Reform U.K have, at long last, released their manifesto. I am not sure why there was ever a delay, the manifesto is almost identical to Richard Tice’s “Contract with Britain” which I had read earlier and expected to be scrapped. Reading the document, I could be not get Rucka Rucka Ali’s 2012 Obama parody song out of my head. There is something unmistakably Obama hovering over the document. I don’t know why. It is not necessarily ideological. It is the taste of Obama, his texture; the loud flamboyance, the ‘clapback’ feel, the sense of a clear ethnic identity being channelled into something weird and anonymous. I’d like you to read the Reform manifesto in the light of what is happening elsewhere: President Trump is promising ‘massive deportations’, kids are singing anti-migrant songs all over Europe. This is what Britain’s new opposition party offers us.
Immigration
Immigration is the main selling point for Reform and it is what you can expect Reform shills on X to use in trying to get you to vote for a moderate, Conservatives-lite party. Therefore, we shall start by reviewing Reform’s manifesto promises on this topic.
“Freeze Non-Essential Immigration Strict limits on immigration are the only way to relieve the pressure on our housing, public services, increase wages and protect our culture, identity and values. Essential skills, mainly around healthcare, must be the only exception.”
Given it is the same policy, I think it would be helpful to see how this read in the Tice document:
““Freeze Non-Essential Immigration. Smart immigration can target the essential skills our economy needs such as doctors, nurses and successful business people, earning above the average salary.”
The concession to ‘smart immigration’ has been edited from the new document but this is nonetheless what will happen. In other words, you have, what is, objectively, the policy every Conservative government has pursued since 2010. This is David Cameron’s “best and brightest”, Theresa May’s skilled workers and Boris Johnson’s point’s-based system. Whether this is a good idea or not, is for others to say but I am tired of people pretending Reform are this romper-stomper, hardcore immigration sceptic party. They objectively aren’t. And consider that this is in their manifesto, only about 50% of which shall ever be implemented. The moment you introduce some qualifier like ‘skilled’ or ‘necessary’ to immigration numbers, you concede most controls. Businesses are always growing, and so what counts as ‘necessary’ labour will be a moving target. It is the same for public bodies like the NHS (explicitly exempt from migrant controls in the manifesto), if an NHS trust says it would be cheaper to hire foreign-trained nurses than train British ones, is that ‘necessary’? What about the caterers and cleaners? And will they get a route to citizenship?
“The National Insurance rate will be raised to 20% for foreign workers. This would incentivise businesses to employ British citizens whose National Insurance rate would stay at 13.8%. Essential foreign health and care workers would be exempt from the tax…”
This is basically just Reform admitting that Polly Toynbee is, in fact, correct and no amount of :thread:(s) can erase the fact Reform’s Boomer voters are completely dependent on mass migration to stay alive. There is a simpler way of doing this. Adopt three-tier citizenship and you can identify which groups (groups already here) are no longer productive, deport them, give the NHS all the servants it needs w/zero path to citizenship or cost to the state, allow certain strategic sectors to attract High IQ foreign labour with targeted state benefits and focus the welfare state on European people. This keeps everybody happy and is far more radical than anything Farage will ever propose. The public do not care about ‘immigration’, they care about demographics. The problem demographics in Britain have overwhelmingly been enfranchised and hold birthright citizenship. A sensible country should control its border as a matter of principle. There’s no contradiction between the two goals.
“Stop the Boats with our 4 Point Plan Leave the European Convention on Human Rights. Zero illegal immigrants to be resettled in the UK. New Department of Immigration. Pick up illegal migrants out of boats and take them back to France”
Well, fine, if they pull this off it would be wonderful; for some reason, I doubt this will actually happen.
Winning
“ Replace Civil Service leaders with successful professionals from the private sector, who are political appointees, who come and go with the government.”
This is another Mikka prediction vindicated. Team Farage have zero interest in changing the way the British government works and taking on the deep state. Yep, put bloody top Business people in government. No jobs for High IQ young people here! The real motivation for this is, obviously, that Farage has a huge chip on their shoulder vis-a-vis people who can pass qualitative examinations and want to get rid of them out of spite. What ‘put top Business people in government’ means, in this context, is that Dick and Nige will do a whip-round at some Rotary club in Saffron Walden and see which gouty Freemason fancies a crack at running the police. It is deliberately incompetent and anti-meritocratic.
What Brits who like to opine about ‘the American system’ do not understand about the U.S Federal government is that there is still a vast cadre of civil servants, selected by pseudo-meritocratic means, holding government positions similar to British civil servants in America. ‘Political appointments’ in America usually means a Secretary of State or President appointing a friendly civil servant, or adjacent academic, to a *few* positions in Washington. Torbert Fahey, a friend of the paper, has described how President Trump did this (J’accuse; From an American: We Don’t Want A Franco). It does not equate to randomly giving the Head of Walmart authority over gain of function research. We do not imagine Team Farage will get rid of *every* civil servant and privatise the state, ergo, the ‘Top Business people’ will be more like an artificial limb grafted onto the old, rotten apparatus at the Cabinet level. The ‘business people’ who have thus far gained high office in Britain do not have a good track record: the Greensill scandal being only the latest and the most prominent example. This is, in other words, a plan to surrender power to the deep state and not to take it away from them. The Farage Team are deliberately apologising for the corruption of the status quo.
