BY DAVID EYLES
Reform, the Tories, and a few other minor matters
The interplay between the Conservative Party and Reform is interesting, but at the moment in political terms, appears outwardly to be relatively unimportant. Who actually forms the main right-wing Opposition to a government which is currently completely out of control in its destruction of the entire country is, in the narrow sense, academic. What matters is that Starmer is not just held to account but stopped from doing any more damage. Given that he has no sense of shame or honour or regard for the health and wealth of the country, that he lies at the drop of a hat, and endlessly repeats his marketing slogans with the same enthusiasm as an organ-grinding monkey, means that he will be extremely difficult to dislodge. No amount of scandal seems to affect him. He has a huge majority and will carry on regardless. He looks unstoppable and so the dance between the Tories and Reform appears to be a very minor issue.
That said, the Conservatives as His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition are doing a lamentable job. Reform are doing much better. Rupert Lowe, in particular, is doing sterling work. Farage is hitting the MSM with many pithy comments which resonate with the public, which are increasing the popularity of Reform, and which is showing up in the steadily improving polling percentages. But Reform are small in Parliamentary terms and can only do so much in terms of stopping this destructive juggernaut.
But why are the Tories doing such a bad job of forming an effective opposition? I suggest the following:
1. Badenoch is not as punchy as everyone was hoping, she seems to be soft-pedalling a lot – which is pretty well what you would expect from someone who was effectively anointed as ‘Continuity Gove’.
2. Jenrick in his campaign for the leadership of the Conservative Party attempted to shoot Farage’s fox on immigration but was hamstrung by the fact that the Tory blob were responsible for the immigration anyway.
3. During their 14 years of government, the Tories have done the following pieces of irreversible damage to the country:
3.1. Unconstrained immigration of huge numbers of low value people who are manifestly not the doctors and architects that we were promised.
3.2. Repeated promises of bringing immigration under control, which they then cynically ignored, professing helplessness in the face of the ECHR, whilst not doing the obvious and getting out of the ECHR and bringing litigious human rights lawyers under control.
3.3. Whilst public (i.e. MSM) attention has concentrated upon the 1 million or so illegal immigrants who have arrived by rubber dinghy in the last year (or whatever the figure is thought to be), the spotlight has turned away from the ‘legal’ immigrants, who have brought themselves, their families and their cousins and their aunts. And in so doing have placed uncontrollable strain upon the housing market, the jobs market, the NHS and a myriad of other services which we have to pay for in our taxes. This group outweighs the illegals by many times. And all brought in at the behest of the big businesses which have the ear of the Tory leadership.
3.4. The outsourcing of our democracy and management of the country to unelected quangos, NGOs, advisory committees and so on. This was a process started in earnest by Blair, of course, but was enthusiastically taken up by Cameron and all his successors. Parliament is no longer the seat of democracy but is allowed to continue as a talking shop. It is diminished to the point whereby we are all aching for a new Cromwell to throw the lot out and start again.
3.5. The continued industrial scale grooming and rape of young white girls at the hands of (mainly) gangs of Pakistani origin, and the suppression of any action by the local authorities, the police, and the CPS. Whilst there have been a number of high-profile cases involving large numbers of defendants, it is clear that this practice continues unabated, and was there in full public view for the Conservative government to do something about it. But they did not.
3.6. The continual hollowing out of our armed forces and our ability to defend ourselves. Under the cosy idea of there was some sort of ‘peace dividend’ at the end of the Cold War, the Treasury has been raiding the defence budget for decades, whenever some other ‘issue’ such as a performative need to shovel yet more funding into ‘our’ NHS. The result, amongst many other tragedies, is that we have two magnificent aircraft carriers but with little in the way of aircraft to put on them.
3.7. The lockdowns during Covid were excessive, illogical and without any scientific justifications. The result was irreparable harm to the economy and social cohesion. The side effects were many and all were damaging to individuals and society.
