sunak became Prime Minister. The return of Cameron to the government then saw a fresh surge, with 1,200 new members signing up in four days, according to Tice. But is it popular beyond the fringes of the Conservative Party?
[caption id="attachment_492841" align="alignnone" width="1024"] 'No, you're in charge!' (Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)[/caption]
There is no doubt its rise in the polls is impressive. Much of this can be attributed to the collapse in support for the Tories. In April 2020, at the height of the first lockdown, the Conservative Party hit its highest poll rating in decades: 53%. Today, under Sunak, his party has seen its support halve to 25% at best — or as low as 19%, according to some pollsters. The problem for Tice is that, because his base is made up of disaffected hardliner conservatives, they are even more opposed to a Labour government than floating centrist voters and so — leading Tories believe — are most susceptible to eventually backing the Conservatives in a general election. Many of the electoral strategists I spoke to believed Reform UK will, in the end, be lucky to get more than 3% in the general election.
The first danger for Reform UK over the next 12 months, therefore, is that they will be squeezed as Labour and the Tories battle it out for the swing voters who hold the key to power. For while an increase in support for Reform UK could be damaging for the Conservatives, it is not existential in the way Labour’s current 20-point lead threatens to be. To put it simply, every voter who switches from Tory to Labour is twice as damaging to Sunak’s chances of holding onto power as a Conservative voter who backs Reform UK. The second danger is that Farage loses interest. While his time in the jungle has certainly not damaged his public reputation — so far at least — it has not yet enhanced it in any meaningful sense. From the beginning there was a sense that his motivation was a little too obvious, a little too cynical. “I was a bit gutted,” he admitted when he wasn’t chosen to take part in the bushtucker challenges. “You see, if you do the challenges it’s 25% of the air time. I'm looking at reaching a whole new audience.”
The comment was authentic Farage. From the moment he broke into the national consciousness following his election to the European Parliament in 1999, he has been focused on the battle for “air time”. He was, in a sense, Britain’s first social media politician, going viral with his extraordinary attack on Tony Blair in Strasbourg as far back as 2005. When it comes to the great electoral battles of 2024, he may well prefer the glamour of being Donald Trump’s wingman. The final obvious challenge for Reform UK is that it is both too optimistic and too reliant on the prospect of electoral reform. Tice is convinced that it is now only a matter of time before some form of proportional representation is brought in by a Labour-led government. But unless the Labour Party falls short of a majority, it seems implausible that Keir Starmer will legislate to make it harder for him to win a majority.
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These are the principal challenges facing Reform UK, none of which means they should be discounted as a long-term presence in British politics. In 1997, both Jimmy Goldsmith’s Referendum Party and Alan Sked’s Ukip were swept away in the tsunami of support for Blair’s New Labour and its promise to lead Britain back into the centre of European affairs. Seven years later, Ukip secured more than two and a half million votes in the European elections.
The abject failure of the British state to ever change anything is the key opportunity for Reform. As of today, there is little sign that either of the main political parties has any idea how to significantly reduce net migration, “stop the boats”, or improve living standards. For so long as this is the case, the conditions will exist for a party offering alternative solutions. Add to this the increasing political salience of Net Zero across all European countries and it is foolhardy to rule out a genuinely popular anti-establishment insurgency emerging. As one Tory strategist put it to me: “If the institutions keep failing, people will ask what is the fucking point in the politicians in charge?”
These are the political challenges and opportunities for Reform UK. But underneath it lies a structural challenge: is it a political movement to deny a certain brand of Toryism power or a vehicle for a man who is still flirting with the idea of taking over the Tory party itself? For Tice, Widdecombe and others, this overstates the problem — we in the media are just falling for Farage’s games. “He will not rejoin the Conservative Party,” Widdecombe told me. “I cannot see what he possibly has to gain from it. It’s cloud cuckoo land.”
And yet, what if Faragism took over the Tory Party without Farage? It is not at all clear from my discussions with insiders what difference there is between Reform UK and a Suella Braverman-led Conservative Party. “If the Conservative Party do lose the next election, there’s a chance we could have a proper Conservative Party and there be a merging of ideas that takes place,” Widdecombe told me. “The problem with Suella is that I agree with everything she says but nothing happens.”
In the end, as the ultimate controller of the party, much rests on Farage himself. In his heart, does he dream of being a true Tory prime minister, the prince over the water who returns home in triumph? Or does he just love the drama — the airtime? Ultimately, if there is ever a clash between Farage’s ambition and that of his party, it is Farage who will have the final say. “Nigel is a terrific maverick,” Habib told me. “Ultimately we cannot know what he will decide in the future.” And that is the point. It’s still Nigel’s game we’re playing.
