I’ve said before that the belief authoritarian politics is popular rests heavily on issue-based polling, filtered through a professional class reacting against the provincial, small-c conservatism of their childhood. This has causality backwards, the curtain-twitcher is mocked because busybody enforcement offends British social instinct. The nosy neighbour survives as a figure of comedy precisely because such behaviour is aberrant. British manners default to mind your own business: people do not discuss their salary, do not trumpet credentials, and do not boast, because doing so is considered gauche and intrusive. Most contemporary prohibitions (speech codes, licensing creep, online safety rules, public-health) are not therefore demanded by the masses banging pots and pans for more regulation.
Reform UK has mostly avoided authoritarian posturing so far. Euroscepticism was inherently libertarian, which is why UKIP attracted voters who valued “boozy, defensive liberty.” Some worried Tory defectors might import paternalism, so it matters that Reform draws a clear line: there’s a difference between performative power-worship and simply expecting crime to be punished and public order maintained.
Reform policymakers should recognise that this is a rare political window. Unpopular authoritarian measures are increasingly being associated in the public’s mind with Keir Starmer himself, and opportunities like that do not come along often.
If there is ever a moment to argue for rolling back the frontiers of the state, whether on speed limits, smoking restrictions, firearms licensing, or freedom of speech, it is when public frustration and moral indignation are already doing half the work for you.
It seems to me that for some time Reform has been going in the opposite direction.
What makes me think that?
Er…
Maintaining the “triple lock” which keeps the state pension high.
Anything else? Surely, there’s something?
Also, speed limits. The state should not own roads. They should be privately owned. And if they are privately owned the owner has the right to impose any speed limit he likes or none. That limit might be lower than the current one (although I doubt it).
Keeps the state pension high? YMBFJ.
There’s a lot of fuss about the triple lock at the moment, because of the much-promoted narrative that the problems of Britain, especially those of the under 40s, are due to the kulaks, sorry retired people, hoarding wealth. You know, all those boomers who bought homes for five quid and are now millionaires. However, both wage growth and CPI are well above 2.5% and so is core inflation.
If that is the sort of policy you’re after, you are going to be waiting a long time for a political party which suits.
Now look at the majority of those Reform UK activists. There aren’t many youngsters in the bunch, mostly 50’s+ and a lot already in retirement which is why they have the time to do the leafleting and canvassing part of any political party.
As for the authoritarian part, Reform UK’s crime and punishment agenda seems mostly focussed upon getting the police to do their jobs instead of policing Twitter/X and getting the judiciary to do theirs (locking up criminals) instead of acting as DEI activists and bringing the judiciary into disrepute.
Hardly Nazi Germany, is it? In fact any small ‘c’ conservative from the past would describe that as the bare minimum of a functioning government along with protecting the borders and maintaining the armed forces.
I’ve not heard of anything from Reform UK which I would describe as authoritarian. Even their demand to deport 400,000 is about people who shouldn’t be here in the first bloody place.
It seems that in UK smoking will be forbiden for people who are 18 years old forward. I think as a non smoker appaling How is it possible that a majority of UK MP’s voted this ? It is really more and more 1984
That’s one of the things that suck about conversational English: The sentence “X should not do Y” can mean
There might be a moderate improvement in more formal English (“should” versus “ought”, maybe?) but I doubt it’s possible to teach a large population to maintain that distinction strictly enough to prevent confusion. Even if it is possible, schools certainly haven’t done so. And, of course, I’d be foolish to demand more rigorous communication from someone I wasn’t paying, especially in a blog comment on somebody else’s blog.
The Tories before and Reform now are socialists for retirees. The recent coverage about the triple lock has been revealing how many boomers still think their current state pensions are actually the money they ‘put in’ years ago, or at least say they think that.
whether on speed limits, smoking restrictions, firearms licensing, or freedom of speech,
I think these are four odd choices for “rolling back the frontiers of the state”. Surely the massive economic destruction of Net Zero, out of control taxes, overwhelming regulation are far more important, and also far more likely to actually be affected by Reform. (I’d also say the NHS, but there is no way in hell Britain will roll that back, though I suppose some reform is possible.) “Speed limits”, maybe probably not… what is far more likely is speed cameras. Smoking restrictions — there is no constituency at all for rolling these back. I personally oppose them but they are VERY far down my list of items to reform. Firearms licensing: are you joking? There is zero chance of Britain and Britons wanting this rolled back in any way whatsoever. As to freedom of speech… I think maybe all the petty nonsense, but I think Britons definitely like the idea of banning hate speech, they just might argue about the details.
I am in favor of rolling back all these things (not so sure about speed limits), but surely though there are much better, much lower hanging fruit for freedom, much more achievable and productive issues than this esoteric bunch?
This! A thousand times this.
I think freedom of speech has more allies within Reform than you believe.
@Perry de Havilland (Prague)
I think freedom of speech has more allies within Reform than you believe.
I hope so. I said “smoking bans I think are bad but pretty far down my list of priorities”, on the other hand freedom of speech sits right on the top of my pile of priorities. All other freedoms flow from it. FWIW, talking to some of my relatives in the UK who definitely do not share my libertarian beliefs are also, for the first time, becoming quite uncomfortable with the draconian British speech laws. So perhaps I am underestimating the support for this. I sure hope so.
A disingenuous framing. They were told, as we are still told, that National Insurance payments are made in order to secure a state pension, so funnily enough they object to people who say that it should now be means-tested because the government has spaffed the money on a bloated state and benefits for millions of working age skivers, many of whom are foreign.
Incidentally, I don’t expect to ever get a state pension, despite paying in for 30 years, but that is not due to “boomers”
I think Felix Hardinge was listing state frontiers that small government types want to roll back, rather than a specific list of Reform’s priorities.
Yeah, well, you’re imaginary, so you don’t count.
I live on a privately-owned road. It never gets weeded unless I do it, it never gets repaired, it’s filled with potholes and the paving slabs are broken up. Nominally, as a private road, passing along it is forbidden to others, but that would result in the people at the end being walled in.
To judge by the Reform Party members in this part of the country they are indeed pro liberty – but then so are the Conservative Party members (they are largely the same people – individuals switched to the Reform Party to save their council seats, rather than because of any ideological change in their opinions) and yet this had no effect on POLICY during the last government.
Alexander Boris Johnson could say (endlessly) how he hated XYZ policies – but he still rubber stamped them, even the Covid policies (the lockdown and all) which he, privately, detested.
And locally, at county level, the same expansion of government spending and taxation and money going to leftist groups, is carrying on under Reform as it did under the Conservatives.
The mistake a lot of people make (because they are indoctrinated into this belief) is that policy is made by elected persons – sadly that mostly (mostly) is not so.