Entering Faragia?

Or perhaps let's not panic

Apparently last Thursday was "the first time in history" Liberal Democrats have beaten Labour and the Tories in local elections (for which information I thank them). But that of course isn't the result that has stood out for the commentariat. Nearly 700 new Reform councillors, a Reform by-election win, two Reform regional mayors, and ten Reform controlled councils have led to an orgy of doom-talk and historic turning-point predictions which should be audible on Mars.

I am chary of turning-point talk. The Second World War variously turned in December 1941 (the entry of the US into the war), November 1942 (El Alamein or the Soviet counter-attacks north and south of Stalingrad)), and June 1944 (D-Day), but today's smart money goes on the German failure to capture Moscow in late 1941. I have come to believe as much in process as in event, but it makes for a less satisfying story.

But for a moment let's turn away from what point is supposed to have turned and look at some practicalities of the Reform success. The party runs ten councils, some of them with huge majorities and its mayors preside over a swathe of eastern England. For the first time, if we take it to be a continuation of Farage-era Ukip and the Brexit Party - members of a further right party will exert real power. They will be the establishment. All to the good, said Reform's deputy leader Richard Tice (whose wife Isabel Oakeshott will now presumably return from private-school exile in Dubai to take up residence in one of Reform's new Edens), such inexperience will be "an advantage" in setting things to rights. This is a delusion which will barely survive the first social care or planning sub-committee meeting.

It has to be allowed that all parties number eccentrics among their local councillors, but it doesn't require clairvoyance to understand that what was a bug for the big parties will be a feature of the hastily assembled Reform candidates-become-councillors. The new mayor of Hull and East Riding is a former boxer married to a model and has bus-fixing priorities that wouldn't be out of place in any mainstream party. There will be others like him who may form a pragmatic (if surprised) wing of the party.

More mainstream Reform is the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire Andrea Jenkyns, who defected to the Farage outfit after her campaign to remove Rishi Sunak and bring back Boris Johnson failed to gain support. In her victory speech (turn-out was 29.8%) she promised to house asylum seekers in her area in tents rather than hotels or hard accommodation, something she has no power to do. She also loathes solar panels which she regards as disfiguring but will probably express a nostalgia for the days of colliery spoil heaps.

And then there are the headbangers, anti-vaxxers, ex-BNP supporters, conspiracy theorists, pornographers and cultists who will inevitably have slipped through the party's self-admittedly lackadaisical vetting process. The folks at Hope Not Hate will have their work cut out, but as of this morning the @reformexposed account on X revealed a new Northamptonshire councillor who has expressed - among other things - the view that the King "is a traitor to the crown ENGLAD (sic) and the church" and pledged his support for Tommy Robinson. What portfoloio will he get?

Most new councillors though will be naive. Perhaps they will take seriously the guidance from their leader about what they should do if in power. Farage suggested "a DOGE in every county" - a desire to "reduce excessive expenditure, find out who long-term contracts are with, reduce the scale of local government back to what it ought to be - providing social care, providing SEN needs for kids, mending pot holes." Farage added that "staff involved in working on climate change initiatives, or Diversity, Equality and Inclusion" should start looking for other jobs. Andrea Jenkyns immediately pledged to get rid of the DEI officers working for Lincolnshire County Council. Do I have to add that there aren't any?

If Farage had consulted the stats on what councils spend their money on he would quickly have discovered that last year English councils spent £127 billion in total. Of this £97 billion (76%) of this was spent on his protected items - plus education and policing which he didn't mention and not including road maintenance, which he did and which accounted for another £4.8 billion. Housing services and planning and development took up a further £4.5 billion. Then there's public health at just under £4 billion, fire and rescue at £2.9 billion.

Little wonder that Tony Travers, the world's go-to expert on local authority financing commented on the Farage prospectus that it would be "very, very hard to find substantial savings in this part of the public sector". Which is academic for "this is a fantasy". What he didn't say is that the cost of a single disabled teenager going on a residential skills course would probably be more than the salaries of three or four senior DEI employees.

By the way the full council expenditure breakdown is here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financing-england-2024-to-2025-budget/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financing-2024-25-budget-england

Reasons not to be cheerless

It doesn't follow, alas, that administrative incompetence and extremism will necessarily lead to the defeat of Reform. But one-time defectors easily become two or three-time defectors (ask Lee Anderson) and the far right in Britain has time and again demonstrated its fissiparous nature. The Rupert Lowe affair which I wrote about here has yet to come to court and - as I'll try to demonstrate later - the atavistic and extreme responses to "migrants" stirred up among activists by leaders in Reform and now, alas, the Conservative Party - lead to policy formulations which are not popular with the electorate and which leaderships seeking national electoral success will try to avoid. In other words the testing of Reform has not yet begun. Perhaps once this novelty has worn off our political journalists can get down to some serious questioning.

