Did you read the big news about Reform? No, not its scooping-up of Tory MPs Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell; but rather Nigel Farage’s announcement of a new regime for future defections. Reform may once have jauntily set up what must be a first for any political party, an online defection application form: but the whole exercise is now to be strictly time-limited. As from 7 May, the date of such local elections as the government have not seen fit to cancel, Reform will entertain no further applications from any existing politician. Even for those who do apply in time, there are going to be no shoo-ins. I have already turned away several people, says Farage; and will undoubtedly turn away more.
After 7 May, Reform will entertain no further applications from any existing politician
If you thought Reform was an amateur outfit that made its policy on the hoof if at all, think again. This slightly counter-intuitive measure is actually an inspired political move, one suspects carefully thought-out, showing not only sensitivity to public opinion but some little subtlety.
Let’s begin with the optics. For all its polling figures, Reform has had an image problem for some time. Its members’ reputation has to some extent paralleled that of the Hong Kongers referred to in the 1980s as the Filth, meaning second-raters in the legal and financial industries who had Failed In London, (and) Tried Hong Kong. As long as it held out a more-or-less open invitation to all comers to defect to it, Reform had made itself dangerously vulnerable to accusations of being an enabler of a kind of political Filth: a snapper-up of subpar performers who, having failed to make the grade in the more exacting parties, now thought they could have things easier by joining the new kid on the block. The characterisation of Reform by Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems as the reconstitution of the clapped-out Tories who had got us into this mess might have ben exaggerated, but it rang horribly true – and Farage knew it.
By contrast the new rule, telling losers on 7 May not to bother, and anyone else wanting to come aboard immediately to break with the Toryism of the last few years and admit that the country is broken because of it, will make such criticisms much harder in future. Properly articulated, it will send a powerful message, and a more difficult one to subvert: Reform means business, takes only the best, and will have nothing to do with acting as a rescue charity for Tories’ cast-off incompetents.
But it’s not just optics. The new regime will also be good for the party’s actual professionalism and the quality of its candidate base, where if it is to do well it clearly needs to up its game.
Why? The first reason is that (as Reform’s leadership, being nobody’s fools, have obviously spotted), its previous open-ended policy on political defection was unsustainable. The problem was the same as that with open borders in immigration: moral hazard. Open the borders, and for every sober doctor or engineer that you do want you get any number of chancers and undesirables that you don’t. Open Reform to any politician prepared to sign on the dotted line, and you might get one or two principled political refugees, but you’ll also get an inundation of grifters and drifters. This rot needed to be stopped.
The second is that Reform needs publicly and finally to cut itself loose from the Tories. There may not be that much difference between Tory and Reform policies on some issues; but demanding that anyone thinking of making the switch make up their mind quickly, unequivocally and most importantly now, rather than relying on some open-ended revolving door arrangement, can only benefit Reform.
However, it’s not only Reform that benefits. So does the British right generally. Farage and Kemi Badenoch will deny it indignantly, but the smart money is still on some workable Tory–Reform understanding before the election. Jacob Rees-Mogg has already suggested that, properly constituted, such a coalition of the right – whatever is left of the Conservatives, Reform and a few outliers – would be hard to beat. It would certainly also help scotch the ability of a Labour rump to secure enough MPs to set up some truly diabolical grouping with the Greens, the Lib Dems, the SNP and a few mavericks on the back of a Tory-Reform squabble and a neat split in the right-leaning vote.
Yet to do this, and avoid strife in every constituency, we need to move towards some understanding of which winnable right-leaning seats will vote Tory, and which Reform. Farage’s deadline may well give us just this. If it does, we could after 7 May get what the right so needs: a workable agreement between Reform and the Conservatives about which seats each is prepared to contest seriously at the next election. That is something worth fighting for.
Comments