‘The two bloc polarisation of Britain’s voters and Party members’, LSE British Politics Blog, 2 February 2026.

Posted on March 26, 2026 by tpbale

The idea that the entire UK is engaged in, even consumed by, some kind of “culture war” is overblown. But there is no doubt that topics like Europe, immigration net zero, and the nation’s history (particularly with regard to its colonial past) have loomed larger recently than was the case when elections were dominated by debates about the economy, tax and spend, and public services.  And Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, and his newest recruits Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman, are bound to want to keep it that way.

Nor can there be any doubt that opinion on such questions is often highly polarised, with parties traditionally seen as on the left and centre-left tending towards social liberalism, while those on the right tend toward what some label “authoritarian” or at least socially conservative world views. Partly as a result, electoral competition in Britain increasingly revolves not just around five parties but around two blocs – one comprising the Greens, Labour and the Lib Dems, the other Reform UK and the Conservatives.

This two bloc polarisation has rightly attracted plenty of attention when it comes to voters. But it is even more striking when we focus on the views and values of those who belong to the country’s political parties across both “cultural” and economic issues – something that we, the Party Members Project run out of Queen Mary University of London and Sussex University, did in the aftermath of the 2024 general election campaign.

Brexit and the EU

Predictably enough, on Europe, hardly any members of the Greens, Labour and the Lib Dems voted Leave, while eight or nine out of ten voted Remain (see Figure 1). The same proportion of Reform members voted for Brexit and, although support for Britain’s withdrawal from the EU among Conservative members was significantly lower, it nevertheless represented a healthy majority.

Figure 1 How members (and the public) voted in the 2016 Referendum

Polarization on immigration

As for immigration (see Figure 2), again there are few surprises.  Indeed, if anything what we see is confirmation that Britain’s party members are much like British voters in the sense that they seem to be resolving themselves into a right-wing bloc comprised of Reform UK and the Tories, on the one hand, and a left-wing (or at least “progressive”) bloc, on the other. Fewer than a fifth of Green members believe immigration has been too high in the last decade – and the same goes for around a third of Labour and Lib Dem members. Among people who’ve joined the Conservatives and Reform, however, negative attitudes toward immigration are near-universal and, in both cases, even more negative than those displayed by those who vote for those parties.

Figure 2: Views on immigration

Contested history

Attitudes to Britain’s supposedly glorious or else shameful past also feature heavily in the so-called culture wars, so we asked whether party members (and voters) felt proud of their country’s history (see Figure 3). Again, the responses were highly polarised, although on this occasion Labour members were rather more positive (perhaps because their party has played a fairly large part in creating twenty-first century Britain) than their Lib Dem and (especially) their Green counterparts.  Even so, the contrast with those who belong to or simply vote for the Conservatives and Reform UK, virtually all of whom express their pride in the nation’s past, is glaring.

Figure 3: Proud of this country’s history?

Net Zero

Attitudes among party members toward the government cutting carbon emissions in order to reach net zero are similarly polarised (see Figure 4) – but with one interesting qualification. This is an issue that the Conservatives under Kemi Badenoch have now joined Reform UK in trying to politicise; however, our research suggests she might not take each and every Tory member with her, presumably because many of them were convinced by her predecessors (most obviously Theresa May and Boris Johnson) that the climate emergency was real and necessitated urgent action. As expected, though, Reform members (nine out of ten of whom oppose the policy) are the polar opposite of members of the Greens, Labour, and the Lib Dems, virtually all of whom support it. As such, they would appear to be out of line with the public, over two-thirds of whom do too.

Figure 4: Views on reducing emissions to get to net zero

Tax and spend, left and right

Our focus on cultural issues shouldn’t lead us to ignore so-called left-right issues completely, of course – something we tapped into in a couple of ways.

First, we asked members (and voters) about tax and spend (see Figure 5) – and although Tory members were slightly more inclined than their Reform counterparts to think the current balance was about right (possibly because their party had just been in charge of the nation’s finances), there was still are marked contrast between the members of both those parties and those belonging to parties in the so-called progressive bloc. The latter were – surprise, surprise – much keener to see more spending than tax cuts.

Figure 5: Views on tax and spend

Second, we asked people to define themselves on a left-right scale (Figure 6) – and, as expected, members were far from reluctant to nail their ideological colours to the mast. And, interestingly, although there were some differences between parties’ members and their voters, generally there wasn’t that big a mismatch.

Figure 6: Left-Right self-placement

Two bloc polarisation

While so-called cultural concerns, then, often seem to be to the fore in day-to-day political debate these days, particularly when that debate is conducted on social media, they don’t exist in isolation. Indeed, they may well be folded (and feed) into people’s conception of what being left or right wing actually entails. Just as importantly, the boundaries between those two stances seem to be hardening. 

Floating voters haven’t completely disappeared, of course; however, they now tend to float within rather than between blocs. When it comes to Party members, our previous research has revealed a surprising amount of movement between Parties on their part; but our latest findings suggest that two-bloc polarisation means their options for switching are severely limited too. These days, to misquote Rudyard Kipling, left is left and right is right, and never the twain shall meet.

Originally published at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-two-bloc-polarisation-of-britains-voters-and-party-members/

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‘Ahead of seismic local elections, what we know about Reform’s ability to put boots on the ground for the campaign’, The Conversation, 20 January 2026

Posted on March 26, 2026 by tpbale

What we used to think of as Britain’s two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, seem more than happy to postpone as many of this year’s upcoming local elections as possible.

