To win an election a party must do two things. It needs to enthuse its base and it needs to persuade sceptics that they could live with it in power (an underrated factor in Labour’s landslide victory was the number of traditional Tories who simply stayed home).
Reform appears determined to neglect the last of these lessons. Richard Tice, the party’s business, trade and energy spokesman, used a speech yesterday to promise a “great repeal act” that would scrap Labour’s employment rights and renters’ rights legislation. In other words, Reform is targeting two of the government’s most popular policies.
The first act gives workers the right to parental leave and sick pay from day one, offers them guaranteed hours and compensation for cancelled shifts, and bans the practice of “fire and rehire”. The second abolishes no-fault evictions, which allow landlords to remove tenants without giving a reason, replaces fixed-term tenancies with rolling ones, limits rent increases to once a year and gives tenants the legal right to a pet (a boon in a nation of animal lovers).
“There’s a balance of risk and reward, and too many landlords have said, enough is enough,” Tice declared. Such rhetoric will go down well with Reform members who, the political scientist Tim Bale found, are “even more Thatcherite” than their Tory counterparts, but it could repel the voters the party needs. While those switching from the Conservatives tend to lean right on the economy, those switching from Labour lean left.
But there’s also a more immediate political question: why is Reform doing this now? We are just one day away from the Gorton and Denton by-election, where the party is in a near-dead heat with Labour and the Greens. The pledge to scrap workers’ and renters’ rights has only handed fresh ammunition to its rivals. This is not the kind of error that a party truly advancing towards power would make.
And there’s a more existential question too: what is Reform for? There was a fleeting moment last year when Nigel Farage appeared to want to create a genuinely populist party that would borrow from both left and right. He called for the nationalisation of British Steel and Thames Water, promised to build “a good partnership with the unions”, and even praised that old Marxist, Arthur Scargill. But in policy, rather than just personnel, Reform increasingly resembles that most familiar creature: the Conservative Party (with Thatcherite/Powellite characteristics).
This might yet win Farage an election: looking like a more energetic version of the force that governed Britain for most of the past century could prove a smart bet. But don’t call this a revolution – it’s just a restoration.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[Further reading: Revealed: Thames Water’s environmental and financial disaster]
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