More Fragmentation on the Right
PETE NORTH
As an observer of politics on the right, I can’t let it pass without comment that Ben Habib has started a new party. This comes on the same day as Rupert Lowe launching his own venture – which appears to be a policy unit and pressure group, not unlike Habib’s GBPAC.
There is apparently no coordination or cooperation between the two, so one is given to wondering why they both launched on the same day. It cannot be a coincidence. One is seeking to upstage the other perhaps? It does underscore, though, that any Habib-Lowe political alliance on a new venture was a figment of the right’s imagination.
So what to make of it? First off, launching any new political venture on a Monday in blistering hot Summer weather is rank amateurism. Conference time is the time to do it. Unsurprisingly, neither venture has made a big media splash. Neither Lowe nor Habib have the Farage factor, so the wider media outside of the Daily Express and GB News will not be the remotest bit interested, now or in the near future.
This is the first hurdle for both, but especially for Ben Habib, whose reach is largely confined to TalkTV and GB News. He has a large and loyal fanbase, but it doesn’t go much beyond social media.
Cutting to the chase, the real question is whether his outfit is any more serious than Reform. To great fanfare Habib took issue with the lack of democracy within Reform, and its top-down approach to everything. He is now obliged to ensure his party is authentic, democratic and coherent.
So will it be any good? The short answer is no. I don’t doubt his intention to form a more transparent and accountable organisation that Reform but he still has to put policy meat on the bones. This is something he should have done before launching. Since he went to the trouble of setting up his GBPAC for the development of policy, he should at least have waited for it to produce at least something. Instead we get yet more lightweight bulletpoints that tell us little about the underlying philosophy, and nothing about the political vision.
This defies explanation. I actually went to the trouble of setting out a loose template for him over a year ago which seems to have influenced his subsequent thinking. He didn’t have to use that, but he could have come up with at least something. Without more substance, we cannot even say Habib has launched a party. He’s merely uploaded a website to register his intent to start a party.
It is reasonable to assume that when this enterprise does adopt policy, it will be the work his of GBPAC, so we know what ballpark it is likely to be. Habib routinely speaks of a Great Repeal bill, and restoring sovereignty, essentially resetting the constitution back to 1997. As I understand it, he has Martin Howe KC working on this.
I am not, however, filled with confidence. I’ve looked closely at GBPAC and the people involved and, I’m afraid to say, they are mediocre intellects – and their entire approach to policy is wrong. As with Ukip back in the day, they’re canvassing the support base for suggestions and I know from experience that it does not yield results. You actually need serious in-depth analysis and a functioning ideological framework.
This is something I attempted to do with the manifesto I wrote last year. As a starter for ten, it’s not a bad effort, though I now see there are major gaps and scope for improvement. The point of it, though, was to provide a basic template which could be expanded upon. To do so would require some investment because ultimately, the job is too big and too complicated for any one person. All the same, I thank it stands as a decent stab given the time constraints and the budget of zero.
Given, then, what was achieved by one person in under two months, I have to ask why Habib’s well-resourced team has taken six months to produce absolutely nothing. One gets the impression that all these people seem to do is launch things with mediocre websites.
The stage, I think, is now set for Habib to bomb out of politics. He clearly isn’t included in any of Rupert Lowe’s calculations and if Advance UK doesn’t pay off then he’s pretty much done. This is his only chance at staying relevant. But it won’t work.
As remarked above, while Habib does have a public profile, he’s still a political pygmy next to Farage, and the media simply isn’t interested in anyone but Farage as the face of the insurgent right. It would take a very public endorsement of Elon Musk, and some very big donors to suck the wind out of Reform’s sails. While Habib’s effort has been noted by Musk on X, this does not translate to an endorsement.
Were it that Rupert Lowe were poised to join, perhaps with a few significant Tory defectors, there might still be something in this venture, but right now it’s looking like another Veritas style one man band. Meanwhile, though many will be sympathetic to Habib’s cause, and appreciate his efforts, there is the fear that yet another party will split the vote.
Ultimately, this party doesn’t shoot anybody’s fox. It doesn’t hurt the Tories, it’s not really going to impact on Reform, it’s not going to deter Homeland, and most of the disaffected Reform set are waiting to see what Rupert Lowe does. I think Habib would be well advised to quietly row back from this enterprise. But that’s half the problem. He isn’t well advised. He is surrounded by sycophants egging him on, and there is no injection of realism.
So what about Lowe? Lowe has today launched Restore Britain – which isn’t a political party – but that then begs the question of what is it actually for and what will it do? As yet there is little to go on in terms of what it stands for, but the messaging thus far is in line with what we have come to expect from Lowe. It favours a burka ban and “net negative immigration”. This is encouraging.
