Mark Jenkinson is the former MP for Workington and a former Government whip.
Given my history, I occasionally get people encouraging me to join Reform. They all get the same answer – we Conservatives must hold our nerve and give Kemi the time to build the platform from which we can win the next election.
I’m naturally conservative – I believe in personal responsibility, personal liberty, free markets, democracy and the rule of law. Above all, I believe that excessive government intervention is rarely to the benefit of anyone. I believe that we should value our providers and wealth creators, whether they’re our farmers or entrepreneurs starting businesses. A rising tide lifts all boats.
I have represented my community at every level of government, from the parish council to ministerial office. But not always as a Conservative.
In 2012 I left the Conservatives and joined UKIP to fight for a referendum on our membership of the EU, returning to the Conservatives in 2016. It was during that time that I was first elected to my local parish and borough councils.
The senior movers in Reform are the same frauds now as they were then. That means I have deep personal experience of the characters behind the party. It was reported when I left UKIP that I had done so over concerns around internal democracy – plus ça change!
I saw people say things they didn’t believe, or intend to deliver on, the closer they got to power. They pretend that the answers to very complex problems are really very simple. Many good people seeking solutions to the problems of the day are drawn in by them, including as candidates.
And just as UKIP did in 2015, they see the opinion polls shifting in their favour, they think they have conservative votes ‘locked in’, and they’re shifting leftwards. They’re turning into a high-tax, high-spend, big-state party – picking up Lib Dem and Labour councillors and going soft on immigration.
Many of those trying to encourage me to ‘defect’ do so on the basis that they stand for conservative values. That is demonstrably false. They’re not conservative, and any talk of ‘uniting the right’ should be taken with a pinch of salt. Recent elections show they’re now attracting Labour votes en masse, which will further entrench their shift leftward.
They have high profile uber-Remainer Charlie Mullins saying he’s going to be a candidate, such a patriot that he’s moved abroad to pay less tax in the UK. Is he going to stand in Marbella? Farage says he’s ‘thoughtful’ about allowing Shamima Begum back in the UK, and that we can’t deport hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants – yet deportation is the current law of this land. Their Welsh leader said mass immigration has been a positive.
People don’t look at the detail behind the policy, Reform’s taxation policy will take some people out of tax altogether, so removing their stake in the decisions made by the politicians they elect while increasing taxes massively on most families in middle income brackets. Their plans to renationalise industry would shift private company’s problems to the state, and into general taxation. It will ultimately deliver worse services at higher costs, wherever those costs are hidden.
I get the anger; I see why people are looking for an alternative. None of this is to ignore or belittle the lessons that we need to learn as a party. We have a significant uphill battle to regain the trust of the electorate, and we also have to articulate why Reform are not the answer.
In government, Brexit paralysis and the pandemic slowed us down and we didn’t deliver fast enough. It also sent some of my former colleagues quite mad, for which we paid a heavy price. But alongside that we ceded the narrative on the many, many good things that we did do. We allowed others to fill the vacuum, and a lie is halfway around the world, etc.
But we also have to recognise the other barrier we faced – we spent decades outsourcing decisions: to the EU, to quangos, and to arms-length bodies. That came back to bite us, and Labour are already finding the same.
As Kemi said when she launched the Policy Renewal Programme
“We replaced the principles-based government that brought us success with the managerialism of Labour that gave our power to quangos and courts”. She had already correctly diagnosed the problem in her leadership launch bid saying: “We need to reboot, reset and rewire the way that government works so that it can serve the public.”
The electorate can see that, in virtually their every interaction with the state. Government at all levels appears to take more and deliver less, all the while seemingly making decisions that benefit those who break the rules, to the detriment of those of us who abide by them.
Nigel Farage is a master at harnessing that anger, just as he did as an MEP. He’s made a career of it, and he now has others with him in Parliament and councils across the country, built in his image – profiting from problems while offering no real solutions. That is exactly how Labour have ended up in the mess they’re in already. It only serves to further decimate trust in politics, from which no-one benefits in the end.
Before now he’s never had to deliver. Now Reform control councils and have regional mayors, the hiding places have disappeared. They campaigned in council elections on freezing immigration and reducing taxes, while offering better services. All eyes are now on them – to govern is to choose. The public anger is less easy to control when there is no-one else to blame.
I have knocked doors for well over a decade. I have seen the rise and fall of UKIP. I have seen the Conservatives go from 8.8 per cent in a national election – that Farage’s Brexit Party won – to the largest Conservative majority since the 1980s, all in a matter of months.
So I say to Conservative Home readers as I say to those encouraging me to defect – hold your nerve. Kemi Badenoch is renewing our party, and all conservatives should join her in that fight.
