Tag: nigel-farage

A New Political Party needs to be new in every meaningful sense. That means leaving the fixed ideas and the egos in the incompetent politics bin too

Warfare within the Reform UK Party has broken in to full view this week, with what appears to be an exquisitely well-timed revelation about MP Rupert Lowe’s behaviour bursting into the open alongside a complaint to the Police, just a day after talk picked up suggesting that the Reform MP could be an alternative to Nigel Farage as Prime Minister.

With the polls appearing to have settled or even calmed in recent days, indicating that there is some kind of status quo manifesting around the current public view of the political establishment, and Reform apparently failing to pick up any one of 9 seats in council by elections this week, it is reasonable to believe that the momentum that the seemingly unstoppable party has had since last July’s General Election is already beginning to cross its peak and that this will have began to ruffle feathers within what exists of the Party hierarchy.

Rupert Lowe has been making demonstrable waves in the form of being the kind of representative presence that all voters should be able to expect of their MP as an absolute minimum.

In itself, this has been shining a light on the shadows created by what much of Nigel Farage actually does, and it would appear that the fragility of the egos that have been driving the 4th evolution of what at its core was always an anti-EU movement, have finally began to wrestle with the reality that the model of politics that they wish to pursue isn’t in any way hard hitting enough.

Fundamentally, the motives and drive of Reform appear to be just an echo, mirror or parroting of what drives all the politicians in Westminster, who have already been written off for their incompetence and self-serving ambitions.

Doing what we’ve always done with our political system is no longer going to wash.

Labour are sinking in every way. Not just because they are Labour. But because everything touched by public policy has been heading this way for decades, and the current crop of politicians on the government benches are really just the unfortunate fools who found themselves without a comfy seat as the music begins to stop.

Solving the growing list of problems that the UK now has will need adults back in the room and most people are waking up to this. So, one party getting a whopping majority, just because they are a different choice, isn’t all that likely to happen again.

Whilst the Reform rhetoric has been like sweet music to the growing number of politically disenfranchised from around the UK, who come from across all political and demographic backgrounds, and the movement of big names and former Tories to the Reform ranks, together make it appear that the right is really going the Reform way, the reality is that in terms of policy, outreach and wider public engagement at the very least, the talk and the stories being shared are direct messages that reflect how those choosing to follow them today now feel, and little more.

Reform policy suggestions give no indication that the party strategy is based on anything real or that connects with the realities that ANY political party in the UK will now face IF it gains power and is then determined enough to do EVERYTHING necessary to achieve all that needs to be done.

Whilst the end result may end up being about what can and what will change in Westminster, IF and WHEN the next General Election comes, no political party and certainly not a new one (or one that calls itself new) is going to create the seismic change and win the cross-tribal support and mandate for what will be very painful and far-reaching change, without turning everything political on its head.

At the very minimum, this means putting the relationship with voters and what life experience is like for everyone, first.

Yes, Reform could still do this. But the chances are that with what we have seen already, the Party is already too entrenched with a philosophy that tells their active members that they are not only different to everyone else, but their cause and what they are doing is right in a way that makes everyone who disagrees, wrong.

If you take time to look at the social media streams this morning, you will see the suggestions that Rupert Lowe join up with people like Ben Habib, Katie Hopkins and other names who any number of different people might currently see being the kind of person they would like or see best to lead.

The problem is that whilst some cannot see and many others simply will not accept it, the world has changed even since July. It is also continuing to change very quickly and that’s before we take into consideration any one of a number of possible events and outcomes that have the potential to unfold in the days, weeks and months that lie ahead.

Anything new and meaningful that has the genuine capability and structure to gain enough credibility to win outright at the next general election, MUST forget the personalities, the loud voices and the great media players and focus on what people need and what is best for the people, first.

There’s no question that people many would already recognise nationally and locally too will have a role to play in our political future.

