J’accuse wrote last week about how Farage must avoid inculcating an economic meltdown in his first five years of power, in the style of Liz Truss – by avoiding policy commitments such as raising the income tax threshold, and inserting an ‘Iron Chancellor’ from the House of Lords into the Treasury to reassure international bond traders that UK PLC will keep on paying the bills.
A friend and contributor to the publication noted on X that Donald Trump has employed this strategy through the appointment of Scott Bessent, who was a successful hedge fund manager and professor of Economic History at Yale before being made Secretary of the Treasury. Although Bessent is supportive of tariffs on China he was reportedly instrumental in convincing Trump to pause their implementation in April of this year when the international markets were teetering on the edge of a full meltdown.
There will inevitably be post-liberal extremists like Navarro and Miran in and around Farage who believe that Reform is a vehicle for bringing back heavy industry to the North-East and it’s important to have a strong voice of reason to prevent a Great Leap Forward into chaos.
Chancellor of the Exchequer is a more front-facing role than Secretary of the Treasury so it would make sense to pick somebody on the right who has a broadcasting background; the crucial thing is that they have to be a loyal and patriotic individual who is willing to be demonised by elements of the right which engage in loopy denialism about national debt.
There will be three missions for this individual in the first term to secure a second Reform victory in 2034. The first is stability and this includes all of the usual jobs of a Chancellor; reducing the deficit, keeping inflation low and avoiding a technical recession, the last of which will derail the Reform project if it occurs.
The second mission that this Chancellor will have is more urgent; managing the economic consequences of mass deportations and the Net-Zero immigration target. Reversing mass immigration is absolutely imperative for the long-term economic health of the country, but it will be very disruptive to the labour market and consumer demand (as there will be less people).
The third mission for this Chancellor, which this article will discuss, is to find non-fiscal tools for reducing the cost of living. Reform is much more likely to win a second election if people can feel their quality of life improving. Mass deportations and locking up violent criminals will go some way to achieving this but there is also a raft of other policies which Reform can bring forward to keep more pounds in people’s pockets.
Many of these changes such as planning reform and deregulation are well-worn topics which centre-right journalists and think tanks have discussed ad nauseam for the past fifteen years. Farage is an instinctive libertarian, which is to his credit, but he also has some romantic attachment to the Green Belt brought to life by his profile in UnHerd by Tom McTague:
In one sense, at least, Farage’s home is threatened by London. For those who prioritise house-building over conservation, the area around Downe is among the most obvious development opportunities in Britain. Here is a land of fields comfortably within the M25, close to Bromley, Orpington, Croydon and Sevenoaks…For Farage, such talk is appalling: the inevitable consequence of immigration, as he sees it. “It’s why the immigration issue will be the dominant issue for the next 10 years in British politics.” But what would he do if this happened? “I’ll just move,” he says. “Between Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells — whatever it takes.”``
Reform is not going to be a YIMBY party so it is probably wise for people like Lawrence Newport to stay in what remains of the Tory party after 2029. One of the few policies Reform has announced, widely decried by the James Simons brigade, was taxing solar energy out of existence. If you are a Liberal on these matters, as am I, do not lose all hope. After five years of mass deportations and a reversal of demographic change there will be more public consent for the liberalisation of planning laws, many of which are enforced by councillors to ‘stop the character of the area from changing’. As expanded upon in this article, this is a necessary precondition to building the bloody houses; so do not expect much in this area during the first Parliamentary term.