Does anyone else find themselves in a political love triangle, where neither suitor quite fits, but you still feel oddly loyal to one of them because you shared a complicated past and a couple of decent policy nights together?
Look, I’m no wide-eyed loyalist waving a flag for the Conservative Party of 2025.
Frankly, it’s been painful watching a once-proud political machine stumble through an identity crisis – drawing certain candidates from what feels like a biscuit tin of mediocrity, and letting some of its best operators quietly sink beneath the surface.
And truth be told, I’m still furious with those sixty lemming MPs who stampeded off a cliff to oust Boris. Thankfully, a lot of them have now gone.
But, and it’s a Boris-sized but, I just can’t bring myself to jump ship to Reform UK. Not yet. Not like this.
Why? Because politics isn’t just about volume. It’s about strategy. And Reform, for all its fire and fury, feels like it’s shouting at a house it used to live in… throwing bricks through windows it helped build. It’s like watching a jilted lover torch their ex’s record collection. Entertaining, maybe. Productive? Less so.
Don’t get me wrong. Nigel Farage is, without question, one of the most electrifying orators of our time. He speaks off the cuff like a 21st century Churchill after three espressos. I’ve got endless admiration for the man. Charisma, presence, a voice that cuts through the static like a razor on silk. If you could bottle his confidence, you’d bankrupt every therapist in Britain.
And Reform as a whole? I’ve got a lot of friends in Reform. Proper friends. Andrea Jenkyns is one of my besties… a force of nature: kind, honourable, determined, and now the new Reform Mayor of Lincolnshire, no less. My girl Alex Phillips is honestly a genius and could out-debate all of Parliament before breakfast. David Bull? We go way back to our L.A. days, he’s smart, sharp, classy. And Richard Tice? I rate him. A brilliant businessman who’s actually run a business, a rarity in Westminster.
I even launched a petition to bring Lee Anderson back into the Tory fold, and we became mates. He’s a good guy. I really like him.
But politics isn’t about personal friendships. It’s about capability.
And that’s where Reform still gives me pause. When Zia hounded Rupert Lowe out, it didn’t sit right. Plus Reform’s relentless slagging off of the Tories feels more like Twitter warfare than statecraft. If we’re going to take the country back from the clutches of chaos, we need a coalition, not a cage fight.
Yes, Reform are rising in the polls… good for them. But let’s be real: there will still be 15 to 20 percent of the electorate who vote Tory in 2029, no matter what. Mark my words.
And if you’re one of the same people who screamed at me before the last general election when I said Reform would get no more than five MPs, listen carefully: you don’t understand stats like I do. I love stats. I work them. I live and breathe them. I was right then, and I’ll be right again. At least 15% of the electorate will still put a cross in the Conservative box in 2029, even if, heaven forbid, someone like that awful Rory Stewart were leading the party.
So unless Nigel’s planning to invent a time machine and go full Terminator on the electoral maths, we’re heading straight for another split vote on the so-called “patriotic right.” And to be blunt, that would hand Labour the keys to the kingdom… again.
I shudder to think. We’re barely going to survive five years of this current socialist madness. We cannot, under any circumstances, allow it to become ten.
I’ve been very open about it, I’m still a Tory member. Why? Because I do believe in the brains we still have. Robert Jenrick. Suella Braverman. Priti Patel. These are experienced, legal-political powerhouses. They actually know how the law works. Rob and Suella are both actually barristers.
Reform often says the right things, but they’re not always sure how to do them. And let’s be clear: policy is more than just vibes.
Let’s not also forget the shadow cabinet ministers like Andrew Griffith, Claire Coutinho, and Chris Philp to name just a few – these are seasoned operators. Parliamentary veterans who know how to play the long game. Parliament is not a pub brawl; it’s a chessboard with the stakes of a nuclear poker match. The Reform bench, while brave and brash, is also, let’s be honest, full of newbies. Who exactly is forming the next Reform cabinet? A handful of former MEPs and some YouTube celebs?