Labour insists the delays are needed because of ongoing local authority reorganisation. Opponents allege the decision has more to do with opinion polls that show both parties losing out badly to Reform, the Lib Dems and the Greens.

Who knows which is true? But it’s all yet another reminder that the UK’s formerly cosy, two-party system seems to be falling apart in front of our eyes.

In a year that holds the potential for electoral gains in councils and in races for the Welsh Senedd and Scottish parliament, what we used to refer to as country’s “minor” parties will have to run many campaigns.

In order to take full advantage of that fragmentation, they ideally need boots on the ground – people prepared to knock on doors and push leaflets through letter boxes in order to encourage supporters to actually get out and vote. These days, it’s also useful to have people willing to create (or at least share) content online.

That raises the question: who do they have? Given that the people who do the most campaigning for parties are its members, we can start by looking at how these numbers are distributed around the country. Reform makes big splashes in the national media, but does it have people who know the ground in the Vale of Clwyd?

My colleagues and I – the party members project run out of Queen Mary University of London and the University of Sussex – have looked into this in a newly published report.

It’s one thing to have plenty of party members – and there have been huge surges in people joining both the Greens and Reform since we conducted our surveys around the time of the 2024 election – but it matters where they’re located and how much they’re prepared to do.

Obviously, it helps to have members in those areas of the country that, opinion polls suggest, are particularly fertile territory. This may well be the case for the Lib Dems and for Reform, although Reform leader Nigel Farage will surely be hoping that that he’s managed to recruit a few more members in Wales and in London since we did our field work.

At that time, just 8% of Reform members were located in Wales, compared to 30% in the south of England. Only 12% of members were in London, where every borough has a council election in 2026.

A map showing how party membership breaks down across the country for each party.
Where are party members? T Bale, CC BY-ND

As for the Greens, they look rather thinly spread. Like Reform, there’s more of a presence in the south, where 32% of members are to be found. But in London it’s 12%, although it looks like that might be changing fast and for the better in some parts of the capital.

Certainly, irrespective of which region they’re located in, if Green party members live in those multicultural urban areas where Labour looks vulnerable, then they could still prove very useful in May.

How useful members are, of course, also depends on whether they’re willing to actually help out. At the 2024 election, from which our data is derived, around a third of all Lib Dem and Reform UK members, devoted no time at all to their party’s campaign efforts. The Tories, Greens and Labour had it even worse. Around half of their members put no time in.

Digging a bit deeper into the kind of activities members do reveals some interesting differences. In the increasingly important online world, it looks as if the Greens and Reform UK may well have something of an advantage. Their members were more likely to share social media content about their party than members of the Lib Dems and Conservatives.

A chart showing what percentage of party members across parties share content about their parties on social media.
Which party members are active on social media? T Bale, CC BY-ND

On the doorstep, however, it’s the Lib Dems who are right up there. Some 37% of Lib Dems delivered leaflets to people’s homes in 2024 – a figure that rises to 59% if we ignore those members who told us they’d done nothing for the party during the election.

This is one of the reasons, along with continued Conservative weakness, why, in spite of them being paid far less attention than current media darlings, the Greens and Reform UK, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey’s often underrated party stands to do well in the spring.

Reform’s membership performed less impressively in 2024 – only 20% delivered leaflets, albeit a figure that rises to 34% if we take those members who did nothing at all out of the equation. The figures for canvassing (a rather more demanding activity which parties often struggle to persuade members to help with) – 12% and 21% – are much lower.

A graphic showing what percentage of party members across parties actually knock on doors to campaign.
Who is knocking on doors? T Bale, CC BY-ND

A key question for Farage, then, will be how he can motivate the people who’ve flooded into his party (boosting its membership to over 270,000) to get out on the doorstep or at least hit the phones in order to contact voters. Zack Polanski faces a similar challenge when it comes to the 150,000 people who now belong to the Greens, most of whom have joined since he took over as leader.

Campaigning by members isn’t everything, of course. Activists who aren’t members play a part, as does top-down, national campaigning – even in local elections. Still, these figures do give some insight into the strengths and weaknesses of party organisation around the country at the start of what looks set to be a crucial set of elections this spring.

Originally published at https://theconversation.com/ahead-of-seismic-local-elections-what-we-know-about-reforms-ability-to-put-boots-on-the-ground-for-the-campaign-273626

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‘Churchill’s defection didn’t kill the Tories. Robert Jenrick’s certainly won’t’, Daily Telegraph, 19 January 2026.

Posted on March 26, 2026 by tpbale

On May 31 1904, a high-profile MP defected from the Conservative Party and joined its main rival. Not everyone believed his claim to be driven by principle rather than personal ambition. Yet it took two years and an election that cost the Tories over half their seats before he achieved ministerial office in a Liberal government – and another four before he was made its Home Secretary.

By 1924, however, the Conservative Party, far from passing into history as some had feared, was back with a massive overall majority. And the man then appointed its Chancellor of the Exchequer was the very same MP who’d quit the party in such bad odour twenty years before. His name? Winston Churchill.

The point of this story is not to claim Robert Jenrick bears comparison with one of this country’s political giants. Not even his admirers (presuming he still has some after jumping ship to Reform in such farcical fashion ) would attempt to argue that. Nor is it to predict that, a couple of decades from now, Jenrick will be welcomed back into the fold, put in charge of the nation’s finances and eventually made Tory prime minister.

Rather it is to remind us of the Conservative Party’s remarkable resilience. That’s something worth recalling when so many are speculating about its imminent demise in the face of Nigel Farage’s determination, if not to destroy it completely, then at least to ensure that Reform UK replaces it as the main party of the Right.

