Reform is right to fear the return of Boris

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0:37Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, the Spectator's daily politics podcast. I'm Osk Redmondson and I'm joined today by Tim Shipman and James Heal. Now Tim, Boris Johnson is on manoeuvres, or so it appears from your poll call this week. I'm not sure they're quite manoeuvres. I think this is a sort of a politician who everybody is always sort of mildly intrigued by raising an eyebrow and everybody going, what did he mean by that? And as James knows as well, Boris has sort of emerged a bit in recent weeks. The 10th anniversary of Brexit was kind of the first moment. It probably would have looked a bit odd if he hadn't said something.

1:15but he did a long video on Instagram. And normally Boris Johnson only appears on Instagram when wife Carrie sort of pictures him cycling through the countryside with a shower bang full of children trailing in his wake and all the rest of it. So to have him actually do a sort of formal kind of piece to camera saying, well, you know, you were right to back Brexit and this is why, and, you know, we shouldn't go back in and all that sort of stuff, fine. But he's also appeared at, there was this sort of Right of Centre ARC conference recently. He gave a speech at that. He did a long interview with GB News.

1:46And there's a slight sort of ripple of what's going on here, going through reform, because Boris has been off the pitch and very successfully put off the pitch. I don't know who actually came up with the phrase Boris Wave for the... From the online right. Yeah. I mean, it's just... Anons. Anons. On Twitter. But whoever came up with that has effectively finished any chance of Boris Johnson returning in any kind of meaningful role to frontline politics at any time soon. And you couldn't imagine a world had that not happened where Kemi-Badalock was struggling a year ago, where, you know, sort of jumping to the charismatic mother, as it were, might have been the sort of thing you would have begun to hear from certain corners of the Conservative Party.

2:29That didn't happen. And Boris Wave is sort of, you know, will be put on his gravestone effectively. But do you think that's percolated through to the voters, the electorate? I think it has a bit because, I mean, you know, Boris Johnson still makes the argument that, you know, even in this video the other day, that we got the ability to control our borders. And then brackets, I chose not to. And we swapped a bunch of Eastern European migrants for a bunch of subcontinental migrants, which I don't think is probably what most people who backed Brexit were voting for. So reform very successfully sort of stuck that on Boris Johnson.

3:01and it means he's you know he spent a lot of time earning a lot of money and spending time with his family and everybody who knows him said he was a bit grumpy and now he's actually quite good spirits and he's enjoying writing when the mood takes him and all that kind of thing but I had lunch with someone a couple of months ago who kind of said he's beginning to sort of look around and pay attention and be a bit more interested again he's in touch with kemi badenok he had dinner with her a couple of months ago. She's been listening to him. He's been offering sort of framing advice, some sort of messaging advice.

3:36She doesn't take all of it because her mode of speaking is very different from his. But there are a couple of things that she's picked up on that he suggested. This idea of a tax doom loop is one of them, where he sort of argues Labour taxed everybody, killed growth even further, and then needed to put up taxes again. And that is a theme that Baden-Ock has adopted. But it just comes at a time when reformer in a bit of a funk, Farage seems to be a bit sort of irritated by the attention he's been getting over his finances they haven't really stormed forward in the polls since since you know what was a very good performance in the local elections and Farage at the start of the year was saying he would have destroyed the Tory party well the Tory party's on 20 % at the moment and and reforms only on 25 % so the Tories are still alive and Boris Johnson if he is there is a useful campaigning limb and what it all boils down to ultimately, and I've spoken to three or four people who know him well, they say he hates Farage and he doesn't want Farage to be Prime Minister and it is entirely mutual.

4:37So you speak to reform people and they say, you know, Nigel has never been given the credit he deserves for pulling half of his candidates out in 2019. That's the only reason Boris Johnson won a landslide. Tories say, well, if you pulled the other half out, we'd have got 120 majority instead of 80. So, but there's no love lost there. you know 10 years on from Brexit there's still this kind of feeling that you know who really got Brexit was it Boris Johnson and Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings on one campaign or was it Nigel Farage on the other the correct answer in my view having written the history of this is that it required both of them to appeal to different audiences.

5:09I think that there are two key dates in kind of the law of the modern right 2016 and 2019. 2016 of course you see the vote leave and then leave.eu against each other and then 2019 you see sort of the boris blonde zeppelin kind of crowding out for our pushing him out i think in the kind of leave.eu reforms fear the people around forage boris johnson occupies the role of snowball the pig in animal farm chased off the reservation but always there over the horizon evoked to inspire fear among the faithful and i think that But very much that sense of snowball could come back, Boris could return. Are those conversations that are happening, are they worried about the potential Boris return?

5:52I would say that they are intrigued, concerned. And maybe if you agree of worry, there's an element of, well, this is the guy who pushed us out of the way in 2016, who pushed us out of the way in 2019. And I think that the 10-year anniversary is a really interesting time to revisit some of these discussions. He who controls the past controls the future. I think there has been a shift in 10 years. I think 2016 was very much Boris the winner, Farage goes off, UKIP were crushed in 2017. There was a lot of theories in 2019 that UKIP had been a kind of holding pen who'd taken people from Labour to the Tories.

