FOR ALL the sound and fury around Makerfield, there are two very sombre facts that the right of British politics must digest. The first is that the supremely efficient tactical voting operation on the left of politics threatens to bring in a permanent left supremacy: in the 2024 General Election the combined vote share of the Liberal Democrats and the Greens totalled 10 per cent, whereas the combined total in 2026 was just over 1 per cent, the margin almost exactly mirroring the increase in Labour’s vote share.
The second is that the right, as well as being very badly split (thank you, Nigel Farage) seems to have reached a hard ceiling of support. Reform has at best plateaued, amidst complaints that its blokeish style is off-putting to many female voters. At the same time, the party has undoubtedly alienated much of its base by appearing to become ‘Tory 2.0’. For the same reasons the hardline Restore’s long-term prospects look even worse: its cheerleaders may state with some justice that 7 per cent from a standing start within a few months of launch is impressive, but they are in denial if they think that they won’t hit a ceiling of support even more quickly – and at a substantially lower level – than Reform.
We can’t do much about left-wing tactical voting, but we can attempt to build a coalition that outmatches its effects. Leaving aside the enormous and seemingly intractable problem of the split on the right, the right must learn to repackage its policies without diluting them, by becoming both radical and respectable, if you will, if it is to ever assemble the broad coalition of support necessary to win an election. Luckily, this is achievable if we first understand the basis of two distinct culturally phenomena, namely the nature of left-wing politics and the culture of what is often called ‘Middle England’, and then learn the lessons from the most talented and politically successful conservative leader of recent times, Margaret Thatcher, who navigated both superbly.
Firstly, let’s look at our political culture. It is often said that to be right-wing may be intellectually satisfying, but to be left-wing is emotionally so: even if their ideas don’t work the left always tell themselves that at least they are the good guys, the ones with morals and ideals. In our narcissistic age, this sense of moral superiority has metastasised into something truly malignant, being used to justify everything from the negation of democracy during the Brexit years, cancel culture, two-tier policing, anti-white racism and all manner of downright wickedness.
However, even now the right instinctively tend to attack left-wing ideas intellectually rather than morally, only to wonder repeatedly why they make so little headway against opponents who, whether it is Net Zero, trans rights or mass immigration, are far more interested in the dopamine hit of expressing what they see as noble ideals rather than their often-terrible practical outcomes.
The second cultural factor is the sensibilities of the largely Southern English and psephologically highly influential middle classes, who put great emphasis on moderation, gentility and good manners, even sometimes at the expense, from your commentator’s jaundiced Northern perspective, of preferring a softly spoken lie to a harshly expressed truth.
Now let us turn to Thatcher. Amongst British conservative leaders, Margaret Thatcher was truly unique: no typical fey high-Anglican Tory, armed instead with the moral certainties and fiery sermons of her Methodist chapel upbringing, she marched aggressively on to territory the left thought they owned by entitlement, and attacked socialism morally as much as she did intellectually. The left were thrown into instant confusion and never learnt to cope with this double whammy. It is true that in later years Thatcher’s increasingly abrasive style did alienate many, but for a time, as well as discombobulating her opponents, her appeal to morality and not just self-interest gave both middle England and upwardly mobile elements in the working classes what the social scientist Matt Goodwin terms ‘permission to support’ – people could vote Tory, support radical action but crucially feel morally good and civilised about doing so.
Since Thatcher’s day, no leader on the right of British politics has come close to replicating her achievement of this sustained defeat of the left both at the intellectual and moral level. In contrast, a succession of pusillanimous Conservative party leaders has reverted to dismal type, at best fighting defensive actions simply seeking to slow down the pace of radical left-wing change. Brexit offered a brief opportunity for right wing radical reform, but its full promise was soon extinguished, and it never dented the Metropolitan elite’s or the broader left’s sense of superiority.
Imagine how the great Lady would have gone about matters today! She would not, I think, have fallen into the trap of uttering such slogans as ‘millions must go’ – a great Restore soundbite and galvanising to the base, certainly, but with crude and repellent connotations for many others, not least because of the sinister ethno-nationalism associated with the Restore base.
Instead, let’s allow ourselves a moment to fantasise what she might have said:
‘It is morally deeply wrong – indeed wicked – to continue this policy of mass immigration at such terrible expense to both the social and economic security of people’s lives, not least for women and gay people, whose present and future is profoundly threatened by the influx of people who do not share our Western values.
‘Indeed, it is not enough to stop immigration, we must take radical action to reverse it to restore a safe, shared, kind and free society based on Christian principles. As painful and difficult as this may be, it is now the only moral course of action before us. By refusing to confront this truth, this Labour government and broader left have shown themselves to be cowardly, immoral and hypocritical, not least due to their callous disregard for the most vulnerable groups in society such as working-class girls that traditionally the Labour party purported to care about. What a terrible betrayal of that party’s historic mission, what a terrible betrayal of our people!’
See what our Maggie does here? Language like this both signals to the base that you are not going to shy aware from necessarily radicalism but at the same time portrays your action as a moral crusade rather than a crude, atavistic hatred of the ‘other’. Unlike either Reform’s or Restore’s messaging, it marches deep into the left’s territory and drives a wedge between some of its client groups, as well as stating that the left has betrayed its ancestral mission towards the working classes. Crucially, by portraying the left as morally compromised, it denies them their dopamine hit of narcissistic self-regard. Just as with any addict denied their fix, the response would be aggressive, hysterical and unhinged, thereby ceding all moral and intellectual ground. Most important of all, it gives both working-class and middle England full ‘permission to support’.
Take all this on board, and all we would then need in both Reform and Restore are morally convincing and self-confident figures to bring the fight to the enemy (ethno-nationalists from the Lotus Eaters diaspora need not apply), and watch that coalition of support mushroom.
There remains of course the very serious problem of right-wing division, but that is a conversation for another day.
