The British Right is in crisis. Boring leadership, bereft of ideas, out of energy; but lo, westwards, a hero comes.
A bombastic, portly figure, a blonde John Bull with an impish sense of humour, an enthusiasm for life and multiple children. He may not be a details man and he may have a colourful past, but he has an infectious smile that makes it impossible not to like him. He has the common touch, this great saviour; those in the know whisper his name as the man to save London.
No, I speak not of the Great Boris comeback that some Critic readers fear, some relish and that Nadine Dorries froths over, but of the Bosh Bombshell — Tom Skinner.
Tom Skinner, once a contestant on Series 15 of The Apprentice, has carved out an unlikely national niche for himself, as an archetypal English small businessman, with big dreams and bigger appetites. Online, he posts videos of himself admiring vast plates of curry or lasagne, delivering messages of unrelenting positivity with his trademark sign-off: “Bosh.”
But behind the geezerish charm lies something more politically pointed. In the run-up to the 2024 U.S. election, Skinner declared his admiration for Donald Trump, saying “I love Trump, I think he’s brilliant” and arguing that his return to the White House would help the UK economy. He’s also gone in hard on London Mayor Sadiq Khan, blaming him for rising knife crime and the general decline of the capital.
Esoteric Skinnerism is not a programme, or even a politics, it’s simply a vibe
The language can be crude, the delivery invariably laddish, but all of it lands. There is a genuineness to Skinner, a common touch that makes his interventions feel more like pub chat than political speech — a combination that makes him a potent force to be harnessed. As a result, what might be called Esoteric Skinnerism is currently popular with many on the right. He was recently invited to speak at the “Now & England” conference. As Nicholas Harris writes in the New Statesman, Skinner didn’t really know anything about the event or his fellow panellists: “He’d simply accepted an invitation to talk about ‘how much I love England’.” He received a rousing cheer when he told the crowd that he thought he could do a better job of running London than Sadiq Khan. More than a little of it was intended as encouragement. Have, as Harris argues, the “reactionary right sniffed out a new champion in their battle against the libs”?
They may have done, but it’s important to distinguish between the thing itself and the image of the thing.
Esoteric Skinnerism is not a programme, or even a politics, it’s simply a vibe — admittedly an attractive one — of unapologetically patriotic blokeishness. But as appealing as Skinner is as a personality, what his most ambitious admirers are engaging in is ultimately a kind of patriotic simulacrum, an endless repeating of the gestures of common sense and national pride, with no real political content behind them. As I suggested at the top of this piece, this is a play we’ve sat through before — and it ends less happily than Oedipus Rex.
What the right needs — as Boris and Trump #1 proved — is more than an energetic, upbeat, funny and charismatic figure that can sweep us to power and land a few left hooks on the Bloody Woke or the Loony Left. That lesson should have been learned. The right does not need another blonde bombshell; it needs a machine politician who can count, it needs people in government who understand second-order consequences, it needs a plan to rapidly re-inflate the decision space and it needs to find people willing to do the necessary. Given this, the energy re-directed to Esoteric Skinnerism is a waste.
But his importance should not be dismissed. James Orr, the academic and organiser who invited Skinner to speak at “Now & England”, is a smart man. He is also a friend of J.D Vance. It does not take long comparing the two to realise Skinner’s potential as a Vance-like figure is significantly limited, but that is not where Skinner’s significance lies. Trump’s electoral success depended on converting huge swathes of previously Democratic white working class men to his side; Skinner is not a potential leader, but a reminder. He is an image of the thing; his importance lies not just in his personality, but in what he represents, a visible and vocal representation of the type of voter the right must win back.
To put it bluntly he is an adornment of our victory, not an instrument of its arrival. But someone else must take the keys to Britain’s white van from the gutter.
