In response to a question about where the problem in British politics lies, I agreed with the questioner it’s “the system” as currently configured that’s the crux of the matter.
Britain faces a series of systemic institutional structural problems, not a problem of leadership or competence. The Civil Service doesn’t serve, it has its own agendas, and the QUANGO-ocracy is where the real power lies, not with Parliament and the elected government.
Reform understands they have to smash the blob rather than try to work with it. And even if for the sake of argument nanny statist Kemi Badenoch also understand that (just as Liz Truss now does), Badenoch’s party is riddled with people who either don’t understand that, or do understand but are actually on the side of the rotten institutions. That means the Tories are a key part of the problem, not the solution.
Reform on the other hand have much less baggage in that respect. Their ‘inexperience’ is a plus because much of the rapidly forming Reform apparatus are outsiders with no attachment to the status quo, or are former Tories who got their illusions beaten out of them when they tried to be, you know, conservatives when in power, only to get crushed by the blob.
That’s why I support Reform. It’s not the quality of the people that attracts me, it’s the fact Reform-as-an-institution isn’t just a wing of the Uniparty filled with people saturated with establishment assumptions.
Quite so. Although in seventy years or so Reform will have been colonised by the (newer) Blob themselves.
I would liken Reform trying to fight “The Blob” to the Germans attacking the Kursk Salient. But instead of Reform being like Germany with the biggest collection of tanks committed to the biggest tank battle ever fought, Reform have a balloon on a piece of stick among the lot of them as their armament.
In other words, The Blob is extremely deeply entrenched, has had multiple decades of experience and training fighting the political will (where it existed) and like any cornered animal fighting for its life, the fight will be vicious and fierce.
If (and it is a very BIG IF) Reform manages to gain sufficient seats and/or partners to impose its will on Parliament, they will need to get the House of Lords to agree (unlikely and at best any legislation will be so watered down as to be useless)and then The Blob.
I wish them well but I genuinely can’t see them succeeding.
Phil B is correct that the destruction of the Blob is a hard task, which has to begin with legislation.
The HoL as currently constituted is of course a major constituent of the Blob. But it only gets to delay Bills for a year (Money Bills for a month.) So a Reform majority in Parliament can pass a Big Beautiful Repeals Bill within the first twenty minutes and then pass it again a year later. It can also pass a HoL Reform Bill twenty minutes after the HoL has rejected the first go at the Big Beautiful Repeals Bill, and then pass that again a year later. In the meantime it can pass lotsa public spending cut bills.
Resiling from treaties is a little more complicated with the precedent from Brexit that the “Supreme Court” can prevent the Crown from giving notice to withdraw from a treaty unless explicitly permitted by statute, so that’s another first 20 minute Bill.
The good thing about this is that Reform can justly claim not to be the actual government for its first year, so that it can continue to get the political benefit of being the opposition-in-fact while it gets its ducks in as row.
The main point – which is I think consistent with Mr Fairfax’s point above – is that it is entirely pointless to attempt negotiations with the Blob. The Blob needs to be legislatively disarmed first, before being actually dismantled and being replaced with something MUCH MUCH SMALLER and less autonomous.
PS I’d be thinking about some swingeing taxes on final salary pensions which these days are, to the nearest decimal point, public sector only