I have no idea who Farage was appealing to when he promised universal DOGE-ism in England. In March YouGov found that 80% of respondents in the UK disapproved of Donald Trump - and that was before beginning of the tariff debacle. In the last week national elections in Canada and Australia have been well-won by centre left incumbent governments, with Trump-aversion clearly a major factor in the former and an influence in the latter. Turn-out in Canada was 69% (highish for that country) and in Australia voting is obligatory.

On Thursday in the English local elections turn-out was low (the Hull vote represented a 28% turn-out), and the Reform share was 31% which is a flimsy basis on which to talk about a Farage premiership in 2029. An argument can be made that the results may more closely resemble those European elections in which, over the years, the Greens, Ukip and the Brexit Party topped the polls.

All the same, as some of us have long warned, for certain values first past the post stops being an over-stable electoral system that stymies renewal but guarantees moderation, and becomes a chaotic one in which divisive candidates can win even if they don’t enjoy majority support or anything like it. For more on this I recommend Peter Kellner's articles and Substack and also Hannah Bunting's Substack which you can find here:

https://theconversation.com/uk-local-elections-delivered-record-breaking-fragmentation-of-the-vote-255841

Note this from Bunting when analysing the council results, that "the average winning majority was just 11.6% at the 2025 local election. It breaks another record, being the lowest since 1914, with 2005 and 2013 being the closest comparable years".

The temptation to panic

The Tories were wiped out on Thursday. I seem to be only person in Britain who feels sorry for Kemi Badenoch, abandoned by those culture war Conservatives who promoted her, undermined by her defeated rival Robert Jenrick (see also my post on him from two years ago) and inheriting a party which could give Ebola a run for its money in the popularity stakes.

Any Tory right-winger with career aspirations or a desire to surf the zeitscheiz may well think that now is the time to join Reform. Others may take the view that the two right-wing parties should merge and - united - sweep to victory in the next general election. Should that happen one consequence would be the permanent estrangement of the remnant of traditional conservatism that is not prepared to be Rubioed into betraying its values. My former colleague and current friend Lord Finkelstein would be one such. A Jenrick leadership might also provoke the same reaction.

Blame the darkies

Increasingly the Right from Badenoch over to “deport them by the millions” Reform dissident Rupert Lowe via Nigel Farage have just the one issue: migration. Or rather, what people associate with migration since the animating emotion is held aloft by two main cables: anti-Muslim sentiment and the continuing photogenic arrival of boats across the Channel. This is to the Right what Gaza is to the Left; their fixation and their only real interest.

This was what underlay the Question Time debacle when Tim Montgomerie raised the issue - yet again - of the grooming gangs in a discussion about Farage's DOGE promise. The cabinet member Lucy Powell responded with, "Oh, we want to blow that little trumpet now do we? Let's get that dog whistle out shall we?" Which was pretty much exactly what Montgomerie had done. Immediately she was accused of belittling the victims of the gangs - which of course she hadn't. So she apologised. Which had she been slightly more fleet of tongue she wouldn't have had to do.

Again this is a question I've covered in a previous post, but the demand by certain politicians and commentators for an additional national inquiry into the gangs to duplicate the work already done by the National Enquiry into child abuse (chaired by Alexis Jay, who also chaired the inquiry into the Rotherham gangs ELEVEN years ago) is purely opportunistic. If the grooming gangs had been mostly white they’d have been largely silent about them, as they have been about the history of abuse among Christian clergy and youth organisations. You may also ask why the party of Badenoch and Jenrick did not hold the inquiry they now regard as being so urgent. Why bother, though? We already know the answer.

But what else does the Right offer now? Other than a side hustle on net zero and the ability to cavil at the various unpopular decisions made by government, the cupboard is empty. If they'd spend more or tax less then - once they've saved practically nothing on DEI officers, where's the money coming from?

That's why almost every discussion about any issue involving commentators on the Right these days will circle back to migration in some form or another. So, for example, last week the Tory peer and Brexit leader Daniel Hannan took to X to blame Sadiq Khan for the necessity of having anti-terrorism bollards disfiguring public places, linking it to Khan's support for liberal immigration policies. This unpleasant leap of logic - legal migrants equal potential terrorists - was not one Hannan would have made even a couple of years ago, but having helped land us with a Brexit that even he now regards as hopeless, what else can he do?