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SubscribeThis is an interesting article and the points made are generally convincing and interesting. It is however, spoiled somewhat by unthinking use of cliche. For example, ‘holding back the onslaught from Labour’. There is no ‘onslaught from Labour’. It is very clear there is no enthusiasm in the country for Sir Kneeler and his thinly disguised Corbyista anti-semites, who can’t adhere for very long to a single principle of their ever-changing policies. The chief reason Labour have such a lead in the polls is because most of us who voted Tory at the last election are thoroughly disgusted with them now and want to see the back of them. There will be no enthusiastic increase in the number of people voting Labour but rather a lack of votes for the Tories. And if the unnamed Tory politician quoted in the article as believing that, on the day, the fear of Labour will bring us all back to very reluctantly putting our ‘Xs’ by the names of Tory candidates, he/she only has to read the BTL comments on this and other websites to see the depth of anger there is about the utter shambles they have created – the lack of any philosophy, the state of our institutions, their behaviour over brexit (pre-2019 and post), their authoritarianism during covid, their inability to get anything done, their inability to recognise what needs to be done. He/she needs to wake up and start looking for a new career. I – a lifelong Tory voter – certainly won’t be voting Tory again. I agree with Mr Habib, it’s time to ‘permanently destroy’ them.
First off, it is NOT news that Reform is a Limited Company, that was the first assault on the Brexit Party after Farage started it well before Brexit The fact it is a Limited Company matters NOT a jot. No MP or even member can be involuntarily constrained by it. In fact if anything the current UniParty has more control over its MPs because of their ‘political infrastructure ‘ in terms of influence over so many other organisation historically.
Also, the other parties aren’t devoid of involvement in private companies. IF you really want you can look up all the ‘Labour Party’ Companies. Listing them was part of the ‘counter attack’ tactic at the time Labour attacked the Brexit party. They have loads of them.- eg
LABOUR PARTY PROPERTIES LIMITED
Company number 00964628.
Nature of business (SIC)
68100 – Buying and selling of own real estate 68209 – Other letting and operating of own or leased real estate
(Gosh Labour are a in the property business! – Well one of their companies is)
or perhaps
THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY FOUNDATION LIMITED
Company number 05289086
Nature of business (SIC)
94920 – Activities of political organisations
(At least this Tory one is in the business of politics!)
This is basically a ‘hatchet-job’. Why do I say that? Experience.
During the Thatcher years, the Lib-Dems were seen as an increasing AND main threat to the Tories. So much of a threat that the Tories held various meetings of their Agents (some in the Cotswolds, shades of COP28, the hotel was wonderful.) and in the ‘lectures’ various political bods pointed out how dangerous the Lib-Dems were becoming and they advised the agents how to ‘respond’ to that threat. Articles like this were one option, Plan A.
For anyone out there thinking we vote Reform and Starmer gets in, then think again (ok Unherd?) Because that was the plan B after hatchet job articles.
Put the fear of Labour up the voters.
I won’t bother you all with the other options, as they will no doubt start to appear now that Reform has suddenly become a worry for the Uniparty. It is also worth asking. Which party is behind this hatchet job? Tory or Labour?
One thing, however, that has baffled me so often. Farage did blink, BUT why? He could have appealed to ALL Brexiteers to vote for the Brexit Party He could then have produced & explained the geographical data (supplied by the BBC IIRC in an Excel spreadsheet) of Referendum Voters by Constituency.
This to me was VERY important. One item of data was clearly visible. That Remainers were geographically ‘contained’ in metropolitan areas AND Brexiteers spread out more evenly
A simple ordering of the excel data in terms of decreasing ‘Leave’ votes as a % of voters produced the fact that in 410 constituencies in the UK, there was a Brexiteer majority. So if ALL Brexiteers voted for the Brexit Party the odds where that the Brexit Party would have returned a bigger landslide that Boris’ Tories did. Farage blinked and he never gave it a chance of happening.
It is some years since Brexit, yet despite the propoganda, I’ve yet to see the sudden surge in remain voters. Nor have I seen vast numbers of Brexit voters die off. Ironically, many of the old I knew voted Remain.
SO I urge the Reform Party to point out IF you want a bloodless revolution in UK politics, then every Brexiteer voting for Reform next GE is likely to achieve it.
They will clear out hundreds of the current members of the Commons, AND, assuming Tice has the guts and means what he says, there could be a complete reversal of ALL Blair’s EU targetted reforms and a UK political revolution on the scale of Argentina’s in ONE parliament maybe?!.
FInal points, IF all Brexiteers did vote for Reform, NO tactical voting by remainers of any party could prevent a landslide victory for Reform. Of course that fact is assuming the data still applies, but I see no reason for it to have drastically changed. In fact the hatred of Tory AND Labour is potentially more potent than support for Brexit! So perhaps advertise it that way.
Doing this could produce the biggest landslide since the 1900s. It would also spell the end of the Tories and Labour parties as now constituted. And good riddance, I would say.
I think a thought should be given to who are people locally that would be putting their names into the hat? The quality of the MP is so important, even more than the party they represent. Isn’t this how it all started? I cannot vote for my Tory candidate as she is totally a Remainer and totally woke so it will be Reform if they have a candidate standing, but I think they have to vet the candidates as the last UKIP candidate I voted for was a total shyster trying to get a bit of fame. Hopefully some good Tories will get in and the bad ones will be dumped. Even a good Labour politician would not go amiss as the aim is to get good government and not too much party against party.
