This article is taken from the August-September 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £25.
With the Conservative Party on its knees, many people seem either to hope or expect that Reform UK will replace it as the major right-wing party in British politics. Yet the evidence offers scant support for the belief. Reform can certainly kill (or at least, mortally wound) the Conservative Party if it sets its mind to it; replacing it is another matter.
The bear case for Reform as the great right hope has two parts, both of which are anchored in the British right’s most fundamental strategic weakness: a gaping talent deficit.
In Reform’s case, this is evident on two levels. The first, more obvious one is that, whilst Nigel Farage has many strengths, institution-building is not one of them. A consistent feature of his political life is a congenital inability to allow his parties to grow bigger than he is. Neither spending controls nor collective decision-making nor potential rivals are allowed to restrict his freedom of manoeuvre.
Farage’s leadership instincts are those of a Macedonian king, happiest at the head of a cavalry phalanx which simply follows him into whatever gap he espies in the ranks of his enemies. As a short-term tactic, this is undeniably effective — just as it was for Alexander. But just as the Alexandrian empire imploded upon the death of its founder, so too is it impossible to imagine Reform surviving without Farage.
That itself is a serious problem, if one imagines for one moment the prospect of a Farage government actually trying to work the levers of state. But it is downstream of an even bigger one: that whilst Farage is a master at channelling inchoate popular anger, he doesn’t actually represent any substantial social force or coherent philosophy. One suspects he can’t build institutions bigger than himself in part because, at the other end, he is not drawn from any.
I do not mean by this the tedious charge that he is inauthentic; where “Boris Johnson” is a persona donned by a man called Alex, Farage appears to present his authentic self in public. Instead I mean that he represents no social bloc, no defined body of sentiment or opinion. This in two ways severely compounds Reform’s problems as contender to be the next major right-wing party.
First, it leaves Farage — and there is nothing to Reform’s agenda but whatever Farage says it is — very exposed both to the chill winds of elite opinion and the temptation to make tactical plays at the expense of any broader strategic vision. Recent experience offers examples of both: his suggestion that Robert Jenrick will outflank him on immigration and his U-turn on the two-child Universal Credit limit.
Second, it limits the calibre of Reform’s recruits. Farage’s penchant for authoritarian leadership is not itself a weakness — a small number of committed people, skilfully led, can achieve much — but, whilst able men and women might submit to a cause or programme, far fewer will submit to a personality cult. The poor quality of Reform’s personnel then justifies Farage’s control-freakery. Daniel Finkelstein has noted that:
One of Farage’s deepest beliefs is that he is surrounded by idiots, saved from political disaster and racist faux pas mainly by his own political savvy. [ … ] He observes, usually correctly, that his rival is comically lacking in political skills and was only there in the first place because of Farage’s own charismatic appeal.
There is much truth to that. But the chicken-and-egg nature of the problem is best illustrated by the following entry in that ancient internet classic, the Evil Overlord List:
I reserve the right to execute any henchmen who appear to be a little too intelligent, powerful or devious. However, if I do so, I will at some subsequent point shout “Why am I surrounded by these incompetent fools?”
This should not be read as an apologia for the Conservative Party. The right-wing talent crisis manifests differently there because, whilst much diminished, it is still an old and well-established institution with a lot of ruin in it. But they face essentially the same problems — poor personnel and philosophical incoherence — and they stem from the same root: a withered social base.
On close examination, apparent contrasts between the Tories and Reform start to disappear. There might seem a gulf between Farage’s dynamism and the Conservatives’ rudderlessness, but each is simply the same instinct: that of the easy short-term decision as it plays out in office versus opposition. The Tories might seem to have a deeper, historically-rooted philosophy, but in practice the old rubrics about personal responsibility, lower taxes and a smaller state were not reflected in the party’s actual record.
Like Farage, the current Conservative Party represents nothing beyond itself, and this hurts it in the same way. Lacking firm convictions or roots in deep social institutions, Tory politicians have become extremely deferential to polite opinion, as expressed by innumerable pressure groups.
Whilst better able to attract a residuum of talent, its candidates have in recent years been drawn increasingly from the most active portion of its shrivelled membership: councillors. The result is an rising number of MPs who view themselves first as a Strong Voice for Little Whingeing and only second a national legislator (if that).
At the same time, the Tories losing sight of their historic role as a sectional interest — albeit with the borders of that section up for debate — has led to them neglecting to maintain the social processes which produce Tories, the unsurprising consequence of which is that they have not been produced and Tory support amongst younger generations has collapsed.
At the level of active politics, this manifests as a lack of talent, not merely a lack of day-to-day political skills — which men like Farage do possess — but those skills married to real convictions and the necessary will to power to pursue them in office. Formal politics is a struggle for power between elites, and a sufficient stock of suitable people is the table stake. Without it, all you can do is shout.
The bleak prospect facing right-wingers in Britain is that Reform could kill the Tories but not replace them, at least not as an effective party of government. If that comes to pass, the most likely reason is that the apparent diversity of party options mask an underlying void symptomatic of the deeper problem.
If the right isn’t producing sufficient elites, the critical question is why. Classic political theory suggests an answer. In his seminal work Mind and Society, political scientist Vilfredo Pareto posited the concept of “circulation of elites”. Simply put, the strength of an elite depends on its ability to bring in new talent and eject dead weight.
But from where are they drawn? Pareto argued that a developed society possesses a range of “social forces” (the arts, commerce, religion, etc.) and that democratic politics is ultimately the clash of those interests. A given party might represent one or a coalition of several; if the social force underpinning the party declines, so too will the party itself — unless it finds a new one.
One can readily apply this analysis to the historical Conservative Party, which was remarkably adept at placing itself at the head of new social forces as old ones, such as the landed interest or the cause of Protestantism, waned in importance. It is difficult to identify any coherent social force (save the gerontocratic interest) served by either the Conservatives or Reform today.
Worse, it’s hard to see what they might be. Lots of voters are very unhappy, but there is not much sectional coherence to the misery. The great mass of the voters opposes both tax rises and serious spending cuts; some two-thirds of working-age adults are net recipients of state largesse, and the remaining third has no net-contributor class consciousness.
Over the past century, and especially since 1997, the relentless expansion of the boundaries of government has captured most identifiable “social forces”. The state is this country’s chief patron of the arts, with predictable consequences for art. It all but abolished, and only partly restored, the old independence of schools and universities, with equally predictable consequences for education. Huge power is now wielded by quangos, but Conservatives showed little ability to staff them with allies (and only intermittent interest in trying).
Again, there is the chicken-and-egg question. The FT journalist Janan Ganesh argued that “barring the introduction of universal conscription into arts organisations, academic faculties, publishing houses, official bureaucracies, quangos and public broadcasters, these entities will more often than not tilt left”, for the simple reason that right-wingers keep choosing more lucrative careers in business. These institutions then create the “ambient moral pressure” which pushes everything left.
Certainly, there is some truth to this. But it is also surely easier to choose the path-less-remunerated if one has reasonable expectations of finding fulfilment in one’s vocation. Perhaps too few right-wingers attempt careers in academia, publishing or the arts — but if so, part of the reason must be a plausible expectation that they would struggle either to build any sort of career in them or pursue projects which aligned to their unfashionable values if they did.
None of this is unfixable, in theory. There is no shortage of money on the right, and it has until recently proven adept enough at winning power. But right-wing donors have shown little interest in funding cultural institutions nor right-wing politicians in defunding them. If right-wing politics thus seems too often like inherited slogans tacked onto unfocused rage — sound and fury, signifying nothing — that’s why.
