Dear Subscribers,
On Friday, Labour lost its Senedd seat of Caerphilly to Plaid Cymru in a by-election. Caerphilly has been a Labour stronghold for a century, though defeat came as no surprise. There were expectations that Reform might win given the energy with which it campaigned and having led national opinion polls for months. Plaid won 47.4 per cent of the vote, Reform 36 per cent and Labour 11 per cent (down from 34.9 per cent).On Saturday, Lucy Powell was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour party following Angela Rayner’s resignation. Powell beat Bridget Phillipson, winning 54 per cent of the vote. She is a continuity candidate, coming from the progressive wing of the party. Phillipson, by contrast, was the Starmerite candidate, preferred by No. 10. Following her victory, Powell criticised Starmer for ‘trying to “out Reform” Reform’ and for ‘not being bold enough in delivering the kind of change we promised’.
Rachel Reeves has pledged to cut the tax-free cash Isa allowance in the upcoming budget. It is intended to encourage investment in stocks and shares. The Economic Secretary to the Treasury described the measure as ‘Thatcherite’ in its intentions.
Andrew Bailey has commented that Brexit has inflicted economic damage for the ‘foreseeable future’. He maintained that he was speaking in as ‘a public official’ rather than offering a personal opinion. This is to suggest that Bailey was speaking neutrally in terms of economics as opposed to stating a political view. In the blog this week Graham Gudgin dissects and exposes the erroneous logic of the political elites who are certain of Brexit’s failure (see below).
The Cambridge academic Dr James Orr has officially joined Reform as an advisor to Nigel Farage. This comes after he set up a think tank (Centre for a Better Britain) earlier this summer, oriented towards a Reform government. His Toryism is one-nation and hard-edged, and he is known for his friendship with J.D. Vance. Following Danny Kruger MP, Orr adds to the developing intellectual makeup of the Reform party leadership.
There are growing calls for Jess Phillips (Safeguarding Minister) to resign. Phillips is under fire because the National Inquiry into the grooming gangs is unclear in its focus and has an inadequate definition of grooming. Four victims have resigned from the Inquiry’s panel, renewing the challenge of finding someone to head the Inquiry.
Blog
Always Blame Brexit by Graham Gudgin
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has recently claimed that her patent need to raise taxes in defiance of manifesto claims is due to an extended impact of Brexit. There is no evidence that this is true.
Media
Daniel Johnson in The Telegraph: Caerphilly shows how our politics is turning European: losers will stay in office
Rishi Sunak in The Times: Reeves mustn’t correct her £10bn error with tax rises
Mary Harrington in UnHerd: AWS outage exposes fragility of our ‘smart tech’.
Key Points
Labour’s Lost Love
The Caerphilly by-election defeat is minor but part of a pattern – post-industrial seats that no longer assent to a liberal Labour party. The defeat was an intimation of the perilous future facing the Labour party. Ask yourself the question, Who is the Labour party for?, and every type of voter seems compromised by Reform, the Liberals or the Greens.
When the Labour party rose after the first world war it was held together by a socialist doctrine and a notion of working-class solidarity. In an important sense the party was a post-Christian phenomenon, succeeding in the previously Liberal Nonconformist strongholds. Its voters were pious.
Now the Labour party faithful haven’t much to be pious about aside from its recent relics: for some its Blair, for the few intellectuals its Healey, for the romantics it’s the second Viscount Stansgate. Benn was a Christian socialist, Healey a man of letters, and Blair a cynical democrat (like Harold Wilson). It is the great difficulty of democratic politics that cynicism wins elections but seldom wins hearts. And those who win hearts are not cynical enough to reach the apex – perhaps Thatcher came closest to overcoming this difficulty. Starmer is politically cynical (having metamorphosed from a Corbynite for Labour leadership to Blairite for premiership). But unlike past Labour grandees, he is signally politically talentless. Not for nothing did only 16 per cent of the members vote in the deputy leadership contest.
Rishi Revisited
Rishi Sunak was interviewed by The Times earlier this week amidst becoming a columnist for the paper. The interview was sentimental, at times regretful, over a well-intentioned man’s fall from high office. If Sunak was a newspaper he would be The Times: earnest, sensible, put-together, trimmed-at-the-edges. (…Or is he the FT?) There is an exasperation that charges the interview – in sum, how can such an ideal person fail at politics?
The Times represents a naivety when it comes to understanding politics, where its own virtue is a hindrance to realising that politics is arbitrary and does not abide by the standards of a respectable business. Sunak is industrious and, it seems, a genuinely kind man but that doesn’t necessarily make for a successful prime minister. Historians will recognise the harshness of the hand he had been dealt which neither industriousness nor kindliness could overcome.
Dr Orr and National Preference
James Orr was interviewed by the humane and charming Amol Rajan of the BBC this summer. Talking about his think tank he described the ‘politics of national preference’. It is a clever adaptation of the ‘imperial preference’ tariff regime of Joseph Chamberlain in the late 19th century. It is also a reinvigoration of one-nation conservatism, of which Reform may be the vehicle.
It has been noted that Reform is lacking in ‘seriousness’ which is often a good word for critics to hide behind and to denigrate with. I am not sure what being a serious party entails, aside from organising itself from the local to the national spheres and to be in an ideal position recommend itself to voters which Reform is doing.
Political parties are coalitions of opinions: Danny Kruger, Lee Anderson and James Orr can, in fact, coexist. Reform have obvious holes in their vision, economic policy being the most obvious. But time and momentum are on Reform’s side, for now.
