Andrew Willshire: Reform is a Frankenstein’s monster of a party

Andrew Willshire is founder of the independent strategic analytics consultancy Diametrical Ltd.

Ever since the election, there has been a fashion among parts of the right-wing commentator class to tour news studios to demand that the Conservative party have some sort of “reckoning”, an “inquisition” into how and why it failed.

It’s usually adjacent to a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger, I-didn’t-leave-the party-the-party-left-me bleating of a slightly unattractive nature, reminiscent of the spurned-husband-who-gave-the-best-years-of-his-life, and has just joined Fathers-for-Justic… sorry, I mean Reform.

Yes, anyone who has given their life to a political party will feel a strong attachment to it. No, that does not mean that they can see the party’s future more clearly than others. It’s pure solipsism; “I’m hurt, so I demand that the party act in a way to make me feel better. I’m sorry to break it to the Monties of the world, but there is no great appetite in the country for a period of public self-flagellation on the part of the Conservative party.

The public at large moved rapidly from thinking the Tories should be removed from office to ignoring them entirely once they had been. When they are ready to hear from them again, it will be a “What are you going to do now?” conversation, not “Can we first talk about last time?”

More particularly, it is apparent that the reckoning that they want is primarily for the so-called “Lib Dems in the party” to be expelled. By this account, it was solely the fault of these 40 or so MPs that 14 years of Conservative government failed to result in the New Jerusalem of Danny Kruger’s fever dreams.

A couple of weeks ago, Henry Hill argued here that, following the leadership contest, “the imperative of unity took over and [the] inquisition never happened”. This seems to me to badly underestimate the value of unity in a party that just lost two thirds of its MPs. How can it be sensible for a party that had just been reduced to 121 MPs to proceed by expelling 40 more for being insufficiently ideologically pure?

If those MPs had indeed joined the Lib Dems, we would be treated to the none-too-joyous sight of Ed Davey facing Keir Starmer at PMQs each week. And doubtless another 20-30 MPs would then have joined Farage on the Reform benches. Unity was, and is, essential for the Conservative party to survive at all.

Henry further argued: “By not offering any answers, Badenoch made herself the candidate of everyone who didn’t have any, but knew that they didn’t like Jenrick’s.” I believe that to be an incorrect reading. “Not offering answers” weeks after an electoral shellacking was to demand instead that the party should take some time to think about policy.

The alternative was to immediately climb up on a soap-box and declare that the party has abandoned everything it believed last month, and now believes a whole new set of things instead. “These are my principles; if you don’t like them, I have others.” Why would anyone take a party like that seriously? Methodical policy development and slowly building consensus among MPs is by far the better option. Badenoch’s achievement in setting the party’s ECHR policy without any public disagreement was a vastly under-rated act of party management.

Anyway, given his recent media prominence, we now have the ability to analyse Jenrick’s answers. And it turns out he has just one.

Listening to their speeches, it is clear that the Reform converts have a long, often justifiable, litany of complaints. They can tell you a thousand things that they are against but only one thing that they are for. Every defection press conference ends with a variation of “and that’s why we have to make Nigel Farage Prime Minister.” That’s it – that’s the big answer. To back Nigel.

In his recent Spectator interview, Jenrick says of Farage that, “His political instincts and judgment are as good or better than anybody I’ve worked with in British politics.” That’s probably fair, but that’s all there is – politics, charisma and chutzpah.

Farage has held elected office for almost 27 years but has never held any responsibility for a governmental budget, not even at a council level. He has shown no interest whatsoever in policy detail and is totally untested in his ability to trade-off bad choices. His arguments shift with the wind; This is a leader who went into the 2024 election pledging to raise the Income Tax threshold to £20,000, at a cost of £80b, only to drop it after the election as “unrealistic”.

While he undoubtedly has an impressive record of creating parties and winning votes, he has never been able to hold a team of equals together. Indeed, it is obvious or that Farage has no capability to be “primus inter pares”, only “primus supra omnes”. At present, he is currently running the largest public-facing team of people he’s ever assembled, numbering seven MPs, and Zia Yusef. It remains to be seen whether there really is sufficient space in Reform for the three giant egos of Jenrick, Yusef and Farage to co-exist, despite the emetic public pledges of fealty and admiration.

The Farage personality cult aspects of the party should bother conservatives. In the Spectator, Danny Kruger actually wrote the following: “Like Emperor Henry IV before the Pope at Canossa, [Tory MPs] should stand barefoot in the snow to seek – and receive – absolution from Nigel Farage.” If you can read that without getting the urge to vomit, then you’re made of sterner stuff than me.

On top of which, Reform is a Frankenstein’s monster of a party, that has not even attempted to reconcile the beliefs and demands of the former Red Wall voters and the thrusting Thatcherite businessmen who lead it. How can a party which is overwhelmingly dependent on the votes of pensioners and welfare recipients argue that they are best positioned to restore order to the public finances?

Then there is the absurdity that Reform’s two primary policy thinkers have opposing solutions to the same problems – Zia Yusef’s digital, libertarian radicalism versus Danny Kruger’s extreme social conservatism. The internal contradictions are far starker than in Badenoch’s Conservative Party, but it appears that “the imperative of unity” has taken precedence over actual answers for now.

For anyone interested in coherent policy as opposed to inchoate rage, Farage is not the answer. But he’s the only answer Jenrick has.