Conservative Progressives or Progressive Conservatives
Choice or the illusion of choice.
Choice or the illusion of choice. With regards to democracy, I’ve always thought that was a phrase for broken down middle age conspiracy theorists with a persecution complex and a strangely admirable self-confidence in their ability to reduce the complexity of the world into the personal language of the playground.
But self-awareness and the ever-expanding list of issues that Labour and the Conservatives seem to perfectly align on be damned, it’s the battle over at Reform for the direction of that political party that’s got me worried about real democratic choice.
The recent civil war between Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe has revealed Farage’s intent more clearly than anything he’s said since Brexit. It’s obvious now that his sole desire is to clingfilm the popularist protest vote and take them with him to the hallowed modern centre ground of Tory HQ whereupon he can swap them for the leader’s job, business and financial policies that are more business friendly, and presumably, a pint of bitter and a pork pie because he’s just such a down to earth, salt of the earth, fucking earthworm of an ‘English bloke’.
What won’t be coming through the door though, (due to them being quite unfit for the dinner tables of the middle class) are all of the socially conservative positions he took on culture war topics and any kind of reasonable migration control. You know, the shiny maraca that he shakes in one hand to get the attention of anyone who feels disillusioned and unrepresented in modern politics, whilst the other hand is hammering out emails to all his finance and American buddies telling them he can deregulate the City again and sell them the NHS.
It's almost refreshing how classically villainous this is as a tactic. Donald Trump, love him or loathe him, somehow still bewilders the well paid and well educated commentariat by doing some of the things that his popular support elected him to do. No, it doesn’t always make financial sense… or political sense… or diplomatic sense … or sometimes any kind of sense really. And yet it delights the people who voted for him because it makes sense to them.
Our knock off, pound shop, Temu, British Trump isn’t actually that at all. He’s seen the enormous space opened up by increasingly similar centrist parties and how different their elitist opinion is on so many topics to the average voter, and he’s gone for it. And to give him his due, he has managed to knock himself up quite the camp on that political land. But what’s going to happen when all those protest voters realise, they’ve been used?
Because here’s the thing about democracy: sometimes the majority of the voting population want things that seem stupid and counterintuitive to the ruling classes. And sometimes it’s the job of the ruling classes to frustrate, obfuscate and divert those desires. But when those desires are clearly stated for a long enough time and yet are unable to find a political home, make any progress, or even see the issue at stake at the ballot box, that’s when faith in democracy and the whole system of government gets undermined.
In the UK there are respectable polls on lots of issues that show solid majorities for ideas that none of the major parties will touch, Reform included now it seems. This problem isn’t unique to the UK, France has just seen the political conviction of Marine Le Pen and the AfD have been locked out of government in Germany. The list could go on but it all illustrates the same point.
Democratic countries can’t keep declaring ideas that are popular with large chunks of voters beyond the pale. If the only choice people are given at the ballot box is between Conservative Progressives or Progressive Conservatives they’ve going to question who defines the pale if it’s not the voters and when did it get so narrow? So beyond the individual issues themselves we have to decide if we’re committed to democracy or not. Should the people have choice or only the illusion of choice?