Agreed. The Tories have doomed themselves. He’s an entertaining summary of the charges against them. https://open.substack.com/pub/lowstatus/p/the-tory-party-has-doomed-itself?r=evzeq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
You voted for Boris Johnson with your eyes open. You lost the right to have your political opinion taken seriously, ever again, at that moment. Complaining that he didn’t do what he said he was is like complaining that a fart stinks. He was already the most famous liar and family-abandoner in British history, and if you couldn’t see that he was only ever pretending to care about Brexit to get to No10, you seem like an ideal person for Reform to target with their nonsense.
Had I voted for him, and enabled all the carnage that followed, I should have more dignity than to pull the ‘sIr KnEeL wIlL bE wOrSe’, and just be quiet – if you wet a friend’s bed, you just say sorry, you don’t tell them that it would be worse if you’d pooped in it.
The Tory party must be destroyed. Completely and utterly.
I will hate having Labour destroying our country but it is the only way to get a proper alternative.
All the parties need to be destroyed. The only sensible way to be represented in parliament is by an independent representative who is responsible to the voters and not a party.
Right of recall!
You have a good example across the channel of what is not to do : precisely destroy all parties. That’s what Macron did and look at the mess we’re in !!!
En même temps as he says…….French labour has become a micro party when it at some point it gave the country 2 presidents.
The Republicans who also sent a score of presidents to the Élysée Palace, do not want to side with Macron……or with Marine Le Pen which leaves them toothless.
The result ? The use of article 49.3 of the constitution that can bypass a vote in parliament because they end up with no majority. Nice way to send people supposed to be represented, marching down the streets like when they raised the retirement age.
Wether you like it or not, you need strong political parties.
That’s what I think and democracy in Britain started that way. Get the right MP’s in and Britain will be governed far better than it is now.
I don’t think the motive of destroying the Tories will work as they do have some good people as well as bad. I really hope the good will get back in as we need them all as well as the good of other parties. The country is going downhill fast and warring between parties instead of concentrating on good MP’s will make it all worse.
Presumably all this is just chitter-chatter. Labour is going to win the next election.
But then the question is: would someone please create a political party that represents the Commoners of Britain?
A party that could demolish Labour as the party of privilege that represents the hoity-toity educated class, but not the average Brit.
Anyone know the answer? Bueller? Anyone?
The idea that the proles will save us is wishful thinking. There are already two parties that represent the commoners of Britain, because the thing that really drives commoners is free stuff. Labour offer the commoners unlimited spending on the NHS, and the Tories promise never to constrain the amount the state gives away in pensions.
The commoners are the problem, not the solution.
“The commoners are the problem, not the solution.”
Reductive and inaccurate. The electorate in general regularly demonstrates that it can vote for reasons other than mere retail politics.
Not all the commoners only those who want handouts.
We are all “Commoners”. We are all “Proles”.
Sadly the majority of Brits are now processed through universities and the majority of those take useless courses to have themselves fitted out with the belief system of the blob .
That is so true unfortunately.
You are right, but I’m afraid the Tories must learn a lesson they simply cannot ignore and only total electoral meltdown can teach them it. I’m afraid it’s going to have to get worse before it can begin to get better. Most of the Parliamentary Conservative Party are still clinging to the wreckage of a liberal globalist ship that broke up and sank years ago.
We only get the choice of voting for one MP. If we did that right a lot of things would be sorted.
I’m tempted to vote for Reform UK next year purely as a protest vote, but I must say I didn’t realise that it is a limited company and not actually a political party. I suspect Ann Widdecombe is wrong and that it should change its status prior to the next election, not after it.
Either way though, Labour will win the next GE anyway, so the debate is a bit academic. It’s about what sort of Tory party, if any, will fight the 2029 GE. This is important, to be sure, but frankly most people should be worrying about the amount of damage that an emboldened Woke Labour government will do to their wealth and liberty from next year onwards.
I know I am.
They will not just thieve your wealth. They will silence you too. Look at Ireland and Scotland for foretaste of what new race equality laws mean. It makes the failures cowardice and betrayal by the Fake Tories all the greater. But they cannot be given 18 years of power when they now hate all Conservative values and are essentially Progressive Quislings.
I really wish all those who want to destroy the Tory party would wake up to the consequences of destroying the one viable instrument that actually exists and that has a hope of forming a viable alternative government to the Momentum dominated Labour party with or without the support of the woke Lib Dems. I wonder if the writers of such diatribes have ever been politically active in their lives beyond going to the polling station. Have they ever considered that stating a policy is one thing and very easy to do but carrying it into effect requires the consent and cooperation of many people and institutions. Things don’t happen just because Tice or Farage or even the saintly Widdecombe say so. Rishi Sunak should stop the boats, they say. But they don’t say HOW. Are they to be sunk in the Channel with considerable loss of life and corpses to be washed up on our shores? Or are we to somehow force the French to take them back? Or instruct the RNLI to let them sink? Let the critics state their actual solutions if they can, and then state how they would deal with the HR lawyers and the Courts.