When Churchill first entered politics, the advent of democracy was understandably regarded by many continental European conservative parties with fear as well as loathing.

Given what was then the overwhelming numerical preponderance of the working class, how could they, as the political wing of their country’s middle and upper classes, possibly hope to win a majority ever again?

Better, they concluded, to cut their losses and abandon first-past-the-post for more proportional electoral systems that would at least ensure their survival and maybe facilitate “bourgeois” coalitions capable of challenging the socialist parties that were, they assumed, bound to win the votes of the newly enfranchised hoi-polloi.

Not so the British Conservatives. Determined to stick with first-past-the-post, they outmanoeuvred (as much by luck as judgement) their Liberal Party rivals, who, in the course of just two decades after their crushing victory in 1906, were overtaken and undone by a Labour Party founded just a few years previously.

In so doing, the Tories became the near-exclusive representative of Britain’s growing, anti-socialist middle class at the same time as winning over around a third of the working class. This was largely by appealing to their aspirations for themselves and their families, to their concern with governing competence and to a love of country that now and then shaded into jingoism and outright xenophobia.

In fact, the Conservatives’ pitch to voters hasn’t changed much over the years – in no small part because it enabled them to become Britain’s “natural party of government”. But it’s precisely because they became the nation’s default option that we sometimes forget that, in the postwar period, there have been two – and now three – occasions on which their long-term future has looked decidedly shaky.

Virtually no one expected the Conservatives to lose the 1945 general election, let alone to see their proudly socialist rivals returned with an overall majority of nearly 150 and the Tories reduced to just under two hundred seats.

Labour, many assumed, had finally come into its electoral inheritance and, unlike Churchill and his stunned colleagues, would now win the peace.

Yet just six years later the Conservatives were back, with a working majority gifted them by an electoral system that saw them bag more seats than Labour despite winning fewer votes overall.

Again, luck as much as judgement played a part: wartime austerity hadn’t yet given way to the West European postwar boom, and Labour’s big beasts were exhausted and fighting amongst themselves.

Equally crucial, however, was the Conservative Party’s compromise with the welfare state and mixed economy ushered in by the Attlee government. It was a compromise effectively forced on a reluctant Churchill by his younger, more centrist, more domestically-focused lieutenants.

Once restored to office, the Tories’ relaxation of wartime controls, encouragement of mass consumerism and delivery of a huge housebuilding programme enabled prime minister Harold Macmillan to remind voters in 1957 that they’d “never had it so good”. To years later, he delivered the party its third consecutive election victory.

Fast forward 40 years or so to 2001, however, and pundits were again wondering whether the Tories could ever recover after the election that year saw Tony Blair score another landslide victory. The Conservative Party finished with well under 200 seats for the second time in a row.

This time its recovery took longer and was admittedly less impressive, even if many on the Right of the party were relieved when, having feinted toward the progressive centre in opposition and finding themselves forced to govern together with the Lib Dems, David Cameron and George Osborne reverted to Thatcherite type once in Downing Street.

The defeat suffered by the party in the wake of the chaos engendered by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, however, is of a different order of magnitude. Never in its long history has the Conservative Party been reduced to so few MPs at Westminster and nor has it ever faced a serious challenge on its Right as well as its Left flank.

True, Kemi Badenoch’s personal ratings and performance seem to be improving. But the Tories are still polling lower than they did in 2024 and far behind Reform UK.

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage continues to command massive media attention even when he’s not celebrating his latest new recruit.

Not only that, but his small state, low tax, strong borders, net-zero sceptic, anti-blob, anti-woke, anti-ECHR instincts are very much those of many former and current Conservative voters and politicians. These include Badenoch and her shadow cabinet (although they would never admit it).

It is one reason why those liberal Tories and ex-Tories hoping Jenrick’s departure will see the party somehow tack back to what they see as the centre-Right are probably fooling themselves.

For all that, it is still too soon to write off the Conservative Party. It remains the official Opposition to a failing Labour Government at Westminster. It maintains an infrastructure at local and national level. It retains (just) the support of much of Britain’s influential print media. Its donations have by no means dried up. And, as we have seen, it has a long history of recovery.

So long, then, as the recent trickle of defectors to Reform – one that now includes Andrew Rosindell – doesn’t turn into a flood, the loss of Robert Jenrick, while wounding, should be survivable.

Moreover, contrary to what’s fast becoming conventional wisdom, Jenrick’s departure hasn’t put paid to the possibility of some kind of stand-down agreement between the Tories and Reform should that seem like the best way of beating the Labour-Lib Dem-Green bloc.

If sworn enemies like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany could sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact back in 1939, then Farage and Badenoch (or whoever replaces her) should surely be able to negotiate a non-aggression deal of their own in 2029. Whether or not it, too, would eventually end in tears is, of course, another matter.

Originally published at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01/19/winston-churchills-defection-conservatives-robert-jenrick/

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‘The ten most surprising facts from the 2024 election revealed’, The Conversation, 15 December 2025.

Posted on March 26, 2026 by tpbale

1. Labour lost the campaign

Labour won the election but its support fell a lot more than any other party’s during the campaign period. Labour started the campaign 25 percentage points ahead of the Conservatives and ended it just 15 points ahead.

That was partly because a fair few people who might have voted Labour either voted tactically for the Liberal Democrats in the end or didn’t bother to vote at all as it looked like Labour was heading for an easy win. But the loss was also down to some voters’ concerns about Labour’s lack of ambition and some concerns about its stance on Israel-Gaza. This helps to explain why the Greens enjoyed a late surge.