Meritocracy
“Abolish Inheritance Tax (IHT) for all Estates Under £2m That means some 98% of all estates. The rate above £2m will be 20% tax, with the option to donate to charity instead.”
This is completely inexcusable. A direct attack on Meritocracy. Anyone associated with Reform who claims to be anti-system, pro-talent or pro-intelligence is lying to themselves and their audience. There is nothing more evil than Inherited wealth. I reject the argument of my colleague that it is necessary to keep money out of the hands of a hostile state. You cannot argue that Bomalians do not have an inherent right to settle in Britain while defending the indefensible, equally religious, opinion that people have magical rights to wealth they have not earned. What is the difference between the ‘right’ to inherited wealth and the ‘rights’ enshrined in legislation like the ECHR and the Equality Act? One can only oppose one, while opposing the other. Reform voters say YES! To Gerontocracy; YES! To the Monarchy! YES to Conservatism! And NO to Regime Change.
Inherited Wealth is the worst kind of tax break for growth. The worst tax break for helping young people. By definition, it only affects static assets and not employment or innovation. The classes of wealth favoured by Inheritance Tax cuts (like property) are those most germane to rent-seeking. It is unsurprising that the social-democratic consensus in Sweden, pursued by Gordon Brown and George Osborne, is to cut Inheritance Tax and Corporation Tax while maximising income tax. This helps people who are already rich but stops people working to rise on their own merits. Reform are now completely behind this policy.
The inclusion of ‘an option to donate to charity’ is particularly insidious as it incentivises the very rich to move their fortunes into political ‘foundations’, of which the unjustly famous example is George Soros’s Open Society, and set their progeny up as professional activists. Farage wants to directly funding the Blob.
“Tax relief of 20% on all Independent Education.
No VAT on Fees: If parents can afford to pay a bit more, we should incentivise them to choose independent schools”
Another revolting anti-meritocratic policy. This is what Team Farage stands for: subsidising the weak, incompetent British aristocracy at the cost of the talented and hard-working. Any remotely anti-establishment party would pay all private-school fees conditional on examination and build a fleet of grammar schools. It is interesting to note, anyone who has actually attended an ‘Independent’ school will testify their clientele is increasingly overseas. For all the performative carping about student visas, Team Farage is still demanding that the British taxpayer subsidise the education of foreigners.
Health
“Put Patients in Charge With a New NHS Voucher Scheme NHS Patients will receive a voucher for private treatment if they can’t see a GP within 3 days. For a consultant it would be 3 weeks. For an operation, 9 weeks. Services will always be free at the point of use.”
This is by far one of the most mystifying parts of the Reform manifesto, it is so odd, you have to wonder what it is actually doing there. Do you have any idea how much it will cost to pay for private healthcare every time one of the serial hypochondriacs who inhabit this island can’t get a doctor’s appointment? Will every foreign family of 10 get access to Harley Street if they are displeased at the amount of paracetamol dished out on the last trip to Bradford Central? What is stopping every private clinic signed up to this scheme from ramping up prices, knowing that it will have zero effect on state-sanctioned demand and the taxpayer foots the bill? It is nuts.
There is only one explanation I can find for such a strange, strange policy. The explanation lies in the personal lives of the manifesto authors. Certain lifestyle related drugs like Oestrogen and Accutane are often jealously guarded by sober minded NHS consultants. If, say, you are looking to gender transition, and your G.P says ‘No’, you will presumably, under Reform rule, be able to get the taxpayer to foot the bill for a private operation.
For the record, one cannot allow distrust of Farage to efface the fact it is a good thing that a major party now pushes back on the NHS. It proves the miserable Tory obsession with The Red Wall and fiscally-left, socially conservative demographic is wholly immaterial to electoral success. If Reform can win while mildly insulting the NHS that will be a good thing for the broader conversation. The Farage policy is so bizarre it is obviously never going to happen.
I’ve been told that the Private Healthcare Vouchers scheme in fact originated in Iain Duncan Smith’s 2005 manifesto. As well as showing Farage Team are, basically, Conservatives, it is noteworthy that the failure of this promise effectively put ‘public sector reform’ out of the Overton window by 2010.
Housing
“Reform Social Housing Law Prioritise local people and those who have paid into the system. Foreign nationals must go to the back of the queue. Not the front”
The blimmin’ Bomalians in Tower Hamlets are ‘local’ people. The solution is to nationalise the stock held by housing associations and auction it off. It is not like this is hard to do, or will upset the Reform base. You can still use the rhetoric of ‘homes for local people’. This is what happens when people who don’t understand the basics of an issue try to pick it up.
“Fast-track planning and tax incentives for development of brownfield sites.”
This is actually a legacy, UKIP policy. Pages have been written about how ‘brownfield sites’ are a complete nothingburger in terms of where housing is needed and wanted.
Woke.