Meanwhile, there’s a fresh crop of sharp new Tory MPs rising through the ranks – Bradley Thomas in Bromsgrove, Katie Lam in Kent, and another twenty or so who’ve genuinely impressed me so far. These people are no Lib Dem infiltrators; they’re the next wave of proper Conservative cavalry.
Yes, I admit there are too many in that 120-strong Tory roster who are, frankly, in the wrong party. But there are also many who are exactly where they should be.
The Conservative Party was hijacked. And yes, I’ll blame Dougie Smith and the CCHQ candidate department until I’m blue in the face. But the future can be reclaimed.
The way forward? It’s simple. Robert Jenrick needs to lead. Have you seen him lately? The man’s been out stopping fare dodgers like he’s Batman with a briefcase this morning. Give him a cape and a mandate, and let him bulldoze CCHQ into the Thames and then rebuild it. I will be the first in line to help.
Then what? We build a coalition. Reform’s muscle. Tory muscle-memory and brains. Never again can we let the socialists creep in through the backdoor of our disunity. It’s time to out-think, out-fight, and out-govern the lot of them.
Because patriotism without a plan is just theatre. And theatre doesn’t run countries.
Let’s win back our country. Together. Strategically.
By Claire Bullivant.
Join us at the Great British PAC.
I understand stats. I can also read. Electoral calculus shows that with a 3-way split in our FPTP system, a majority in parliament can be won with around 27% of the vote, possibly 25%, all depending how it splits (it’s about winning seats, not the overall vote share).
So if 15-20% of meteor-dodging dinosaurs still vote for the blue Labour party, Reform can win a majority in the HoC with much less than they are polling now.
I too was annoyed by Yusuf’s silly treatment of Lowe. I can only hope it was driven by a desire to avoid defending the indefensible (as the Tories did in previous parliaments).
However, the suggestion that Reform “don’t have a plan” is risible. What they lay out on their web site is better than anything I’ve ever seen from any party. It shows a joined-up approach to government and to economics rather than the piecemeal statements we see from other parties…
E.g. housing shortage? The old parties all issue a statement saying “we will build X thousand more houses by random date Y”. That ignores the root causes – immigration, low wages, high interest rates. Building houses doesn’t make them affordable – unless you suppress the asset value which drievs away other voters who own houses (they’re not daft).
So I suggest that, despite your protestations to the contrary, your are a dyed-in-the-wool tribal Tory voter, finding it hard to let go of your vested interests (your time served voting Tory). I’ve been there – I got past it.
Adding to my previous post. Regarding this “Reform often says the right things, but they’re not always sure how to do them. And let’s be clear: policy is more than just vibes”.
As noted earlier, “policy” should be more than the Tory version of simply vaguely stating “build more houses”. That’s a wish, not a plan – and it’s not the right wish either.
The governments of the last 30-40 years, and many governments before that, had no idea what they were doing at all. The country is massively in debt (therefore arguments about Reform’s suppsoed lack of costing their policies is, frankly, laughable) and social cohesion is almost non-existent. What plan are we working to now? What plan did we work to for the previous 14 years? Your position is a non-argument, a collander trying to hold water.
And the there’s this: “Because I do believe in the brains we still have. Robert Jenrick. Suella Braverman. Priti Patel. These are experienced, legal-political powerhouses. They actually know how the law works. Rob and Suella are both actually barristers”.
Laughable. Their tenure saw net migration at almost a million in a year. Their so-called “policy” (lol) to “reduce immigration to tens of thousands” (without any plan as to how to achieve it).
Jenrick came into the HoC as a Cameronite. He was mentored by Anna Soubry, she of remainer fame/infamy. Even I can see that his Damascene conversion to the right wing is just too fast, too recent and too convenient to be treated with anything but the disdain it deserves.
As for being barristers… good grief. Lammy was a barrister. Enough said?
At best, these people think law is a substitute for politics – it isn’t. The standard of barristers is as variable as you see in any other profession. And… to anyone who puts trust in lawyers… I have some bridges to sell you.