2. Fear of tax rises wasn’t really a factor

Since coming to office, the government has been plagued by indecision about what to do about taxes and fearful of angering voters.

But our analysis shows voters expected all along that a Starmer government would put taxes up – and they were apparently reconciled to it. Neither Rachel Reeves’s pledges not to increase the big three taxes, nor Tory attacks on Labour tax rises seem to have had any discernible impact on voters’ overall views about the parties’ intentions on tax and spend.

On balance, voters in 2024 felt that taxes in general (if not necessarily their own taxes) should go up to fund spending, meaning Tory promises of tax cuts fell on unusually stony ground.

3. Labour and the Conservatives lost support to more radical alternatives

In the course of the 2024 campaign, Labour lost support to the Greens, who for the first time (and at least where Gaza independents weren’t standing) picked up lots of Muslim voters.

The Tories (especially after Nigel Farage entered the fray) lost support to Reform UK, whose candidates tended to split the right-wing vote. This helped Labour win back many “red wall” seats in the north and the Midlands, as well as helping the Lib Dems take parts of the “blue wall” in the south. That split on the right also spared Labour’s blushes in Wales, where their vote actually declined.

4. Muslim voters turned away from Labour

Muslim voters swung away from Labour to an unprecedented degree in 2024. The loss of support from a community that had long backed the party cost Labour several seats, along with several near misses. Health secretary Wes Streeting’s Ilford North seat (which he won by just 528 votes, down from 5,198 in 2019) was just one example of a close contest.

Though the shift among Muslims was most dramatic, Labour also fell back among Hindu voters. The Conservatives’ sole gain came in Leicester East, the seat with the highest share of Hindu voters in Britain. Labour’s claim to be the natural choice for ethnic minority voters has never looked weaker.

5. The Conservatives ran out of cash

While in office, the Conservatives raised national campaigning limits to around £34 million. But, ironically, and unlike their Labour opponents, they ran out of money before the 2024 campaign was even over.

Party spending in 2024

Digital ad spending during the 2024 campaign period.
How digital spending fluctuated in the campaign. Who Targets Me, CC BY-ND

The lack of cash was especially evident in online campaigning, where Conservative party activity fell off a cliff towards the end, even as Labour efforts ramped sharply up.

6. This was an ‘all politics is local’ election

Local conditions, local campaigning and tactical voting mattered more than ever in the 2024 election. Voters’ behaviour varied more widely from one seat to the next than in any previous recent contest and people were more aware of and responsive to the local stakes in their seat than ever before, making the parties’ voter contact efforts even more important than usual.

7. Scotland is always different

The election campaign in Scotland once again ran along radically different lines to what was happening in England and Wales. There was a huge swing from the SNP to Scottish Labour, with the latter making dramatic gains, sometimes rising to first place from third. This was boosted by tactical voting among people opposed to Scottish independence.

The SNP, incidentally, was particularly active on social media, Labour posted more than Reform on TikTok and Nigel Farage has more page followers on Facebook than the Labour party. But, for all that, this was not the “TikTok election”. Social media matters, especially for younger people, but that’s not where most people go for election coverage.

8. Sadly, the sofa was the biggest winner

Voter turnout fell sharply to the second lowest level in postwar history (just ahead of 2001), and more people stayed home (41%) than voted for the winning Labour party (34%). These figures also don’t take account of the 8.2 million people who are entitled to vote but aren’t registered to do so. Shockingly, only one in five eligible voters voted for the party that was swept into government with a landslide majority.

9. Many party members sat it out too

Perhaps surprisingly, even members of the country’s political parties weren’t feeling excited by this election. Over half of Conservative party members and nearly half of Labour party members said they’d devoted no time at all to helping out their party during the campaign. Fewer than one in five of all party members knocked on doors or picked up the phone to canvass voters. Party members were a little more generous with their money than they were with their time, although Conservative members were notably reluctant this time to donate to the cause.

10. The election reshaped parliament

This is the most ethnically diverse, gender balanced House of Commons in history. But it is also the most inexperienced Commons in modern political history. More than half of MP are currently serving their first elected terms. This includes 56% of the MPs on the Labour government benches – also a record.

Talking of records, there are fewer privately educated MPs sitting in the House of Commons than ever before: just 23%. However, for the first time, the parliamentary Labour party elected in 2024 doesn’t contain a single MP who has arrived in the Commons direct from a job in a manual occupation.

Originally published at https://theconversation.com/the-ten-most-surprising-facts-from-the-2024-election-revealed-271989

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‘Our survey of Green party members suggests Zack Polanski has the mandate to take his party in a more radical direction’, (with Paul Webb and Stavroula Chrona) The Conversation, 3 September 2025

Posted on March 26, 2026 by tpbale

Thanks to the media interest in his election as leader of the Green party of England and Wales, there’s now plenty of information available about Zack Polanski, the so-called “eco-populist” who won a landslide victory over his arguably more moderate rivals.

But what do we know about the nearly 65,000 grassroots members who gave Polanski an overwhelming 85% of the vote, albeit on a turnout of just 38%? A survey we conducted of party members following the 2024 election sheds light on why he won so convincingly. It also gives us some idea of how easy Polanski will find it to achieve his goal of moving the party in a more radical, left-liberal direction.

As part of the Party Members Project, we’ve surveyed members of the country’s five most popular nationwide parties, including 732 people who belonged to the Greens.

The Greens had easily the most gender-balanced membership, coming in at a satisfyingly precise 50:50. However, in common with those of other parties, Green members are no spring chickens: fewer than one in 20 were in the 18-24 age group. The rest were evenly spread across the 25-49, 50-64 and 65+ groups.