My expectations of these initiatives usually aren’t high. It takes a certain intellectual architecture to deliver coherent policy and it’s rare as hen’s teeth on the populist right. I do, however, have confidence that it will be better than GBPAC. I am encouraged to see Charlie Downes is involved. He is bright, articulate and has pretty sound judgement. He has good instincts. He’s at the right end of the argument on immigration, without resorting to crass edgelordism.
The test of whether it’s serious or not will be whether it considers to practical implications of of policy. Lowe has expressed support for the idea of Channel pushbacks, and I simply do not believe such a policy would survive more than six weeks in reality before it descended into farce.
Similarly, there’s the ECHR question. There are two approaches here. You can take the pragmatic road where we remain in the ECHR, recognising that the HRA and the British judiciary are the more immediate problems, or you can take the principled approach that Britain should not recognise any foreign court.
I actually have no preference on this just so long as there is a recognition that leaving the ECHR, of itself, accomplishes very little, and that there are far-reaching consequences to doing so, not least unravelling the political settlement in Northern Ireland. Only fools rush in.
In Ben Habib’s mind, we would leave the ECHR, rip up the NI protocol and dump the TCA if we had to. Again, I have no strong feelings either way, but I would want to see a technically proficient plan as to what replaces it. Ben Habib thinks it’s sufficient to roll the British constitution back to 1997 and everything will function as before. Delusional.
What troubles me about Lowe’s venture is the policy page, where it doesn’t really go into detail yet. Though there isn’t much to go on, it does give us some insight into how they think. One section reads “End Woke” – “DEI ideology has consumed our institutions. Men are not women. No more anti-white racism. We must return to truth, biology, and equal treatment. We must restore reason and common sense”.
We’ve all seen this shtick before but “carpet bombing woke” is no small undertaking. It requires a complete overhaul of the civil service, a complete clear out of the CPS, a purge of the police command tier, and an all out war on Britain’s bloated university sector. That latter factor may be the most important. The worst woke drivel comes out of British academia. Oh and let’s not forget the unions. To that end, I want to see detailed plans, with direct testimony from people in the know, rather than whatever is stuffed into the online suggestions box.
To date, not a single one of these enterprises has produced anything of substance. I would like to be proved wrong this time, but I don’t think the populist right is up to the job. Going back to the very beginnings of Ukip, there has always been an vehement aversion to policy and planning, believing it to be superfluous. Nothing in recent months persuades me that the penny has dropped.
Meanwhile, the right-leaning political outsider might then find it bizarre that Lowe – the politician – is forming a “non-political” movement, while Habib, the non-politician, is planning on creating a political party. They could well conclude that the dissident right as a whole is an egotistical trainwreck, and shuffle back to the Tories.
This article (More fragmentation on the right) was created and published by Northern Variant and is republished here under “Fair Use”
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Advance UK: A distraction or an opportunity?
JOHN WYCLIFFE
ON MONDAY Ben Habib, political campaigner and erstwhile Deputy Leader of Reform UK, formally announced his much-anticipated new political party Advance UK. After resigning from Reform, having fallen out with its leader Nigel Farage, Habib has hinted for months that he was setting up a new party. In a highly volatile political landscape with so many so desperate for change, opinion will be divided between those who see this as a calamity, splitting the ‘protest’ opposition and so ensuring continued globalist hegemony, and those who see it as both necessary and perhaps instrumental.
In such dark times, Wycliffe sees it as a duty to offer Christian hope where he can, so in that spirit let’s list the objections to Advance UK and deal with each in turn.
The first is that Advance UK simply won’t have the brand strength to make political headway.
It is a truism that the first-past-the-post electoral system is exceptionally harsh on start-up parties. Even in the friendlier proportional system, it takes a long time and much money to build a political brand. It took over 20 years for Ukip to advance from a fringe movement into a mainstream party that severely threatened the established parties, and it is highly unlikely that Advance UK would be in such a position in three to four years.
Second,although it’s true that politicians and political activists often vastly over-estimate political engagement amongst the general population, we live in a time of unprecedented political and electoral volatility. For all that the rocketing popularity of Reform UK owes a substantial amount to Nigel Farage’s own political and personal brand, even before he voted himself in as leader the only partially known Reform brand was already gaining significant electoral traction, such is the electorate’s desperation for change.
Third, momentum is certainly with Reform UK and it would be a brave man who suggested that Advance UK could overtake them in the short or even medium term, but parties do not have to be electorally successful to move the dial significantly. If you think of the three most successful political movements since the fall of Margaret Thatcher, along with New Labour you would list Ukip and the Greens. The latter two both shifted political policies in directions that at the time were truly radical without achieving significant breakthroughs at Westminster as more established parties started to take their agendas seriously and in time adopted them. (Though one must add as a caveat that both first achieved success in European elections under the now-closed avenue of proportional representation.) In such a volatile environment, even if Advance UK starts to gnaw away at Reform UK’s vote share to a moderate degree, it may stop Reform’s current march towards the ‘soggy centre’ ground.