But the way that politics today is politics for politics-sake, and everything is all about some agenda that is out of touch with real people and something that nobody apart from those who are ‘in on it’ will ever see, is over. It just hasn’t ended yet.

The unfolding tragedy of the UKs political right
We need a new party in British Politics, yesterday. But it won’t be another that’s only been Reformed

The unfolding tragedy of the UKs political right

You may have read the title of this blog and immediately wondered what I’m on about. After all, Reform UK are running level with the Labour Government in the polls; the gap is opening up to the Conservatives behind them, and it’s all looking rather like Nigel Farage’s prophecy that Reform will form the next government in 2029 is unfolding in front of them like a political itinerant’s dream come true.

Anything is of course possible. And with the result and consequences of the General Election only six months ago plain for all to see, there is just as much reason to believe that Reform could sweep to victory on a 2029 landslide, that a majority vote for, simply because they appear to then be the better option out of a very bad bunch.

However, could it really be as straightforward as that?

My guess today, as someone whose political background is the ‘right’; who was elected into local government twice as a Conservative and who has dealt with evolutions of reform that include UKIP and the Anti Federalist League before Farage himself was even around, is a considered no.

Not because a new political party from outside of the traditional mainstream cannot smash the current triopoly. But because both Reform and those who are riding off the idea that they can profit from being like Reform are still playing the establishment game and offering too much of the destructive sameness that the establishment demands.

Whilst the reader would need to be watching all forms of media closely to see a very different reason for Reform’s future unfolding differently, the other problem that Reform – and therefore the whole of the right or conservative family has, is that there are already two further parties emerging that to one degree or another could easily split the Conservative Party and Reform axis even further. Leaving it ever more realistic that a left-wing or rainbow coalition will form the next government, with an even weaker Labour Party leading and ‘in charge’ than the one being accused of crashing the economy right now.

What Andrew Tate, and whatever Dominic Cummings has cooking, the current mentality of the Conservative Party and Nigel Farage’s Reform all have in common is their belief that they are different. Whilst the only difference they offer or look like they will offer, is a distilled version of policies which are no better than calling out the issues facing the UK as they see them. Which in terms of being the difference that the majority of people now need and want is the same thing as no difference at all.

Whilst the polls create a constant source of excitement for political anoraks, they do not indicate that a sweeping aside of petty rivalries and egos is now or is currently likely to take place.

That means all the right is offering today is all it has done for living memory:

Whichever version you choose, it’s all about the politicians themselves rather than people – which is what we all so desperately need.

Being able to talk about the uncomfortable issues that the government today and the last conservative government would not, is no longer enough.

That much has been quickly proven by the reality that the Labour Cabinet is massively out of its depth with the problems and realities of the establishment machine that they face. When they also rode a wave of good faith-based voting that led them to believe that they were equipped and ready to take on what faced them on the 5th of July.

It will not be different for any of the politicians currently coveting the keys to No. 10. As will be the same case for all of their understudies who sadly show all too easily what we can expect from them through their ambition and failure to genuinely connect.

If the political right is going to gain a meaningful result at the next election, rather than contributing to the creation of greater damage to the UK and what may then be an unnavigable mess, they have to be ready to fight the next general election together.

More importantly they will have to work together in a very different, people orientated way.

2029 is not a long time, assuming that the next general election will be then, rather than much before.

The time to deal with the differences and find common ground is now. Not in 3 years and certainly not during the fall out of the next general election where on current trajectories, things are going to be hideously worse than they are even now.

I’m not convinced that a coalition of the right is possible as things stand. Because nobody in politics can face up to the truth that it’s the outcome that is the most important factor to consider. Not how they take us there or who becomes the name that everyone then thinks about as being in charge.

The one thing we can be sure of is that change of the kind that the UK currently needs and what getting there really means, isn’t going to be offered or achieved by any political vehicle constructed with the same motives and way of looking at the electorate as the Political Parties who have been swapping power between them up until now.