Labour's Corporal Joneses

Starmer took office last July with quite possibly the worst economic inheritance of any post-war government and within months was faced with the coming consequences of the Trump re-election. I can point to a number of things that I would have liked Labour to do differently, most of them involving reneging on arguably unnecessary promises made before the election, but even if it had taken my sage advice the government would still be in a really difficult situation.

Now with dire polls, the loss of a seat to Reform and a terrible performance in the local elections the pressure on the government to panic feels almost overwhelming. And there are roughly three directions to panic in.

Panic one: Steal Reform’s clothes.

In its first edition following its testudinal reincarnation the Observer carried a long interview with Maurice Glasman, the "Blue Labour" peer, who talked inter alia about his friendship with the American quasi-fascist Steve Bannon. Glasman was till very recently simply seen as a throwback to 2010 and the brief post-Crash heyday of vacuous but trendy "thinkers" such as “Red Tory” Philip Blond and Steve Hilton. Now he is resurrected as supposedly the inspiration for an economic and anti-migration nationalist ideology partly shared by Starmer's chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney.

The Blue Labour idea as articulated by several MPs and supporters is to deny interdependence and to decry the value of cosmopolitanism, and to settle back on a nostalgic view of homogenous communities, resurrected manufacturing, bigger families and (whisper it) fewer foreigners.

In reality only one of these is subject to easy rhetorical solution: so the demand is for Labour to adopt the language of the Right and look and sound ever tougher on immigration.

Panic two: forget the long term and do nothing unpopular

When many people on the Right talk about abandoning net zero what they tend to mean is abandoning British attempts to stop contributing to manmade global warming. As we know many on the Right don't really believe it's happening anyway and even if it is Armageddon won't be along for years and by then they’ll be dead. So why add costs in the here and now?

Then there's the cut to the winter fuel payments, the land inheritance tax, the cuts to some benefits, the striking refuse workers, the action-threatening train drivers, junior doctors and teachers. Give them all the money and... And what?

Panic three: return to Corbyn

Actually in practice that would consist of the previous paragraph plus cutting defence expenditure, taking a tough line with Israel and a soft line with Russia,

Dead ends

These are all dead ends in their own way. Immigration is not and never will be an issue on which Labour can compete. Not even Yvette Cooper actually believes there is any benefit to the country from a policy whose sole objective is the reduction of immigration. Not in the short term and certainly not in the long term.

As to the visuals, reducing the boat crossings will largely be achieved by making asylum claims easier. Stopping the very unpopular use of hotels to house asylum seekers will best be achieved by processing claims faster. This will take a little time and patience…

It is always fair for a country to ask what kind of migration benefits it most and to encourage that, but it is counter-productive to the economy and - yes - to the vigour of the nation to seek a large numerical reduction in people coming here There is nothing to be gained by it and much to be lost. Far better to adopt an approach aimed at making immigration work better both for migrants and existing communities. If Glasman really cared about communities that's what he would concentrate on.

I understand the crude temptation but demonstrative deportations will only fuel demands for more deportations. Tough talk will always be out-toughed by those who are unafraid of whistling up the dogs. The more you concede the more you fuel the idea that this is our biggest problem. And, incidentally, the more you alienate that large section of opinion which is liberal on issues such as migration and intensely dislikes the deportation talk. Already the Reform supporting section of the electorate is superserved in terms of political attention and commentary. As Peter Kellner's analysis suggests, the threat to Labour comes not so much from the Right, but from the Left and centre.

This is not a heroic age, but one that requires grim practicality. The chronic short-termism and shallow populism which characterised Rishi Sunak's premiership, following on from the false promises of the new Brexit dawn, have helped along an almost total dealignment from automatic political affiliations. Now it's all about argument and delivery. Or it's about resentment and prejudice.

If Labour wants a vision it has to be a realistic one based on the country's strengths and its needs and not on the imagined intractability of 30% of its voters. We are a nation of technological adaptors, of great scientific innovation and institutions, of trusted diplomats, of dynamic cultural industries. The scientists spurned and defunded by Trump should be offered a place here.

If we want better visuals then let the government launch a push to improve the public sphere from roads to parks to high streets to better policing the everyday low-level crime that feels like a scourge to bike-owners, mobile phone users, shop owners and assistants. Give the job to the government's most charismatic member; this is really not impossible. Suggestions as to who that may be would be welcomed below.

A shot in the dark

And finally change the electoral system. Dealignment means we have passed the point where FPTP acts as a dampener on the rise of extreme parties. Now it could act as a massive amplifier. The UK is a liberal-minded nation with a natural centre-left/centre right orientation. Even with a system like AV (defeated in a low turn-out referendum 14 years ago) there would be little or no chance of a government elected that would include the politics of Reform.

Also, it's just fairer.