And, like most other parties (Reform UK being a partial – but only a partial – exception) Green members are overwhelmingly middle class. Indeed, to use a commonly employed classification, some 83% of Green members we surveyed were ABC1s – meaning they come from one of the three higher (and generally better-off) social grades.

Geographically, they are rather more likely than the population as a whole to live in London, the south and the east of England rather than in the north or the Midlands.

How leftwing are Green members?

In terms of attitudes and values, some 88% of Green members voted Remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum compared to just 5% who plumped for Leave. And when asked whether “the government should increase taxes and spend more on public services or cut taxes and spend less on public services?” agreement with the first option was near universal at 96%. This beats even the 89% of Labour and Lib Dem members who said the same.

When asked to place themselves on a left-right scale, some 27% of Green members labelled themselves “very left wing”, with 54% picking “fairly left wing” and 16% going for “slightly left wing”. This again suggests the Greens’ grassroots stand somewhere to the left of Labour’s membership.

More broadly, Green members are clearly at the far end of what political scientists sometimes refer to as the green alternative libertarian v traditional authoritarian nationalist, GAL-TAN scale. This appears, these days, to be as if not more important than its left-right equivalent.

Predictably enough, some 98% of Green members supported cutting emissions to get to net zero. On immigration only 18% thought it had been too high over the last decade, with 29% thinking it had actually been too low and 41% “about right”. Eight out of ten disagreed with the notion that men and women had different roles in society, and three quarters said they weren’t proud of this country’s history.

Originally published at https://theconversation.com/our-survey-of-green-party-members-suggests-zack-polanski-has-the-mandate-to-take-his-party-in-a-more-radical-direction-264510

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‘Even tactical voting will not help Labour survive a Tory-Reform pact’, Independent, 3 December 2025.

Posted on March 26, 2026 by tpbale

As the English philosopher RG Collingwood didn’t quite say, “the only clue to what a man can do is what a man has done”.

Given that Nigel Farage denied he would do any kind of deal with Boris Johnson’s Conservatives – until, that is, he did one in 2019, standing down Brexit Party candidates in Tory-held seats – nobody should put too much faith in his attempt to pour cold water on reports that he has told donors to expect some kind of pact or merger between Reform UK and the Conservatives at the next general election.

Doubtless the story has brought some desperately-needed solace to Labour politicians and strategists. That a number of former Conservative MPs most people have never heard of have defected to Farage’s outfit (whether out of genuine conviction or because they believe it now offers them a surer route back to the Commons than Kemi Badenoch can) has already enabled his opponents to suggest that Reform UK doesn’t quite present the clean break with the past and the failed establishment that its leader is always banging on about. The idea that Farage actually has a secret plan to team up with the Tories to get into government provides even more grist to their mill.

Likewise, Liberal Democrats hoping to hold on to the swathe of southern English constituencies that they took off the Tories in 2024 will be more than happy to tell voters in their largely (though not entirely) Remain-voting, graduate-heavy seats that their opponents are getting together with the man who brought you Brexit, and now wants to finish the job by deporting a whole lot more people than have already departed our shores due to the blindingly obvious damage it’s done to the UK economy.

The Greens, too, will be pleased. After all, Zack Polanski, who, however “progressive” he might paint himself, is pound-for-pound just as much of a populist as Farage, will clearly jump at the chance to point to a Tory-Reform pact or merger as proof positive of a plot by wicked one-percenters to do down the virtuous 99 per cent.

But progressives shouldn’t start celebrating too early. If the Conservatives and Reform UK can come to some kind of formal arrangement, it could mean curtains rather than Christmas-come-early for this country’s centre-left.

That’s because mounting evidence suggests that, for all the fragmentation of the British party system brought about by the advent of five-party politics (eight, if we count Plaid, the SNP, and – stop laughing at the back! – Your Party), what we’re actually seeing is a sorting of the electorate into two distinct blocs, with most votes flowing not between them but between the parties within each bloc: the Conservatives and Reform in one, and all the rest in the other.

Right now, it looks as if plenty of Conservative and Reform supporters might well be prepared to trade votes if it means locking a Labour or Labour-led government out of power. A pact (or, perhaps better still, a full-blown merger that would negate the need for complex negotiations around which party gets a crack at which seat) would do a more reliable job than informal tactical voting to prevent the splits on the right that help cost it dear last year – especially, as looks likely, the left can’t find a way to respond in kind.

A pact or merger also helps Reform overcome one of the biggest doubts that people have about voting for it – namely its sheer inexperience. Nigel Farage as prime minister and Robert Jenrick as chancellor? Be afraid – be very afraid.

Originally published at https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nigel-farage-electoral-pact-reform-tories-starmer-labour-b2877302.html

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‘A Reform UK government isn’t inevitable’, Interview with LSE’s Joanna Bale (no relation!), 18 September 2025.

Posted on March 26, 2026 by tpbale

With Reform’s recent success in local elections and a parliamentary by-election, do you think we’re witnessing a temporary populist surge or the beginning of a longer-term realignment in British politics?

I’m rather cautious about the idea of a realignment or, “The realignment,” as people used to say after the 2019 election, because I think, often, election results can be rather more contingent than people imagine. So, for example, there was a lot said about Boris Johnson creating this new, impregnable voter coalition in 2019. And come 2024, the Conservatives crashed to their worst defeat ever.

