'Nigel Farage is well on his way to being the public's voice of the opposition - but only if he reforms Reform UK ' - Henry Bolton
'There’s no denying the fact that the country feels badly let down and betrayed,' says Henry Bolton
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This was an election full of interesting things. First and foremost was the obvious and well-deserved expression of anger at the Conservative Party. There’s no denying the fact that the country feels badly let down and betrayed.
Then there’s the fact that Labour won with a lesser share of the vote than they obtained when they were defeated under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership in 2017 and 2019. There is no growth in Labour’s fan base. The Conservatives lost this election and rightly so. Labour did not win it.
Another remarkable fact: the Conservative Party and Reform UK together obtained four per cent more votes than Labour - 23.6 per cent and 14.3 per cent respectively, compared to Labour’s 33.9 per cent.
Furthermore, Reform UK, with 14.3 per cent of the vote, gained four seats, while the Liberal Democrats with only 12.1 per cent of the vote have 71 seats.
Incredibly unfair you may say, and certainly it provides a powerful argument for proportional representation (PR). But, while PR has its merits, in this case, I’d urge caution. Things aren’t perhaps quite as they seem.
The Liberal Democrats have a highly tuned campaigning organisation with networked activists backed by training and years of historical data.
That enables them to efficiently analyse and target multiple seats quite precisely, focusing their vote share on constituencies they stand a chance of winning. Reform has none of that. Reform’s ability to target seats is presently limited to the capacity of its central team to manage the process pretty much on its own. Therefore, despite their impressive performance, Reform is limited.
The party’s leadership seems not to have fully realised that Westminster elections are held on a different basis to European elections and that failure to translate national vote share into seats was largely their fault, through failures in organisation, delegation and capacity.
If Reform is to grow in Westminster, one of the things that must happen first is that the party must decentralise, democratise, professionalise, organise, and train its activists. That’ll require significant effort, patience, and time.
However, two other significant processes are now beginning.
Firstly, Keir Starmer has taken the helm of a government that will at best allow, and at worst encourage, identity politics, the woke agenda and political sectarianism, whilst integrating us as much as they can with the European Union, including in the areas of Foreign Affairs and Defence.
Adding insult to injury, he’ll almost certainly ask to join the EU’s Asylum & Migration Pact and agree to let asylum seekers into the UK without the need to get into a dinghy.
However, despite their impressive majority and a rather terrifying agenda, Starmer and his ‘Ministry of the Talentless’ will have difficulty diving straight into ‘Blair Project 2’ as an array of testing challenges are heading straight for them, demanding immediate attention – a hefty debt burden, the war in Ukraine, the fact their manifesto tax and spend balance book doesn’t balance, amongst others.
This may give the Conservatives a little breathing space to do the second thing that must be done now the election is over and Sunak has resigned: choose a new leader, regroup, reorganise, redefine themselves and conduct the mother of all resurgences.
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Can they do it? That all depends on who the new leader is, and on the competence of the team they appoint.
In all events, the battle for the future direction and character of the Conservative Party is on. The appallingly misnamed and wet One Nation MPs have been decimated, removing a significant drag on the party.
Furthermore, Suella Braverman, Priti Patel and Robert Jenrick have all kept their seats – might one of them emerge as the one Conservative Party Leader with the other two watching their flanks and the trio giving their party back some of its mojo?
Or will the Conservative Party simply wimp out again, select a liberal or compromise candidate such as Kemi Badenoch or Jeremy Hunt, continue to present its values in a vague and indecisive manner, and deepen the abandonment of traditionally social and cultural conservatives?
If they do that, prevaricate, or fail to rapidly and decisively reassert and project sincere and convincing social and cultural conservative values, mark my words, Nigel Farage will.
If he also reforms his party as I’ve suggested he should, he will then likely go on to dominate the narrative of the centre-right and become, in the public eye at least, the voice of the opposition. Then he’s well on his way to becoming His Majesty’s Opposition, or more, at the next General Election.
That said, despite his flamboyance and ability to rouse a following, Nigel Farage commands only five MPs to the Conservative’s 121. On the centre-right, it’s still all to play for.