3.8. One of the particular aspects of the early part of the lockdowns was what happened to the very elderly, who were shovelled from hospitals into care homes. Prior to being moved they were not tested for Covid and so those who were infected whilst in hospital, promptly spread Covid into the care homes. What happened then was that many were subjected to a ‘care pathway’ using the combination of morphine and Midazolam – which quickly killed them. This policy was embraced by Matt Hancock who was anxious to ensure a “good death” for those unfortunate people. He has, subsequently, stated that the guidelines for this practice were misused by doctors.
3.9. During the whole of this time, and subsequently with the rollout of the vaccines, the whole of medical ethics was thrown out of the window, and there is now evidence that the ethics committee set up to advise the government was sidelined and then abandoned.
3.10. Covid also brought in an absolute bonanza of emergency contracts for supporters and well-wishers to the Conservative Party. The waste and corruption from this unconstrained boondoggle is enormous.
3.11. The adverse effects from the vaccines are slowly being admitted. Scarcely a week goes by without some new scientific paper or unearthed governmental emails admitting that the predictions made by many so-called ‘conspiracy theorists’ have turned out to be correct. The consequences of this for the Tories is that it was they who effectively handed over administration of the country to an unelected committee of academics with strong links to the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry. Critics, ethics, information, other means of treatment, the origins of Covid and so on, were all suppressed with the most vicious of propaganda and expedited by the cancellation of those who voiced dissent. All of which was promoted by the Tory government.
4. There are hundreds of points of criticism of the Tories, who whilst in office either did nothing about the many problems because of political cowardice, or actually made them much worse because of belief in the needs of their economic mantra for cheap unskilled labour and a secondary belief in the woke ideas amongst the chatterati.
All of this means that, for at least the next twelve months, PMQs will amount to Badenoch accusing Labour of some iniquity, and Starmer repeating the same excuse that it was the Tories wot started it. These exchanges will be boring and even more unproductive than usual (see point 3.4 above). However, it means that whenever the Tories try to hit Labour with heavy ordnance, their missiles will simply be thrown back at them across the floor of the House of Commons. All of which will be richly deserved and all of which will continue to leave them weak and ineffective as an opposition. Their abject failure to confess their sins whilst in government, to recognise why they lost in way that they did, reinforces the public perception of politicians engaging in serial dishonesty. Added to the even more obvious dishonesty and hypocrisy of Labour, the public will recognise the incorrigible nature of the existing political establishment to be common to both parties, to the point of being inseparable. Hence the epithet ‘Uniparty’ applied to them both.
Given the current insanity of Net Zero and all the rest of Labour’s agenda, the public will become increasingly angry as an out-of-control government, intent upon destroying the country, its economy and culture is combined with a chronically weak and ineffective Opposition.
This is a recipe for some sort of revolution.
The inheritance tax for farmers has just pushed that particular group into a place where there is no way out for them, other than to fight. Demonstrations have so far amounted to big tractors rumbling into Westminster. The mood has been cheerful and noisy, but otherwise polite and restrained – so far. Other demonstrations have briefly, and again politely, blockaded Dover and Holyhead. But if Starmer remains unmoved and fails to clock the significance of what the farmers are capable of, then he has picked a fight with the wrong people. The farmers are getting organised and have lots of very big kit – which is fundamentally unstoppable by any resources the police have. French farmers have shown them how these things can be done. All sorts of things could happen if it gets tough. The political situation could easily get very, very difficult for even this arrogant and dishonest government. There is plenty of time for things to get sufficiently unpredictable and unstable to bring down Starmer’s government.
But long before this point is reached, the relative importance of the Tories and Reform in the minds of the voter begins to matter. At the moment, five MPs in parliament will not change much in the way of who forms the official opposition. That role is currently held by the Tories with 121 MPs, and little will happen to change that for the foreseeable future.
Given what I have already said about the Tories, and given the continued absence of any kind of public mea culpa amounting to a ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, the public perception of the Tories will (at best) remain distrustful; and (at worst) openly hostile – and with that will come a long slow slide in the polls. Current membership figures for the Conservative Party are characteristically opaque, but are thought by some sources to be around 120K, a big reduction from their 170K before Covid.