Having said that, obviously I think it’s been true for some time that voters have been falling out of love with the two main parties and looking for an alternative, and not finding it in the traditional third party, the Liberal Democrats. And generally speaking, not finding it in the Greens either, although in Scotland, finding it in the SNP. So there is room in the system for an anti-establishment party, just as there is in many European countries. I think we are seeing a big shift, but I wouldn’t want to say that that makes a Reform UK government under Nigel Farage as prime minister inevitable in the way that, perhaps, some people are saying because they would very much like it to happen.

Do you think a Reform government is a distinct possibility though?

I think given how volatile British politics has been over the last few years, and given how unanchored most people are from one party or another, given that we have a very unstable geopolitical situation, given that it’s going to be very difficult to “stop the boats”, given that there will be arguments, because of the cost of living, about moves to a green transition, and given there are so many older people who feel uncomfortable with the kind of cultural changes we’ve seen, yeah, “never say never”.

I think one problem for Reform, funnily enough though, is Nigel Farage, in the sense that he’s both their biggest asset and their biggest liability. He is, to use that cliché, quite a marmite politician. So there are a whole bunch of people who absolutely love him, but there are a lot of people who absolutely despise the man and wouldn’t trust him an inch, let alone to run the government.

And I think that’s probably what Labour, and to some extent the Conservatives, are relying on. By ’28, ’29, people will be faced not with telling opinion pollsters which party they prefer, but actually with a choice between a bunch of people who at least have run governments before, and even if they haven’t done it brilliantly, probably know what they’re doing, and a guy who so far has only got four parliamentary colleagues, none of whom have ever had any kind of executive experience in government. And when it comes to that crunch, I’m not sure people will necessarily vote for the more radical option. But who knows?

If Reform did get into government, what do you think would happen? What does that mean for the future?

I think if Reform UK do get into government, all bets are off. You will have a party that has no experience of running the country, which has a parliamentary contingent with no experience of what it means to be a legislator. I would’ve thought it will be a recipe for chaos. But many people look at how the Conservative Party’s run things for the last 14 years, how the Labour Party has run things for the last year, and think, “Really, could they do any worse?” I would guess actually they could do a lot worse, but some people are prepared to take that chance.

What would it take to reverse or at least blunt the influence of Reform in the UK? Is it a question of policy, leadership or social change?

I think to blunt Reform UK’s performance in the short to medium term, we are probably talking about Nigel Farage falling under the proverbial bus. It’s difficult to see how they could replace him, and I think that would make a big difference. Otherwise, I think all the Government can do is focus on trying to make a tangible improvement to people’s standard of living and to public services, and hope that that is enough, in the end, to persuade people not to take a chance on something more radical.

If there’s one thing you wish the public better understood about the rise of the radical right in Britain, what would it be?

I think the one take-home message would be that there is a symbiotic relationship between the Conservative Party on the one hand, and Nigel Farage’s vehicles on the other. And that you can’t really understand the rise of UKIP, you can’t really understand the rise of the Brexit Party and Reform UK, without understanding the Conservative Party and vice versa. You can’t really understand what’s happened to the Conservative Party without understanding Nigel Farage and the appeal of populism.

Do you think the radical right is shaping our future or the future of politics?

I think certainly it’s going to play a big part in British politics over the next few years, and I would argue that it’s actually been playing a big part really since 2010. This is only the latest development, the culmination as some would see it, of a long-term trend.

Originally published at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/a-reform-uk-government-isnt-inevitable/ See (and hear) the podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohn-mlxfff0

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The memoirs of a whip in love with his leaders’, Political Quarterly, 30 June 2025.

Posted on March 26, 2026 by tpbale

Ungovernable: The Political Diaries of a Chief Whip, by Simon Hart. Macmillan. 368 pp. £25.00

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any book purporting to be a revelatory insider account of contemporary British politics must be in want of a serialisation in the Times, The Telegraph or The Mail—not least because getting one may well net the author more money than they stand to make from sales of the book itself. Admittedly, some people will be persuaded to actually buy that book on the strength of the ‘juicy bits’ they get to hear about in advance of its publication. But there is a downside: unless the reader of said book somehow exists in a self-imposed media-free bubble, then much of its supposedly revelatory content will already be incredibly familiar.

So it is with Simon Hart’s account of his time as Secretary of State for Wales in Boris Johnson’s government and Chief Whip in Rishi Sunak’s. One’s jaw might perhaps have dropped on hearing for the first time about an MP trapped in a Bayswater brothel, or a special adviser getting up to no good at an orgy. But when it’s the umpteenth time, not so much—especially when (both in those two cases and when it comes to Tory MPs’ endless attempts to secure themselves a knighthood or a peerage) no names are named.

None of this to say that the book—particularly when names are actually named—doesn’t have its merits. One of these, for anyone who follows politics, and in particular the politics of the late (but unlamented) Conservative government, lies in its capacity to confirm that all-too-many of those who served in the latter really were every bit as awful as they seemed from the outside looking in.

Some of those whom Hart skewers are now long gone, and maybe best forgotten—Matt Hancock and Nadine Dorries, to name but two. But some are still sitting on the green benches at Westminster, including the party’s current leader, Kemi Badenoch. Whether it really was her to whom Rishi Sunak was referring when he confessed, during his February 2023 reshuffle, ‘Let’s all agree about one thing, she is fucking useless but we can’t get rid of her’, we shall never know. But Hart does confirm what has surely become increasingly obvious to voters who didn’t know much about Badenoch before she won the leadership—namely (as he writes in February 2024 after she’d ‘popped in for a chat about trans stuff’) that she ‘lives in a permanent state of outrage.’