Agree 100%. I often find myself trying to explain this to people on Facebook about the Channel crossings: how, exactly, do they propose to stop these boats? The Navy is usually the first suggestion (blowing up unarmed refigees in rubber dinghies?), then towing the boats back to France (invading French territorial waters?), then blockading French ports because France is expected, apparently, to police this problem by keeping all these unwanted people on its own shores – the list goes on.
You’re quite right – nobody has a plan that will actually work, and there is probably no plan that even CAN work until the laws that presently make Britain globally open both to legitimate incomers and illegitimate ones, are reformed.
By GE 2029, there will be votes at 16, further relaxation of the rules around postal and online voting, “hate speech” censorship, and millions of Tory voting pensioners will have died and been replaced on the electoral register by Labour voting teenagers. In retrospect the 2019 election victory will be seen as the Conservatives’ last best hope to save the country, and themselves.
Or: millions of Tory-voting pensioners will have died … and be casting their votes for Labour.
Possibly.
How can a dead person cast their vote or do you mean their dying will hand Labour a landslide? That and the children voting will change a lot in this country but not for the better.
Perhaps there will be pop stars standing for government for the sixteen year olds to vote for.
Nowadays the Labour Party depends on the votes of middle class property owners the bulk of whose wealth comes from asset values artificially inflated by government immigration and fiscal and monetary policy. Blair understood this and hes educated Starmer in the reality of the situation. My bet is that the principle consequence of a Starmer government is that the metropolitan class – bankers bureaucrats, teachers, lawyers, doctors and the media – will get richer and the small business sector, which essentially drives the productive economy, will get smaller.
I think we should only let the people on Unherd vote.
I think the Labour party are not straight. They will bring things in that we don’t know about now if they win. Who knows what they have hidden in their cupboards?
“… Farage stood down 317 Brexit Party candidates to give the Conservative Party a clear run at power. For the first time in his career, Farage blinked.”
As I expect others have pointed out, Farage didn’t “blink”. He stood down the Brexit Party candidates so that the Tories under BoJo had a clear run at power – TO DELIVER BREXIT. To not have stood down the Brexit candidates would have been a vanity project for Farage and Brexit would surely never have happened.
Farage gets my vote for the Greatest Living Briton.
Mike Buchanan
JUSTICE FOR MEN & BOYS
http://j4mb.org.uk
Although I have generally voted Conservative in the past it was only because they were closest to my own political stance of Classic Liberalism. That is (from Wikipedia):
Since Conservatism (and Labour) are drifting further and further away from these principles I’m shopping for a new Party for my vote. Reform seems to be the nearest option at the moment. It’s unlikely that they could form a government at the next General Election, but they could determine the balance of power if there is no outright majority. It’s up to them to seize the opportunity.
We need to end the tribalism. Simply voting blue, either because you always have, or because they are not red, is the road to hell and not a good basis to choose a government.
It encourages votes and voters to be taken for granted, and democracy dies. Which is roughly where we are, and why Brexit was such a shock to the system.
Brexit was wonderful. PIty the system got hold of it and almost throttled it at birth. It is not yet fully recovered, but it’s on its way.
My question is did Johnson appear to back Brexit to get power or was he really a part remainer. Some of his actions would appear to suggest this.
I agree entirely. Vote for the right person and think about them properly not the colour of their party. It’s lazy to just pick a colour.
Well, one lives and learns! I always thought I was a ‘c’onservative, but there isn’t a single part of that definition of Classical Liberal I don’t hold as Gospel!
The author – like many others – “forgot” to mention that one of Farage’s losses in a parliamentary election was down to Cameron’s team breaking electoral law and overspending on the Conservative campaign. Had the perennially “dodgy Dave” Cameron not cheated, history could be have been somewhat different.
To have a chance on winning a parliamentary seat in England (the threshold is sometimes a little lower in 4 way marginals in Scotland and Wales), it is necessary to win at least one third of the vote. Realistically most successful candidates win more than one third of the vote. UKIP got one third of the vote in just two constituencies in 2015. In one of those the outgoing UKIP MP had been elected as a Tory. In the other, UKIP won 33.8% of the vote. Overspending by the Conservatives made no material difference to the number of seats UKIP put themselves in a position to win. There was just a cap on the number of people in any constituency willing to vote for UKIP.
Quite possibly true in general – but that in no way refutes my specific point on South Thanet in 2015.
Farage was beaten by 2,812 votes – over 5%. If hotel accommodation had been declared as Conservative election spending as it should have been, it is still hard to see that this would have made a big difference. Even if Farage had won, UKIP would have had 2 seats, and the Conservatives 330. So one suspects history would have worked out much the same.
