With this in mind, we may understand Reform better through considering the political thought of the party’s court historian, Sir David Starkey, than we do by mocking Dame Andrea Jenkyns’ sequinned conference sing-along. As summarised by Nicholas Harris in the New Statesman: David Starkey at conference “lectured on the Blairite coup of 1997, which he compared to a ‘slow burn French Revolution’… condemning ‘the catastrophe of human rights’, the Supreme Court and the ECHR… while musing on historical analogies for the coming Reform takeover: the 1832 Reform Act, the Glorious Revolution, the Stuart Restoration”. This is not conservatism as we have come to understand it, but counter-revolution: a swift and total toppling, through packing the Lords with sympathetic new peers, and a bonfire of Blairite legislation, of New Labour’s unloved and malignant constitutional order, the “theoretick dogmas” of our own revolutionary lawyers.
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Samizdata quote of the day – Prepare for the counter-revolutionSeptember 17th, 2025 |
 6 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – Prepare for the counter-revolutionLeave a Reply |
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tldr: Once conservatism has lost, it can no longer be conservative. It becomes revolutionary.
(Reading that article was like listening to William Buckley after he had too much caffeine.)
Ace. Bring it on.
As yet we just do not know – if we do not know if the Reform Party will get a majority in the House of Commons, and we do not know if they will do anything if they do get a majority in the House of Commons.
In North Northamptonshire all the Reform Party have managed to do is take down the Ukrainian flag (NOT because they have something special against Ukraine – but because they believe only the British flag should be flown) – but the House of Commons, at least in theory, could take power back from the officials and “experts” (the various “independent bodies”) – so we shall have to see.
Cynical people said that President Trump would not be able to stop the flood of illegal migrants – but he has stopped the flood of illegal migrants, so perhaps (perhaps) Mr Farage, as Prime Minister, would also be able to stop the flood if illegal migrants.
The difficulty is that demography has moved on – so stopping the flow of illegal migrants is no longer enough, not in the face of natural increase (births).
But it is a start.
The most successful, indeed perhaps the only, example of “counter revolution” in Britain is 1660-1661 – when the great mass of “laws” of the Commonwealth period (a disguised military dictatorship) were swept away.
There was also the Churchill government of 1951 to 1955 which removed some (some) statism – and the Margaret Thatcher’s government in the period 1983 (NOT 1979) to 1990, which also removed some (some) statism.
But the Restoration of 1660 was the truly big “reactionary” event.
Other than that there is just the partial roll back of war time spending after the First World War, and the far more successful roll back of government spending and taxation after the Napoleonic Wars – under Prime Minister Lord Liverpool.
Lord Liverpool was the most successful Conservative (“Tory”) Prime Minister of the 19th century – and the contempt that Disraeli had for Lord Liverpool is very instructive – instructive about what sort of (dreadful) Prime Minister Disraeli was.
Lord Liverpool, although partly because he was pushed by various other people, got rid of Income Tax, greatly reduced government spending, and restored Gold Money.
President Grant did these things in the United States – in his period of office from 1869 to 1877.
Reform is the only game in town. There is no other option. Certainly not the rotting, shambling corpse of the ‘Conservative’ Party, still reeking of deceit even more than rot.