It’s as impressive as contemplating your reflection! It’s narcissistic.
Reform aren’t a new party. They are just the current vehicle for Farage that started with UKIP. Which started within the anti-EU wing of the Tory right.
What will happen today is both predictable and predicted. It’s not the least surprising, interesting or impressive. This is just an inevitable stage in the British flirtation with populism.
The next stages are less predictable. For sure Reform will now have to face more reality as they struggle to manage local authorities with limited resources and, in many cases, having to rely on others to do so. This has already been seen in some places. Now there will be many more with the unavoidably negative results. Living solely on promises has gone. Now they will have to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
What’s less predictable is the impact of the collapse of populism elsewhere as its limitations and corruption gets put under the spotlight. Trump’s slide towards the exit being the biggest red flag to our voters. Voters who seem increasingly fickle.
What happens in the next few years is what is interesting. What happens in the next days isn’t. It’s already known.
I continue to believe that the next series of GEs will result in coalitions. Reform will try to be involved, and could be with the Tories, but efforts will also be made isolate them, although to hasten their demise it may be considered better to let them suffer the embarrassment of actually having some responsibility.
Now that would be impressive.
England