This is one of the areas where it is interesting to compare the Tice-manifesto to the Farage one. For Tice we have the following, lana-del-rey inspired bit of wisdom:
“Enforce existing laws to stop violent, hate demonstrations such as the Free-Palestine marches.”
Which is absent from the Farage one reading:
“Propose a Comprehensive Free Speech Bill.
Legislate to stop left-wing bias and ‘woke’ ideology. No more de-banking, cancel culture, left wing hate mobs or political bias in public institutions.”
Nonetheless, the reference to ‘hate mobs’ is still there and it is reasonable to assume the anti-protest agenda is contained within this bill. This is an amusing contradiction. How will you ‘enforce existing laws to stop hate demonstrations’ when, in fact, the Free Speech Bill will get rid of laws which penalise British citizens for free expression? Will there be a “unless it is anti-Israel” clause in the future free speech bill? The reality is, Team Farage are entirely submissive to woke cancel culture; and happy to suppress the liberties of English people in the name of random foreign powers.
“Promote Child Friendly App Restricted Smartphones Social media is associated with eating disorders, anxiety, depression, suicide and the child mental health crisis. Launch an inquiry into social media harms.
Reform are completely onboard with the anti-youth censorship movement and any Reform shills who deny their direct responsibility for these things are lying to you. As with the insane Tory obsession with ‘hate demonstrations’, we see Reform sabotage otherwise good policies like “Review the Online Safety Bill”; you cannot have both. The average person thinks ‘online hate’ and ‘trolling’ are basically just as bad as, say, porn. In any debate against Starmer, he will hijack the one to ban the other. The best bet is a steadfast commitment to Free Speech but Reform are too risk-averse to do this.
“Stop Child Grooming Gangs.
Systematic child sexual abuse continues unchecked. Child Protection Services needs a dedicated National Agency working with local charities, councils and health services. Upgraded intelligence can identify high-risk children and filter malicious claims.”
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT!!! Why do we need to engage the bloody stakeholders first? The idea Reform are some sort of radical party is so funny when you read stuff like this. ZERO SEATS.
“Cleaner Energy from New Technology.
Fast-track clean nuclear energy with new small modular reactors, built in Britain.”
Yes, well done Slytherin, well done. Gift bags for all kiddies in attendance. But does anyone in Reform actually know what a ‘small modular reactor is’? Could they even describe how nuclear fission works? Do they know the difference between a Tokamak and Inertial Confinement Fusion? I doubt it, which is why, when a civil servant who does know about these things provides an eloquent explanation of why it can’t work, any Reform government would fold on the issue. This is complex, grown-up stuff which cannot be left to Lana del Rey Gogglebox mums. You have to do the homework. Let us count this, and all Reform-shill talk about nuclear energy, as basically an aesthetic commitment.
“Integrate Mental Health Services with Job Seeking Pathways. Motivate up to 2 million People Back to Work Reforms to benefit support and training will help people back into work. Particular focus on 16-34 year olds. Employment is critical to improving mental health.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHA!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! …. Regime change!!!... Revolution!!! XD… MEN’S MENTAL HEALTH!!!! HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA
The Good
There are some good things about this manifesto although none of them seem to have come from Anglotwitter.
“Bank of England Must Stop Paying Interest to Commercial Banks on QE Reserves.
Other central banks are not doing this. Senior economists and a former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England (BoE) agree. This saves £30-40 billion per year. The BoE must also stop Quantitative Tightening, which is negligently costing the taxpayer billions; stopping this will also help lower interest rates.”
This was the best Tice-era policy. I would be so happy to find out Farage genuinely believes this and would talk about it instead of pretending to be an anti-immigration politician. The aftermath of the 2008 bailouts has entirely vanished from the public discussion. This is a real opportunity to seize the mantle of social justice from the Left. It is a bold policy, a smart policy and a good policy for which Reform deserves credit.
“Brexit Bonus. Cut Unnecessary Regulations.
Government red tape and nanny state regulations are estimated to have cost the UK economy £143 billion since 2015. That means billions of pounds lost in growth and taxes.”
YIP YIPPITY KI-YAY
“Affirm British Sovereignty.
Reject the influence of the World Economic Forum. We will cancel our membership of the World Health Organisation unless there is fundamental reform to its structure and funding. Reform UK also opposes the Creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). We will legislate if necessary to stop Britain becoming a cashless society.”
Wonderful, I clink my champagne glass against the monitor.
Farage in the Future.
Unlike my colleague, I’ve never cared much for ‘taking over the Conservative party’ or the relative merits of ‘Zero Seats’. I’ve never voted in a General Election and I don’t care about the Conservative Party one way or the other. I do agree with Peter Hitchens that Labour are going to be particularly bad but I cannot agree with his conclusions as the Conservatives have failed to show any celerity in identifying and responding to the proposed constitutional changes. I’m also aware that thirsty men will drink muddy water; and the British right are so starved of relevance and victory that the chance to pretend something is going on here akin to events in Europe and America will prompt irrational behaviour. If you really feel you need to vote for Reform to sate some emotional need, stop reading, I don’t wish to stop you and you aren’t the audience.