No one mentions that Farage was the only candidate to stand in a constituency in England and have an opposing party official found guilty of election fraud aimed at him. They just say ‘he never got elected’
He’s Lord Dodgy Dave to you, peasant.
Or Lord “Green cr*p” Dave if one is concerned about the planet.
How about Lord Pigsh***er of Bullingdon ….
That has a nice medieval ring to it.
Pig shagging is not medieval. It’s quite popular here in Devon.
I think he was more interested in men marrying each other.
Very good 🙂
Cameron gets my vote for being the most dodgy PM we have ever had.
I am disgusted that Sunak got him in from the Lords. This means he escapes democracy and doesn’t rely on anyone voting for him.
I do not see how the Conservatives under Sunak could squeeze the Reform vote to anything like 3%. By sacking Braverman and appointing Cameron, Sunak showed he won’t even pretend to care about immigration, and just wants to turn the clock back to 2015, as if that was even possible. Reform will pick up lots of votes in traditionally safe Tory seats, and make a lot of those very vulnerable. But Reform’s focus on proportional representation shows their real priority is winning seats for careerist right wing politicians, not on delivering actual reform. A right of centre government would be practically impossible in Britain under proportional representation. The Blob would be more secure than ever.
“Having a focus on electoral reform” does not in any way show any careerist priorities. The best way to get actual reform is to force a coalition to adopt the reform policies you want.
The Conservative Party is a coalition with a right wing, which has had some limited success in imposing reform policies (notably concerning Brexit). Under proportional representation it would be easier to exclude the right altogether, as has happened in France, Germany, Netherlands and elsewhere, by building coalitions with the Lib Dems, Greens and other leftist parties. A better plan would be to force a merger with the rump Conservatives post electoral meltdown, as happened in Canada.
PR in Ireland has turned every party centre left and woke but it’s interesting to ask why. I would say it’s because since the SF-WP infiltration of RTE and the Irish Times in the 60s and 70s, any form of nationalist, Catholic or right wing stance has been completely derided in the media. People have become frightened to express such ideas and with good reason. Now we’re in a situation of complete left wing tyranny.
With the experience of Urban Warfare on the horizon. I wonder how many former IRA men are considering training the next generation of Irish to fight for the freedom of the Republic?
That worked well for the Lib-Dems in 2010.
Am not going to comment on the election dynamics in the UK, but I will say this for Sunak re: immigration. The guy knows the value of sometimes standing back and letting problems sort themselves out.
Obviously the public wants to see positive action on illegal immigration, but Britain alone cannot stop the boats.
What Sunak might see is that the general mood across Europe is swinging very decisively against illegal immigration and that there will be a rash of right wing governments coming in in the not-too-distant future across the continent, from NL to Austria and Germany. Finland and Sweden are already there. That will probably result in more decisive action to defend Europe’s borders…which automatically means fewer people getting to Britain.
Sunak’s logic might just be this: why scratch the UK’s reputation even more with failed Rwanda asylum models, trying to pass dumb legislation which says ineffectually that black is white and having Suella Braverman screeching around the joint and damaging people’s eardrums when all you have to do is wait for events to move your way?
I know people are fed up of waiting for change, but patience really is a virtue.
The whole point of Brexit was to get our own house in order, rather than waiting for the EU to do it, because it never would. Most migrants come from outside the EU, so whether or not the EU secures its borders (it won’t) is neither here nor there. The demographic changes impacting Britain are very radical, and require a radical response. That may offend polite society, and may be smeared as racism, “screeching” and so on. But there is no point maintaining your sang-froid and losing your country.
That most migrants come from outside the EU is obvious, but without a plan to either stop them coming from France (a matter which the UK is not fully in control of and France has no interest in stopping them all) or to deport the people en masse (as we can see, almost impossible) then the UK political establishment has no way to “get its own house in order”. I’m not fully against Brexit, but I always realised that there were many things which it would not sort out, because the British political establishment cannot influence or control certain, larger movements and trends – and that includes mass migration.
Here, like it or not, British politicians have to cooperate with others (i.e. by paying France off, but – even better – by helping EU countries to secure Europe’s outer borders), as the only way to get the problem under control is to stop migrants coming into the EU in the first place. And the fundamental theatre for problem-solving on that front is NOT the English Channel, but the Med, the Aegean, the Atlantic (see: the rising number of migrants landing on the Canary Islands) and the vast eastern land border.
But this all requires the British to think beyond their own borders…which, quite frankly, is not their forte.
Most migrants are legal – the result largely of an extraordinarily lax work and student visa regimes which Sunak has refused to reform, even while millions of the indigenous population are outside the workforce due to a failing universal credit system. The minority of illegal migrants could be managed via a faster processing regime and much high rate of deportation – provided the necessary legal framework is put in place. This is within the UK government’s power. The EU will not save us.
I think your argument has some validity in terms of immigration flows across mainland Europe impacting on the UK, but crediting Sunak with the kind of thinking that would produce anything like a decisive shift under his watch just doesn’t wash, i’m afraid.