By contrast, Reform have grown their membership from about 70K a few weeks after the election, to a reported 105K now. They are getting organised for the 2025 county council elections. In those local by-elections that Reform have already contested, there have been very large swings in their favour. It’s early days for election victories, and total national coverage of candidates is still a long way off, but the beginnings are looking promising.
Meanwhile, Reform’s chronic problems with lack of funding are likely to be overcome. During the last General Election, candidates were left with little or no funding from the party, and had to stump up for their own leaflets and literature. There was very little central organisation – all candidates were real people who had entered their details correctly into the election system, but many amounted to ‘paper candidates’ because of the lack of money. Despite all of these disadvantages, Reform polled 4.1 million votes, or 14.3% of the total votes cast. In terms of the number of votes cast, they were the third largest party, but returned only five MPs to Parliament. Despite this, Reform have come from nowhere in a few short months, to becoming an effective source of opposition to the government – albeit a small one.
Success breeds success, and funding is now said to have been sorted by the defection of Nick Candy from the Conservatives to become Reform’s treasurer. He has said that he aims to bring in about £40 million into the party before the next election. In addition, there are claims that Elon Musk has promised $100 million to Reform. This has not yet been unequivocally confirmed from either Musk or Farage. In any case there are legal issues to be sorted out as foreign donors to election campaigns are banned by the Electoral Commission. With or without Musk, the electoral organisational problems look as if they are on the way to being solved.
As a test of viability for a new political party, high profile defections from other established parties might be considered to be an indicator of the party that is on the way up. In this respect, Reform has done well by attracting:
- 1. Dame Andrea Jenkyns – a former MP and an influential member of the Parliamentary Conservative Party.
- 2. Tim Montgomerie – who founded the online magazine Conservative Home.
- 3. Aidan Burley – a former Conservative MP.
- 4. Nick Candy – Billionaire and former donor to the Conservative Party. Now Reform UK Treasurer.
- 5. Rael Braverman – Suella Braverman’s husband. Suella has confirmed that she is not intending to defect.
The more usual test for political success outside of elections is, of course, regular opinion polling. Reform have steadily improved their polling percentages since the election. From 14.3% at the election, this has risen to 25% according to a very recent poll, published on 12/12/24. (see Figure 2 below) Note the sample size is nearly 4.7K, an unusually high number compared to more well-known pollsters who usually use sample sizes of about 2K. Find Out Now caveat this survey with the following:
“Note, due to the margin of error (the statistical range within which the true result is likely to fall, usually 2-3% for polls), small week-on-week changes in results may be caused more by random sampling variation, rather than reflect genuine shifts in public opinion.”
“In addition, due to Labour, the Conservatives and Reform UK being very close together, their relative rankings can change very easily, even if there are only slight changes in their levels of support.”
“However, when looking at the results of our last three voting intention polls in unison, the following trends seem likely:
Conservatives: slight decline
Labour: steady overall (despite fluctuations)
Reform UK: slight rise
Other parties: no change”
And then they give a useful chart (Figure 1):
Despite the caution of the pollsters, we can see that Labour have dropped about 9 points since the election, the Conservatives are about the same or declining very slightly, and Reform have increased about 10 points. Importantly, Reform have broken through what I consider to be the psychological barrier of about 20% and appear to be rising steadily, at least according to this pollster and their methodology.
One of the more subtle influences upon political events in the UK will be how Trump and his team goes about his intended agenda in the United States, and how effective and successful it turns out. Javier Milei in Argentina has shown the way, by cutting out huge swathes of unnecessary public sector workers, and he has brought Argentina’s parlous public finances under control and after a short period of pain, reduced inflation and increased public prosperity. He has succeeded in doing this within a year of taking office. The problem Trump faces will be much bigger and much more complex He will have serious opposition from the Democrat blob who will do everything it can to obstruct progress. But it looks as if Trump’s agenda is very similar in principle to Milei’s.
