The Road to Reform is a Rocky One

Reform UK has been bolstered over the past few years by a media sullied by millionaires selling easy answers to the less politically focused populace. This malaise has been growing in the background for many years, however, with reports of Elon Musk considering funding Reform UK, it could be a saga reaching its climax. My gripe is not just with Reform over this campaign, but also with the left-wing parties of Your Party (Jeremy Corbyn’s new home), and The Green Party. Through whichever lens we appraise the state of our country, we must bear in mind that politics is hyper complex, and that simple populism seeks simple answers to complicated questions. 

We saw this with austerity from the Conservatives – cutting money to save money seems eminently logical, but it didn’t work on a macro scale or a micro scale, as people didn’t feel money in their pockets. As a policy, it failed to see the detail of what it was cutting because it went too far and too fast. We saw similar problems with Brexit – what did the EU pay for that national government did not? Such questions are not answered by simple politics. 

Labour, conversely, came in softly softly and has also failed, albeit differently. So what causes these problems? In my view, it’s people wanting to see action, but not knowing what action they want to see. It’s why Labour’s one-line slogan of ‘change’ was enough to cater to many formerly hostile voters. 

In many ways, it’s the rally culture that all parties need to step away from, something which extends to the more bombastic carnival or festival culture. Although these may look wildly entertaining to the uninformed observer, they seek to entrench views and not to attract new ones. The members, the chosen few, ensconced in their echo chamber, are dangerously ignorant of what other sides are saying. Having said this, an over-examination of other sides is also perilous – constantly second-guessing your opponents and, in some ways, kowtowing to them; one of the reasons Labour has failed to sustain their lukewarm popularity is because they have been trying to court voters they never had in the first place. They haven’t acted fast enough, and haven’t been their own cheerleaders in a media stacked against them. In the left corner, The Guardian and The Mirror, in the right corner, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, and The Sun (even if they uncharacteristically backed Labour in 2024). I have bemoaned Labour’s communications strategy in the past, as they just haven’t been good enough. We know Labour faces a harsh media landscape. The most fleeting of statistical analysis also confirms that Britain at its core is a small-c conservative country, with the Tories having won 23 general elections to Labour’s 12 in their common electoral histories. 

Now that arguably both sides have failed (although it could still be too early to tell in the case of Labour), the extremities have started to develop a voice, reflexively adopting simple answers to complex problems. The Greens want to tax the richest 1%, precipitating myriad positive environmental offshoots: air traffic, for example, might trend downwards, given that a private jet takes off in the UK every 6 minutes. Another issue they are capitalising on is water quality, of increasing salience thanks to coverage within the more leftward media and fringe groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, and the formidable Surfers Against Sewage. 

While the relatively subdued rise of The Green Party is grassroots-led, what we see with Reform is more calculated. Reform have taken over traditional media, even through accidental advertisements on BBC News, and through less traditional means have poisoned much of social media.

Many passive observers of politics like me will have noticed that reels, recently, are now monopolised by two types of videos. On the bright side, sweet instrumental videos, with either handpans or performances with toy instruments being particularly prevalent, and on the dark side, clearly AI-generated videos demonising Muslims and minorities, or British people talking about how Britain is broken. These videos come from oddly labelled accounts designed to appeal broadly, an account named Paws & Whiskers is hardly going to ring any alarm bells. This is one of the ways Reform is growing its support, its disregard for proper parliamentary politics allowing it to focus on winning hearts and minds.

Labour must, resultantly, bite the bullet and diversify their media teams. We do not need more Morgan McSweeney-esque characters crowding the corridors of power. Instead, we need community-led governance via people’s assemblies, a government-by-select-committee approach to return power back to the people. A change in our voting system would also be invaluable. Unfortunately, one lesson of Brexit that has yet to be heeded by traditional Westminster forces is the desire for full-throttle constitutional reform.

Image (first image): Eliot Lord

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