6:23And they'd gone UKIP in 2015 and then they went to the Tories in 2019 and completed the journey. In retrospect, 10 years on, there will be a case that if reform wins the next election, as they claim, it could be that 2019 was the holding pattern, that they went UKIP in 2015, went Tory in 2019, and then back maybe to reform in 24 and 29. And where is Boris Johnson's coalition now? It's interesting. The breakdown of people who voted Conservative in 2019 for Boris Johnson, 42 % of them are voting Conservative, 40 % of them are voting Reform and just 7 % are voting for Labour. So while Andy Burnham's trying to appeal in some ways to that similar audience by kind of recreating the sort of levelling up stuff, that vote is basically split between the Tories and Reform.

7:07and unless the Tories can get some of that back and Boris Johnson might be a route to do that they're going to be in big trouble at the next election but I think you've got this whole sort of interesting dynamic on the right it's now not just two players, it's three and Rupert Lowe is really annoying people in reform because apart from just falling out with Farage and making a nuisance of himself he's now peeling off votes not in vast numbers but you saw in the Maker Fiat by-election he got like 6-7 % And, you know, that in the end would not have been enough for reform to stop Andy Burnham winning that seat.

7:42But if Rupert Lowe starts routinely peeling off six or seven percent, that is very probably the difference between a decent sized reform majority and not even being the largest party at the next election. And that, you know, if you then chuck Boris Johnson into the mix, who might have the ability to peel off a couple more percent, that could, you know, cumulatively have quite a big impact on reform's chances of forming a government. I mean, Dominic Cummings obviously has this wonderful phrase, the OODA loop, which is about military terms to refer to or thinking. And Rupert Lowe was in the OODA loop of reform in that make-up by-election.

8:15And ultimately, he got what the poll said, which was 6, 7 percent, seeing what 6.8 percent, exactly what the Sunday Times poll did and exactly what it was at the end. They were a spoiler. They were never going to win that seat. And yet it allowed some of them at the top of reform to bother them inordinately to go off the ball. And the same with Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson was like a gnat. you know he's not going to be the leader he's not going to probably get back into parliament anytime soon but he can go around the country canvassing barnstorming like farage used to and that can distract them and i think the key thing is to how do you shut them out the conversation and what we're seeing right now is i think the attention economy is key in british politics and took kane bay not maybe a while to get back into this to grab attention and headlines he certainly worked out to do that boris johnson knows how to cut through and i think the most potent attack on farage until recently was this sense perhaps and it's probably why there's the endurance the middle middle class and the upper middle class Tory bases there's something a little bit off about him is what some Conservatives think and that line a whiff of sulphur which Tim refers to in his column.

9:11That is the line that Boris Johnson uses privately and he's been using that for quite some time and he's now going around telling everybody well I was right I was right because look at what's happening with Farage's finances. Of course it takes one to know one. Well it certainly does and also I mean look I was probably the first person to write about OODA loops because Dominic Cummings told me all about that when I was writing the first book on the referendum but the simpler way for the reader to understand oodaloops is living rent-free in their head and that is what boris johnson does for a lot of reform people and it's what rupert lowe is out doing for a lot of reform people and that's the sort of they're just a bit you know to say that they're really worried i think would be overdoing it yeah but the fact that one of them sat down at lunch and said what's boris up to yeah now a lot of people have said what's boris up to over the years, most of his Tory Prime Minister's cabinet colleagues and some of his ex-wives.

10:04But yeah, he's rent-free in their heads and as James says, there's a lot of kind of law here, there's a lot of kind of history. Yeah, so do you agree with James' analysis then that, I mean, he probably wouldn't come back as an MP, certainly not as late. I think that's very, very unlikely. It's more a case that he's having a sniff around and he's putting his shoulder, because don't forget he did nothing much to help Rishi Sunak when Sunak was trying to sort of save Tory seats at the election some of the people who were advising Johnson said look go and do one event because then at least you've done something and you can't then be accused of sort of sitting it out and watching the whole thing collapse so he did one event with Sunak very awkward go and read my fourth book there's a delicious account of all the sort of behind the scenes maneuverings but even in the car on the way to this event Boris was saying why should I help this fellow and he didn't call him a fellow It was a four-letter word beginning with C.

10:59Why should I be doing this? Well, yes, let's say chap. Why should I be helping this chap who brought me down? This total chap. Is that still a bit of an indictment of the Conservative Party and the situation they're in at the moment, in that the best asset that they have is Boris Johnson and he's, you know, off the field? I mean, he may not be their best asset. I think a lot of people would say, Kemi Bednock is doing pretty well now. But if you certainly look around the rest of them, it's a pretty short list, let's be honest. I mean, the people admire their sort of young thrusters, the Nick Timothys and the Katie Lambs of this world.