On the other hand yours and Sunak’s patience doesn’t necessarily produce the right result and is therefore a very big risk.
Your obesrvation re PR is accurate. In fact I have repeatedly told the Party (they actually reply to email with counter arguments!!) that they should bin PR as it isn’t good for voters.
As the Lib-Dem voters discovered in 2010. They being the only voters who got what they wanted; the balance of power. Then they were shocked to discover that their ‘leaders’ negotiated away the policies they believed the balance of power would deliver.
Next GE Lib-Dems were eviscerated and haven’t recovered since. Which I find amusing, because the Lib-Dem voters didn’t appear to understand what PR means – it means John Major/Blair would have survived to fight another day, AND the policies the MPs wanted would be applied, not necessarily the ones the voters wanted.
Still, I’ll put up with that to remove as many current MPs as possible, as otherwise worse will come.
Reform are going to hit 15%, driven purely by angry vengeful proper Conservative voters who have now woken up to the fact that the Roshi as well as Fool Johnson Tories are utter imposters; they are quasi socialist ultra liberal wet progressives and hostile to every traditional Conservative principle and policy. So these voters will be the Keirs, stamping out and terminating a now hated rogue sickdog Corbyn like group in Blue – slaves to the Blob. They have given us net zero pol potism, identitarianism, mass uncontrolled migration, magic money mega bailouts and extreme welfarism, punitive high taxes on private enterprise to oay their vast pensions and zero reform to our broken crappy Third World health service. But that will be it for Reform, just like the Brexit Party. They are just a one off demolition team. The horror is that it will cement the power of the permanent Progressive New Order. But it is now unavoidable. Kemi must have a Manifesto for a proper reformed modern Conservativism closer to Thatcherism at hand and start to rebuild a New Tory Party from centre right purged of the wets. First we must endure the Reckoning; electoral payback for the Fake weak Tories’ total defeat by and meek appeasement of the hostile permanent progressive State.
One can’t say they didn’t tell us, though May took long enough to confirm my suspicions. May said she was Woke and Cameron he was the Heir to Blair. I expect it is the ‘Hamas’ effect, they mix lies and truth and deciding which is which is the grey area that the gullible can move around in & deny truths
Atheist though I now am, I still think the Bible has a lot of wisdom to provide. Some of the classics
‘Many will say Lord, Lord’ – but I will say I know you not.
“By their fruits you will know them”
Could have been written with the current Tory party in mind.
It is always by their fruits and not by what they say.
I relapsed and voted Tory because of Brexit but I see they have put lots of barriers in place and will not come out of the ECHR so that we can control immigration and left N Ireland in the EU. I hope the voters deal with that and that we shall get a proper Brexit.
Apart from the political events listed in the article, there is a wider more general tendency in our society which favours a party like Reform.
News reporting, analysis and commentary has been taken out of the exclusive hands of the MSM and dispersed among a huge number of small players and amateurs. The quality is obviously variable, but there are some intelligent, committed, and creative people making programmes, tweeting, commenting and blogging from their homes and from small media outlets. The overwhelming impression for most people has been that we have been gaslighted for years. The BBC are the main culprits, jumping on every trendy bandwagon and shamelessly promoting a narrative of diversity and inter-racial harmony. And they are still lamenting Brexit.
We can now see that this is wishful thinking at best, and at worst is something far more sinister. All across the internet we can see people demonstrating that our entire establishment seems to be engaged in lying to us in order to denigrate our traditional culture and institutions.
In such a climate, reform is indeed necessary. Which is why “Reform” is a good choice of name. They’ll get my vote, for sure. Something has to change before we are lost for ever.
I’ve argued before that the BBC is the communications arm of the Establishment… and the Establishment has run out of relevance.
You could also argue that Politics (left or right) is the circuses arm of the Establishment.
Agree 100% with the aim of Reform – to destroy the Tory party. In a strange way of saying things, the Tory party is our main enemy because it doesn’t present a proper opposition to Labour.
In the next election there will be a choice – between Labour and Pseudo-Labour and Labour will win. Pseudo-Labour will be in opposition until the electorate gets bored with Labour. And so on.
The article personalises Reform as a way of steering people away from what it stands for. When a party is small it has to be personal. If the party grows, there will be internal strife and other personalities will come to the fore. This is life.
“the Tory party is our main enemy because it doesn’t present a proper opposition to Labour”
That is it. It campaigns from the right, and governs from the left. It has to go.
True, there are lies, damn lies, statistics and Tory party manifestos & rhetoric.
The other way around. Labour is the opposition party not the Tories. The trouble is that Labour have not found all that much to oppose in a partially woke government.
Nu-Labour (which may or may not hold whatever demons that exist behind that facade, behind that facade) or Blu-Labour, which certainly won’t stop the demons behind Nu Labour’s facade. Though they say they will.
The article personalises Reform because that clearly describes what it is. Not a political party in the normal sense but the personal property of N. Farage.
And…?
What lazy nonsense is this?
