The problem that could blow Reform apart
And one specific suggestion for how it can be overcome
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The populist revolt against Britain’s establishment remains as strong as ever.
Last week, across all polls, Nigel Farage and Reform averaged 29 per cent of the national vote —well ahead of Labour, on 23 per cent, and the Tories on 18 per cent.
Reform, then, remains firmly on course to emerge as the largest party at the next general election, if not one with a parliamentary majority in its own right.
In fact, such is the speed and scale of Reform’s growth that it’s now attracting more than half of all people who voted for Brexit, in 2016, nearly one-third of all men in Britain, nearly one-third of what remains of the Tory electorate, and has emerged, by far, as the most popular party among the Alarm Clock Class —working-class Brits who to set their alarms at night because they have get up and go to work.
But there is also a very big risk in all this, too, a potentially huge problem coming down the track that threatens to blow this revolt completely off course. And it’s one I want to address directly today.
What turns a populist revolt into a serious movement that is reshaping country? In political science, in the study of politics, it’s often said it’s the parties that manage to successfully transition between two very different stages of growth.
In the first ‘breakthrough stage’, populist revolts soar in the polls, win elections, attract lots of new members, activists, and money, and become a household name, all while openly rejecting the dominant regime they seek to upend and replace.
Reform is currently enjoying this breakthrough stage.
But in the second ‘consolidation stage’ things get a lot harder. At this stage, the populist revolt has to achieve a number of other things.
It has to build a coherent ideology or set of guiding principles. It has to attract people who are not only experienced but ideologically unified and who want the same thing.
And it has to establish a ‘dominant faction’ at the very top of the party that is wholly focused on achieving the same goal and can protect the revolt and its leader.
It is during the transition to this second stage that countless populist revolts around the world have completely failed and been blown apart. And what has often brought this about, exactly? Well, it’s pretty simple.
They are infiltrated.
They are taken over and captured by politicians from outside the revolt who neither share its aims or ideology, who do not want to work towards achieving the same goal, and who have no serious interest at all in upending and overturning the status-quo.
In short, they end up being diluted not by genuine, radical outsiders who are fully committed to saving and reshaping the country but, instead, establishment insiders who are fully invested in maintaining the broken status-quo they helped create.
These are people, in short, who are much more interested in advancing their own interests than making sacrifices to save the nation (this is why you never really see them during the first stage when the costs of political activism are much higher).
Getting back to Reform, the problem for the party, I’d suggest, is that you can already see the beginnings of this same problem that has easily destroyed many other revolts.
Let me be absolutely clear about one thing.
If Reform is to succeed, if Reform is to genuinely change the direction of this country, then everybody involved must be fully committed to rejecting the Big Immigration, Big State, Big Welfare, Big Tax, Big Net Zero, and Big-on-Woke regime that has dominated Britain for the last thirty years and has very nearly destroyed the country.
The only way Reform will ever take power, will ever take on The Blob, will ever push the country in a very different direction, is if it remains firmly focused on rejecting the established consensus, not being captured by the architects of this consensus.
Which raises the obvious question. If Reform is going to do this then why on earth is the party welcoming the likes of former Chairman of the Tory party, Jake Berry?
This is a politician who openly opposed Brexit.
Who has long been a passionate supporter of Net Zero.
Who even publicly made the case for Net Zero in Scunthorpe, where this idiotic policy almost cost thousands of blue-collar jobs.
Who talks much about the need to ‘level-up’ the north yet sat in a government that did very little about it.
And who sat in Boris Johnson’s cabinet yet, as far as I can see, said nothing at all about Boris Johnson’s decision to lie to the country by unleashing an even more extreme model of mass uncontrolled immigration on the country.
Why, in other words, is Reform welcoming a former Tory who had a front-row seat to the striking failures of the dominant regime in this country and yet concluded, as recently as July 2024, during a contest for the leadership of the Tory party, that the answer to Britain’s problems is … ultra-liberal Tom Tugendhat?
I mean, how do you go from believing that the next prime minister of this country should be Tom Tugendhat to thinking, only one year later, that the next prime minister should be Nigel Farage?
Seriously? Does this look like a revolutionary, a man of character to you?
How do you do this unless you are precisely what Reform should be avoiding at all costs —careerist politicians who are more interested in preserving themselves than completely upending and overturning the status-quo they helped create?
Even more worryingly, at the very same time as Reform was welcoming Jake Berry, the weekend’s papers suggested some Reform insiders are briefing against the idea of former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, from also defecting to Reform, telling the Daily Mail Reform “should not take her”, on account of her being “disruptive”.
I do not know if these statements and leaks are accurate. And it is also true that Suella Braverman herself, as far as I’m aware, has not yet decided to defect.
But what I would say, as I said on X, is that I do not see how anybody in Reform could ever hold the view they should be taking somebody like Jake Berry, who has consistently backed Net Zero and endorsed the failing regime, but not take somebody like Suella Braverman, who has consistently called to defend our country’s borders, end mass immigration, and oppose woke ideology —even quitting her job in government so she could remain committed to her principles.
Disruptive to the regime? Disruptive to the status-quo? Give me disruptors any day.
Hopefully, for those who implicitly support this populist revolt, these beginnings of what could be a much bigger problem will promptly be dealt with and neutralised.
Which raises another crucial question. How could Reform stop these seeds from blossoming into something far more dangerous that risks blowing this revolt apart?
Well, I have one idea that will immediately address and solve this problem.
There is something very specific Nigel Farage and Reform UK could do right now to ensure this growing revolt against the establishment moves from the breakthrough to the consolidation stage and is not hijacked by self-interested careerists.
They could do this …
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