Still, the current Leader of the Opposition escapes very lightly compared to the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman—‘a glove puppet for the 1950s wing of the Party’ who, rather than responding positively to Rishi Sunak’s understandable (but ultimately badly mistaken) attempt to unite a chronically divided party around his leadership by appointing her to his Cabinet, spent much of her time undermining him, only to fly into an unseemly rage after he finally summoned up the courage to sack her.

Hart, it seems, had Braverman’s number right from the start. Yet in a number of other cases, he (rather admirably in some ways) allows us to see how staggeringly naïve he could be. That he believed that all-round bluff Northerner and red wall icon Lee Anderson’s assurances that he wasn’t off to join Reform UK just before he went and did so is one example. But the best—unsurprisingly given so many of his colleagues also fell under that supreme chancer’s spell—comes in his dealings with Boris Johnson, whom he continues to see as some sort of loveable rogue right until (and indeed after) the end.

Fortunately, and somewhat paradoxically, that doesn’t prevent Hart from making some acute observations about the nature of the parliamentary party’s relationship with Johnson: ‘the mutual respect,’ he writes in January 2022 after the UK had finally left the EU, ‘has always been somewhat transactional and hence skin-deep … BoJo was only elected for one reason (to deliver Brexit) and if that no longer applies what is the point of him?’ He also supplies an anecdote that, in a just one snatch of dialogue, perfectly captures Johnson’s character. It comes on the evening Hart (and others) are trying to persuade him that the game really is finally up:

‘[H]e said, “Just give me till Tuesday.”

“Why?,” I asked, “What’s happening on Tuesday?”

“I don’t know,” said Boris, “but something is bound to crop up.”’

Hart’s account of Johnson begging him to somehow kill off the Privileges Committee investigation is equally damning. And nor, for all his residual admiration for Johnson, does Hart hide the fact that, during the race to succeed him as PM, he ran ‘an uncharacteristically effective “anybody but Rishi” operation’ which handed the leadership (albeit mercifully briefly) to Liz Truss.

Perhaps the most glaring failure of Hart’s supposedly finely-tuned political antennae, however, is his inability to realise quite how damaging Partygate would be. Almost unbelievably for someone whose career rests on reading voters right, he’s convinced, when the revelations first appear in December 2021, that it’s ‘not resonating with the public.’ Indeed, it takes him until the following April to realise that the scandal is ‘producing some anti BoJo reactions with real people not just the media’—and even then he believes that the fall-out on the doorstep ‘can be managed with a conversation.’ Then, when the Gray Report eventually appears, he reckons the press ‘have been made to look a little foolish and hypocritical by blowing it all up out of proportion.’

That said, for the student of legislative and executive politics, Hart’s book provides an engaging insight into both the pastoral-cum-disciplinary-cum-logistical role of the Whips Office and the sometimes bonkers balancing act that is the British Cabinet reshuffle. As such, while not quite in the same league as Tim Renton’s Chief Whip and Gyles Brandreth’s Breaking the Code, his diaries provide a degree of reassurance that not much has changed in that respect—apart from Tory MPs behaving with even more of a sense of entitlement and even less commitment to the party’s collective good then they did back then. The section on how parliamentary selections are managed (‘managed’ being the operative word) when a snap election is called is also well worth reading.

What comes through most strongly in the end, however, is the extent to which grown-up, supposedly worldly-wise operators like Hart can fall hopelessly in love with those they serve, convinced not only that their boss is trouncing their apparently hapless opposite number at every PMQs and in every televised election debate, but also that duty lies, above all else, in preventing them being taken down by their internal rivals.

That so many ministers and chief whips now seem to see themselves as praetorian guards to the prime minister rather than guardians of the collective good of the party will no doubt be grist to the mill of those who argue that British politics is now irredeemably presidentialised. Whether it actually serves the best interests of those political parties, and therefore parliamentary democracy as a whole, is another matter entirely.

Originally published at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-923X.13561

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‘Norman Tebbit carried a torch for a “true-blue” politics now embraced by Nigel Farage’, Independent, 8 July 2025

Posted on July 24, 2025 by tpbale

They say “never meet your heroes” – but meeting your antiheroes can be absolutely fascinating. At least, that was my experience when I met Norman Tebbit. How could it not have been?

Already branded a “semi-house-trained polecat” as an opposition MP, once in government after 1979, his take-no-prisoners, right-wing persona meant that anyone growing up in the Seventies and Eighties in a vaguely left-leaning household couldn’t help but see him as the Thatcherite thug his puppet played in the phenomenally popular satirical show, Spitting Image.

But there was always more to him than that – which quickly became apparent when, in 2017, we met for a chat over a cup of tea in the House of Lords.

It wasn’t that the so-called “Chingford Skinhead” had mellowed in the sense of resiling from many of his characteristic and sometimes notorious beliefs – he might have admitted that he’d been wrong in his opinion of the Ugandan Asians who’d been forced to flee to Britain in the early 1970s. But he was still clearly sceptical about the willingness and ability of migrants to integrate (the origin of his infamous “cricket test”). And he was still very much a Europhobe, and opposed to gay marriage.

But on a personal level, he was nothing like the bike chain-wielding, leather-clad bruiser I thought I’d grown up with.

True, he was still sharp-tongued – a reminder of his considerable talents as a soundbite politician avant la lettre. But what struck me most was his even sharper political intelligence. Here was someone who, throughout his time as a key figure in Margaret Thatcher’s governments, could go studs-up when required, but was also very much a canny strategist.

In retrospect, and even at the time for those willing to see beyond the stereotype, those qualities played a crucial part in some of those governments’ signal achievements – most obviously, trade union reform, privatisation, and a couple of now-legendary electoral victories.