“there is little sign that either of the main political parties has any idea how to significantly reduce net migration”
It’s not a great mystery: you just allow in fewer people than choose to leave each year.
A bit more clue is required to ensure that the *right* people come here, but as a bare minimum we should insist that they are fluent in English, have no criminal record, and make a net contribution to public finances.
It’s not that our politicians don’t know how to sort this out. It’s that they don’t want to.
I don’t think Sunak wants to sort it. He likes to give us words that he is doing something but nothing ever comes of it. Getting rid of that great politician Suella Braverman almost proves it. He is a billionaire so he can just get out and go to India or anywhere he likes when it all crashes.
Will Reform UK try to inflict the awful Proportional Representation system on this country? As with so many things that people unthinkingly believe are just and fair PR would be disastrous for this country. We are already bedevilled by too many factions, special interest groups and lobbyists. PR would really subject us to the tyranny of the minorities.
NOT if you write to them, as I regularly do, and tell them to ditch it with reasons why. Enough of us do that and they may well remember that we had a referendum on that once before AND refused it.
Good point although we are already subject to the tyranny of the minorities with government help I would have thought.
So many of us are just so disillusioned with the entire clown show – no matter which colour ribbon they wear – that I can see 2024 being the lowest turnout on record.
The most common theme I hear is that it doesn’t matter who wins, they’re gonna shaft us and look after themselves, just like they always have.
Blair certainly looked after himself.
Whether a defeated Tory party turns to Braverman or not depends on which MPs keep their seats. If it is the Cameroon centrists who hold most seats then it will not rediscover conservatism but double down on Blairism. There are not enough true conservative MPs and there will be even fewer after an election. Breverman as leader is a nice thought but unrealistic. Conservative Central Office is still in charge of the party.
Braverman is one of a long list of conservative myths. She talks a good talk, but did nothing. That is how the Tories survive, they lie more convincingly than Hamas.
We are at a Sodom and Gomorrah moment. It is no longer worth striving to find 10 good Tories, they have to burn.
I disagree about Braverman she was restrained by her government and particularly Sunak We have nothing to lose making her prime minister instead of what we are getting especially the rediculous idea of zero carbon without which all plant life would die.
Elon Workman
I am just an ordinary member of my Association and my worry is that so many members and the Association Board/Committee do not realise how dire the situation is. They seem to think that everything will turn out all right in the end as Keir Starmer has performed a ‘u turn’ on virtually every policy since he was elected Labour leader. As things look at present Reform U K will pick up enough votes in Conservative or Conservative leaning seats to let in by a few thousand votes either a Labour or Liberal Democrat candidate Electoral Calculus gives the Conservatives around 90 seats in 2024 with Reform U K having none. Reform U K may well destroy the Conservative Party but will be unable to replace it with another party of the centre right. For all the love the Liz Trusses of this world have for Margaret Thatcher she never won more than 44% of the national vote and was lucky in the sense that the SDP/Liberal Alliance split the left and that in both Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock she had Labour Leaders who were not considered Prime Ministerial material. She was not (to quote Milton Friedman) ‘a Tory’. What made her was her conduct of the 1982 Falklands war when she was at her most congenial with both her Cabinet and the Military (read Peter Hennessey The Prime Ministers from Clement Attlee to Tony Blair). What is probably not in doubt is that had we had a Prime Minister of her calibre, decisiveness and foresight (she was after all a trained scientist) the Conservative Party would not have found itself in its current mess with five Prime Ministers in eight years and even now despite all that has happened some of those on the right are itching to get rid of the current incumbent.
Wrong! The Conservatives have destroyed the Conservative Party AND if they continue to vote for them in 2024, they may succeed in destroying the UK.
Not sure the name ‘Reform’ has much resonance and the leading figures have little appeal in Scotland and Wales.They should change their name and try to recruit celebrities who have an appeal in Scotland and Wales where there are plenty of seats that are winnable if one can persuade people to vote for credible immigration policies and against net zero.
Labour,Lib Dems,SNP,Greens and Plaid all believe in open immigration and extreme Net Zero policies which is a crowded market whilst the Tories currently have no credibility on either issue
Net Zero is destroying our nation in many ways. It is the most devastating example of a consuming insanity. War has been declared on carbon dioxide the gas reponsible for greening the planet, essential to the growth of all plant life and for producing the oxygen which we all breathe via photosynthesis. CO2 makes up a mere 0.04% of the atmosphere yet it is now decided that it must be trapped and pumped away under ground. CO2 makes up only 4% of the greenhouse gases. The rest is water vapour contributing to keeping the planet from freezing at night whilst the earth spins.
Which is as good an illustration as any of just how completely the Oxbridge Mafia have things sewn up.
The Conservative Party lost its way and now must dwell in the wilderness for a long time.
The only thing in their favour is the Labour party and maybe the three women, Suella Braverman, Liz Truss and Miriam Cates who is a real star of mine. I sincerely hope that these three women keep their seats.
