Fresh from the votes of 60 per cent of its MPs for assisted suicide, a higher percentage than Labour's, Reform UK split three ways on, admittedly, only yesterday's Ten Minute Rule Bill for Proportional Representation, with three in favour and one against while Nigel Farage effectively abstained because he was off welcoming Tim Montgomerie, yet another spear-carrier of Boris Johnson's to have joined Reform.
Johnson was the Prime Minister of Net Zero. He was a very big spender long before Covid-19. He even lifted the requirement that jobs in Britain be advertised first in Britain, making him the most pro-immigration Prime Minister ever, since Liz Truss never got into her stride. Johnson was closer to Stonewall than any Prime Minister before or since. The lockdowns were Johnson's. The Northern Ireland Protocol was Johnson's. The war in Ukraine was Johnson's. If Reform UK is now the party of Montgomerie, then it is the party of all of that.
Even if it were not, then while there are easily 326 wannabe Donald Trumps in this country, there are not 326 constituencies in which each of them would be the First Past the Post. Using the far more favourable Single Transferrable Vote and having uncharacteristically managed their candidates to avoid cannibalisation, those broadly in that vein have made only limited progress, if any, in Ireland, while the hard core has been humiliated. Reform looks set to do fairly well under the Additional Member System for the Scottish Parliament, and very well under the closed list system that will be used for the Senedd from 2026. But it is a different question what its supporters will be voting for.
They all meet up on the Telegraph and GB News.
ReplyDeleteWhere the most successful election-winning machine in the world runs rings around the plucky upstarts. Reform is becoming Johnsonism in exile.
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