Meanwhile, back in the UK, eyes will be watching closely. From the right, the Conservatives will be looking on (probably enviously) and Reform will be watching eagerly for object lessons in how to get things done quickly. Meanwhile Labour will be watching with horror and condemnation as the US public sector is hit with savage cuts. If this happened in the UK, Labour’s client unions’ power would ebb away. In the US, the entire ‘woke’ industry will be prime targets for the Trump/Musk agenda. There are promising signs this is also the case with Reform. Net Zero, the UN, the WHO and the IPCC are all targets for Trump. Ultimately, the fate of these international institutions, and whether or not they are diminished by Trumpism, will affect the way the UK does business with them too. Farage’s links with the US and Trump will be subtle but important.
Naturally, there are those (on both Left and Right) who predict that Trump will be a disaster. They may be correct, but looking at the people Trump has on his team, I suspect there will be absolute determination to succeed – something Americans are very good at. Indeed, the quality of the Trump team is better than anything else in public life in the US – and far, far better than anyone in the UK from any party.
There are other indicators that Reform are on the rise, whilst the other parties are either stagnant or declining. The Leftist commentariat are complaining bitterly that Farage is appearing on telly far too often, and the BBC in particular. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Especially as the Left consider the BBC to be their own property. But the fact is that Farage is an exceptionally good speaker – he shoots from the hip and is very good television. Compared to some of the more pedestrian politicians, he is streets ahead. It is this quality which has helped to bring Reform into the mainstream of political discourse.
The Reform use of TikTok to hit the younger generations seems have caused Labour to retreat from their earlier demand to lower the voting age to sixteen. Suddenly they have realised that the long-standing political maxim that the youth vote is always for the Left, has been broken. The same goes for the ‘brown vote’ of recent or second-generation immigrants. Trump broke the Leftist models that Hispanic, black and brown voters were the ‘property’ of the Left. Nigel is now a TikTok hero, in much the same way as Trump became during the 2016 US election. Like Trump, he is attracting ethnic minority support. Alternative media is being used much more effectively. The MSM (and the two main parties) are still working on a 20th century paradigm, whereby the media (and therefore what news is published) is controlled by a tiny number of players, and where the government effectively controls the narrative. This was mostly still the case up until Covid, but has now broken down, principally because X is no longer controlled by narrow Leftist interests and government propaganda. The MSM is now effectively dwarfed by social media. Although much of social media is controlled by a Leftist narrative, the links between government and sources of news is broken. There’s still a long way to go, but the establishment grip on the narrative has been loosened, if not yet lost altogether.
It is worthwhile remembering that, despite their huge Parliamentary majority, Labour won the last election upon a record low turnout. They won just under 34% of the votes cast, but only 20% of the potential vote. In other words, 80% of the country did not vote Labour. Starmer has a huge majority in Parliament, but not in the country as a whole. His electoral position is surprisingly weak.
Looking again at the polling figures, and especially Figure 1 again, the fall in support for Labour is almost exactly matched by the rise in support for Reform, whilst support for the Conservatives is largely static. This would imply that it is Labour that are losing support to Reform. This is backed up anecdotally by reports that many lifelong Labour voters are switching to Reform. This electoral migration seems to be most marked in Wales, where disastrous Labour policies are now biting deep into the devolved Welsh economy. The Labour vote is now extremely volatile, whilst the Tory vote is confined to its core supporters. Reform are on the way up. In response, the Labour commentariat are turning their viciousness onto Reform.
Meanwhile, the farmers are only just beginning to flex their considerable muscle. If joined by lorry drivers and small businesses, there is the potential for some sort of national strike – not propelled by unions but by grass roots movements. Depending upon the timing of each of these (and other factors) an election against the additional backdrop of an economic recession and reduced tax revenue may bring a chance of getting Reform into government.
Naturally, there is huge potential for many other factors which confuse the electoral and economic mix, so other outcomes are just as likely. Maybe the Tories will surge back, with their characteristic ability to evolve and survive. But at the moment, their support is stagnant, whilst Labour’s is draining away and Reform’s is building nicely. Ultimately, the success of Reform is dependent upon having enough time to build an organisation which is viable in the long term. This may not be granted to them because of the confluence of events outside Westminster.
Only time will tell. But as Harold Wilson once remarked “A week is a long time in politics.”
Figure 2- Political polling from Find Out Now.
David Eyles is a retired livestock farmer from Cornwall. More of David’s writing can be found here.