The Conservatives must be destroyed. Most of us who left the Conservative Party for Reform see no difference between Labour and the Conservatives. In fact over the past week Starmer is sounding more conservative than Sunak.
I keep tapping the ’like’ button but nothing happens. It’s like voting Conservative.
Ha! Ha!
I suggest he is kicked upstairs to The Lords. That is the only way he will get any power, even if it is limited. The idea of him taking over the Tory party is pie in the sky.
Elon Workman
Matt Damon
Ed Balls
Should I vote for you?
Farage didn’t blink in 2019. He recognised two things: Johnson was personally popular and he was lying to the electorate about his true intentions over immigration. Farage knew that Johnson would fizz and burn out. Johnson was the last card the Conservatives could play to steal another election win through deceit.
The party name change was also necessary, even if it required 2 years for name recognition to be re-established. The Brexit Party remained vulnerable to claims that ‘Brexit is done’, however false those claims might be.
The political outlook is highly unstable. If Sunak appears capable of a Tory victory in the 2024 general election, then Reform supporters would vote Tory. If there is no chance of that happening, then Reform supporters will vote for Reform.
Longer term the main issue is how Reform approach party financing. A membership model would indicate a change in policy from the Conservatives. My suspicion though is that Reform will take corporate money and turn into a party that reflects business interests rather than those of Conservative minded voters.
Who cares?
Reform? UKIP? BNP? Tories?
All the same and all about to be comprehensively rejected as the UK swings decisively to the left and the far right are consigned to the dustbin of history.
Good riddance!
Pure fantasy. The article misses an important point. Just as Farage has failed to be elected as a member of Parliament despite seven attempts, Reform is his third political brand. Neither is it true to say Farage has made a single strategic mistake in shutting down the Brexit Party. His signal strategic error came in July 2016. There can be no gainsaying Farage’s extraordinary victory in the Brexit referendum, Cameron was so crushed he simply walked. But incredibly, so did Farage when he abandoned UKIP. Walking away from this overwhelming victory broke the hearts of Farage’s many UKIP supporters in the Red Wall. Johnson astutely mopped them up for the Conservatives. Despite Tice’s efforts, it must be very unlikely that the Red Wall will now switch from the Tories to Reform. They’ll go back to Labour. As for Farage emerging from Australia to take over the Conservatives, dream on. Does he really think he could get past an elegant stiletto thrower like Mogg? Hardly, Farage is just not bright enough.
Talking of ‘bright’ – I am amazed that you are so consistently wrong You must be an MMT Economist.
Can a Tory Party be imagined that contains both Cameron and Farage?
F:”Didn’t you resign?”
C:”Didn’t you?”
That the elevation and appointment of Cameron has garnered so few recruits to Reform is remarkable. People’s response to Reform in a sense being reminiscent of the reaction to Cromwell’s death. No one much minded.
Has C’s return provoked such a response in Brexit voters from both Tory and Labour Parties that they are willing to finally abandon their tribal voting once and for all?
F and C are similar in that their support has gotten ever smaller, except among a party that sticks close out of necessity.
Farage won’t join the Conservatives. He attended their conference to talk to many of Reform’s voters.
What is your source for the profile of Reform membership data ?
Err, anyone actually heard a coherent practical policy from Reform beyond, groan, withdrawing from ECHR? Or just more sloganeering Golf Club bore twaddle for the echo chamber?
Of course moment they have to come up with a proper suite of ‘reform’ Policies the contradictions and simpleton thinking will just make them look even more stupid than they already do.
I guess at least with each passing year more of these bores become too senile to get to the voting booth whilst the youngsters have the future. And what an inheritance they’ve been bequeathed by these chumps and their Right Wing media friends.
What a charmer you are. The youngsters don’t have a future thanks to the incompetence of the last eight administrations over 31 years when democracy was handed over to the banks, supranational organisations, NGOs and think tanks. All who have failed magnificently.
I will be spoiling my ballot paper again at the next general election.
You ought to do something positive as well as negative.
Farage is a rebel. The plebiscite is the apogee of his political career. He doesn’t have what it takes to lead a governing party, always veering off in ego-driven new directions like broadcasting and latterly the risible and embarrassing Celebrity nonsense. He’s a right-wing George Galloway. Mavericks by definition cannot lead the herd.
The Tories had to commit electoral fraud in the constituency he stood in. Tho’ conveniently the office staff took the blame.
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/tory-party-official-who-falsified-expenses-carried-away-by-bid-to-beat-farage/37696567.html
Exactly. Yet you’ve got down-ticks for stating the bleeding obvious!
Thanks Rupert, glad to find I’m not alone!
As a Scotsman all this is a load of utter coital bovine scatology
Why ?
Because wether any like or not
Scotland will be free and NI and Wales shall follow
The Answer my friend is in
1. The demographics
2.The terminal decline and collapse of
England,s economy and the military ,political clout evaporates into the Ether of Geo Political matters
“Scotland will be free and NI and Wales shall follow”
As an English taxpayer, I do hope so.
If the SNP is anything to go by your exit will not be fruitful.