Lastly, in the much longer term we are likely to be presented after the next election with a shattered political landscape quite unlike anything we have seen before. As long predicted by Peter Hitchens, we are facing the simultaneous collapse of not one but two major political parties – the Tories and Labour. Who knows what opportunities will present themselves under those circumstances? This is particularly so if, as many fear, Reform fails in government due to its lack of a broad talent base, failing to build a cabinet with more than one member: Reform may prove to be a comet amongst the stars, burning brightly before just as quickly fading into obscurity.
However, Ben Habib has been very naïve in making Advance UK wholly democratic and inclusive from the outset. Whatever issues one may have with Nigel Farage’s authoritarian style and the pseudo-democratic nature of Reform UK, he certainly does speak and act with significant experience of the problems in building a fringe party and stopping its brand being polluted. Those who first join a new, radical movement are almost by definition political obsessives and some may hold deeply unpleasant or crank-like views that the media can use to pollute the brand. While it is still small, the party may also be subjected to tactics of ‘entryism’ from highly organised, truly extremist groups. Even the threat of brand pollution may stop heavy hitters with name recognition – Suella Braverman, David Frost, for example – joining such a party: they may not wish to be associated with the likes of Tommy Robinson, whose reputation, though improving, remains toxic in many quarters.
Time will tell on this one. The highly democratic structure of Advance UK is certainly impressive from a theoretical standpoint and, if it was an already mature party, would knock authoritarian Reform out of the park. Whether it is good for a start-up is another matter. Habib’s statement that the party will become formally registered only once a floor of 30,000 members is reached may help mitigate the issue here but nonetheless the risk of attracting undesirables in its infancy is a significant downside.
Thus, attracting big-hitters and high-profile defectors may well prove a significant problem and this may count as a missed opportunity. One of Reform UK’s most significant weaknesses is the inability of any political Icarus to withstand the heat that comes with flying too high: if you so much as threaten to eclipse the radiant glow of its Sun-King leader, the wax on your wings will melt and instantly vaporise. Advance UK would pose a much more serious threat if it did manage to attract some big names who judge that, based on past behaviour, associating themselves with Farage was little better than a death wish. Consequently, as the election neared, it would look like a more convincing government in waiting than Reform UK ever could. Of course, Ben Habib may surprise us over the next few days with the names he has already attracted, but the decision of Rupert Lowe not to join is a significant initial disappointment, and others may remain wary, preferring to watch and wait.
Even so, it’s not all doom and gloom. Looked at in another way Advance UK may do a great service to British politics: although it may or may not be to the party’s advantage that it welcomes virtually anyone, it will at least provide a democratic outlet for those, particularly from the working classes, who currently feel outcasts even from Reform UK. There is much talk these days of a drift towards civil war and if Advance UK helps in stopping such a baleful development it will have been all worthwhile.
Looking to the long term, Advance UK’s far more democratic structure may prove more robust and attractive than virtually any other political player on the market if it can survive its start-up phase.
Of all the arguments against starting a new party, that Advance UK will just split the ‘right-wing’ vote is perhaps the weakest of all. For decades the ghastly Tories survived on the mantra that ‘If you didn’t vote Tory you’d get Labour’ or ‘a vote for Ukip/Reform is a wasted vote.’ Large portions of the electorate are in no mood to have their votes harvested in such cynical ways any more and expect to able to hold parties to account if they stray too far from what they want. There is a simple way Reform UK can stop its vote being split – stay true to what its supporters want.
Many may counter that you cannot win an election based solely on the support of True Believers, and Reform has to attract those from the centre ground. Even here, the existence of a political party on its right flank may help it do so due to a regrettably eternal but powerful factor that intrudes into English political life – snobbery. British, certainly English, voting patterns were until very recently powerfully connected to one’s class identity and although probably not the factor it once was (who are we kidding? Class is still immensely important in English culture), supporting a ‘low status’ political movement like Reform UK associated with working-class Red Wall patriots may make some voters uneasy in the Tory shires, even if they broadly agree with the party’s agenda. If Advance UK’s base proves to be built on the kind of voters Richard Tice describes as ‘that lot’, some of the more snobbish members of the middle class may feel better at voting for Reform – at least they still have someone to look down on. Nigel Farage’s recent interesting comment, warning the British Establishment that they had better support him or one day the alternative would look at lot worse, seems to suggest he senses this. Advance UK may well attract some voters who may either be totally alienated from politics or may have voted Reform instead, but as a consequence Reform UK may pick up votes from other more well-to-do demographics without having to drift too far to the centre.
So, when all is considered, why not join Advance UK? I have.
This article (Advance UK: A distraction or an opportunity?) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author John Wycliffe
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