It’s too easily forgotten, especially if we focus on her titanic struggle with Arthur Scargill’s National Union of Mineworkers, that Thatcher’s undermining of trade union power was achieved iteratively rather than via one climactic confrontation. And Tebbit (who, don’t forget, had been an official in the airline pilots’ union) had played a vital part in boiling the frog by steering through the second of a string of employment bills, which over time totally transformed the UK’s previously poisonous industrial relations.

Likewise, the selling off of state-owned concerns to the private sector was not achieved by some sort of big bang, but instead accelerated over time. And once again, Tebbit, promoted to secretary of state for trade and industry, played a vital role, overseeing the first really high-profile privatisation – that of British Telecom – which paved the way for the second; British Gas.

By then, of course, Tebbit and, even more so, his wife, Margaret, had suffered terribly in the IRA’s Brighton bomb attack, and had, as a consequence, been switched from the executive to the electoral front line, becoming chair of the Conservative Party in the long run-up to the 1987 contest.

Already no stranger to media appearances (indeed, during the 1983 election, he’d appeared in more broadcast news items than any Tory apart from Thatcher herself), Tebbit not only helped front the 1987 campaign but helped mastermind it, brilliantly integrating the advertising expertise of Saatchi & Saatchi and the political instincts of his boss and his colleagues – even if one them did famously panic about how things were going.

Afterwards, in semi-(house-trained) retirement on the backbenches and in the Lords, Tebbit, like Thatcher, was admittedly a thorn in the side of his successors, particularly on Europe. But the Tories, and admirers of the brand of “Essex-man”, no-nonsense Conservatism which he embodied, and which, sadly for them now, seems to have passed to Nigel Farage, owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

Originally published at https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/norman-tebbit-death-thatcher-nigel-farage-conservatives-b2784672.html

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‘Why we need to halt “hard right” in its tracks’, The Loop, 10 July 2025.

Posted on July 24, 2025 by tpbale

Whatever passes for the centre right these days is in serious danger of being displaced or even replaced by the far right – most often by politicians whose questionable commitment to the checks and balances that characterise liberal democracy and whose tendency to counterpose ‘the people’ to ‘the elite’ qualifies them as ‘populist radical’ rather than ‘extreme’ right.

This is happening in three main ways. Sometimes, a far-right party of either variant surpasses its centre-right rival electorally. We’ve already seen this happen in France and Italy and it may one day happen in Germany. Other times, the takeover occurs from within – think what MAGA has done to the Republicans in the US. Occasionally, a centre-right party tries so hard to fight off a far-right contender by adopting its rhetoric and policies that it all but becomes one itself. Arguably this is what’s happening to the UK Conservative Party. Indeed, one might even argue that, in the UK, all three things are happening at once.

Who’s to blame?

In part, normalisation of far-right ideas is down to supposedly centrist politicians hoping to counter the threat on their right flank by talking and acting tough on immigration, sounding more sceptical about rapid progress towards net zero, and walking back previously liberal stances on transgender issues. But the mainstream media also contributes – as anyone following politics in the UK for a few years may have noticed.

Large parts of the British media treat policies put forward by far-right politicians that are not merely fringe but patently unworkable as options worth discussing and even supporting. A recent example is Reform UK leader Nigel Farage talking about reopening coal mines or, equally absurdly, funding massive tax cuts simply by ‘scrapping’ net zero and DEI programmes.

More insidiously, there is a growing tendency in the British media – especially The Times and The Economist and, even (in its radio coverage) the BBC – to label such parties not as far right (or, at the very least, populist radical right) but as ‘hard right.’

Excuses, excuses

‘Hard right’ is a neologism that, unless I’m missing something, has little or no currency whatsoever among academic experts. Those experts like to call things exactly what they are – namely (following Cas Mudde) far right (the umbrella term) or one of its two variants: extreme right or (populist) radical right.

In their defence, journalists will talk about language evolving to cover new phenomena. This argument, however, seems to ignore the fact that both the extreme and populist radical-right variants of the far right have been around for decades. If this is the case, then why is it only recently that the new term has crept into media output?

Journalists have even suggested that ‘populist radical right’ is just too complex a term for their readers to understand. Why use three words when two will do? This is understandable in a headline, perhaps, but in an 800-word report or op-ed? I don’t think so.

In reality, ‘hard right’ is less an evolution than a euphemism, effectively sanitising and normalising what it purports to describe. And the recent increase in its use doesn’t seem to correlate with any deradicalisation among the parties that journalists are referring to. Instead, it correlates with growth in those parties’ electoral support and their proximity to or entry into government. This all suggests that what’s driving journalists’ use of ‘hard right’ is their fear of losing access to precious sources were they to call it what it actually is. Or, given that Reform UK (successfully) threatened the BBC with legal action if it were to label the party ‘far right’, maybe journalists fear an even worse fate than that.

Which is to be master? Time to make a stand

Ultimately, of course, I can only hazard a guess as to whether journalists’ fears of loss of access, or else media intimidation by the parties themselves, are in fact the cause. Nor can I be sure that other countries are experiencing something similar, although I would be very interested to find out. But I do know that those of us involved in studying such parties – and who, I assume, value precision – should push back against this terminological slippage.

Pushing back can have an impact. And it does matter. After all, as this piece of dialogue from Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking Glass reminds us, language is no trivial matter:

‘“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be master – that’s all.”

Originally published at https://theloop.ecpr.eu/why-we-need-to-halt-hard-right-in-its-tracks/

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