11:30And there's a few effective members of the Shadow Cabinet. You know, there's half a dozen of them who I think you would think we would say were quality performers who deserve a proper cabinet job. And frankly, we're still looking for quite a lot of others. And, you know, but let's not underestimate Boris Johnson. I mean, this country has produced in my sort of adult lifetime only really four or five great campaigners. And that's being extremely generous to David Cameron, if you slip him into the bottom of that list. But, you know, Tony Blair was a very effective campaigner as well as a political leader.

12:05But, you know, in recent years, there have been two great political campaigners. One of them is Nigel Farage, and the other is Boris Johnson. And frankly, they're fighting over a lot of history. They're fighting over the future now. and ultimately what they're fighting over is the status of most kind of consequential politician of their generation and it feels to me like that title ebbs and flows between the two of them a little bit and james just the final question it has been a very difficult month for reform we had the makefield by-election sort of plateaued in the polls questions over this five million pound gift to nigel farage and now also some suggestions that he didn't disclose to parliament the extent of his property portfolio.

12:47A lot of people are asking the question, what is going on with reform at the moment? Can you shed some light on that? So one person offers informal advice to some of the senior members of the party said this quote to me last week. The train has hit the buffers. It's not yet derailed, but it's lost momentum. And I think they're currently working out how to get that momentum, how to get the coals on the fire, how to get them restarted. They've had a lot of discussions, a lot of internal meetings. Currently, I think they're happy to do some internal restructuring. You've seen, obviously, the chairman's been replaced.

13:16David Bull is gone, and now it's Lee Anderson. I think that their conclusions are, with Andy Burnham coming in, there's going to be a point where reform are going to get overtaken by the polls by Labour. They shouldn't lose their heads at that point. Indeed, there are a couple of voices who think that might even be a good thing, in the sense of they then become an insurgent party once again. So keeping the nerve, going through tough times, when a football team loses the lead, come back, that's going to be the key thing. and waiting over the next three or four weeks or so to see what Burnham does, who is chancellor is going to be, fiscal events.

13:47I mean, the big question they're all asking, of course, is snap election. Is that going to happen? I'm reminded of conversations I had a lot in 2023 when it was people on the left saying, well, why doesn't Rishi just get on with the snap election? On the right thinking, well, something might turn up. Now it's the inverse. And I think it's more a conversation on the right are having and saying about the snap election than the left. I think to go back to Tim's early point, the key question comes is about timing. You know, Kimben Ben-Ock is clearly kind of coming into her form much more, but she's up against a time where she's had two big local election defeats, 25 and 26.

14:18Can she turn it around in time? And if there's a snap election, that may well, she won not too well in her seat last time. She obviously had Essex, the local election, not too great. That could really damage the conservatives and cease them to be, you know, the Israeli who said the conservatives are a national party or is nothing. So that's something to watch out for. And reform, it could be a kind of two bites the cherry thing, as someone was saying to me this morning. You know, you could be two elections. And of course, remember, Nigel Farage has always looked at the Reform Party of Canada. It took multiple elections for the Reform Party of Canada to produce a prime minister.

14:46And it wasn't the guy who founded it, which was Preston Manning. So look, I think that they are watching and waiting. It's clearly not been a great month or so. But I think right now it's going to be Burnham at the agenda, waiting to see what he does, and then making their issues accordingly. Interestingly, there were people from the House of Commons authorities circulating at the Spectator Party on Wednesday evening, suggesting that they might be preparing at least for the possibility of a by-election. which, you know, that could come about if Farage is banned from the Commons for more than 10 days.

15:19I think there's a lot of people not in reform who don't necessarily particularly want to see Farage banned because if he had a sort of galvanising by-election which he was then able to win and was able to suddenly play the uni party and all these terrible folk in Westminster are still, you know, sort of conspiring against me, that might actually give them the rallying point and the way of getting that momentum going again if you have a sort of big cathartic by-election where all this is thrashed out. Although I would say Rupert Lowe was also at our party and I think he very much would stand a candidate, which would be interesting in a kind of...

15:55Do you think he would stand himself? Stand down from Yarmouth and go and fight Farage in a battle for the ages? I think given how much of his salary has been invested in good causes of great Yarmouth, I think he'll probably stand again. But just find someone else, maybe. Someone like Alistair Harrison, who was a former UKPA, you know, works for Rupert Lowe. That would be a sort of rich irony there, wouldn't there? But I think that he would intend to fight that. And that would be a kind of interesting moment. But, yeah, I think they love campaigns. And I think now is the kind of big thing. They've got summer.

16:27It's not going to be – last summer reform was all conquering. All the other parties seem to flee before them. Now they've got to work out what comes next. And I think as they prepare for conference, which is the first week of September, bridging the next six, seven, eight weeks, showing that they haven't lost it, that's going to be the key thing. Well, you can keep abreast of what comes next on Coffeehouse Shots. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, James. And thank you for listening.

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