Albie Amankona: The right needs grown-ups, not grifters

Albie Amankona is a broadcaster, financial analyst, vice-chair of LGBT+ Conservatives, and co-founder of Conservatives Against Racism.

It always starts the same way. Someone says, “We need to be radical.” And it ends with someone insisting the state should both nationalise the utilities and abolish income tax. All before pudding.

I recently found myself in the middle of one such conversation. A prominent Reform-adjacent online activist — let’s call him ‘the poster boy for algorithm-approved outrage’ — was holding court amongst admirers. Cigar in hand, linen suit immaculately pressed, sipping liquor from a crystal glass in a Mayfair members’ club (naturally), he looked every inch the metropolitan elite he claims to detest.

Reflecting on the future of the British right, Reform UK’s economic vision came up, and I, ever the spoilsport, asked the obvious question: how do you raise the personal allowance to £20,000, nationalise utilities, and lift the two-child benefit cap?

His answer? “Waste.” He cited NAO findings that fraud and error alone cost taxpayers between £55 billion and £81 billion annually.

Technically true — just like it’s technically true I own a gym membership. The trick is actually using it, and I do. Identifying waste isn’t the same as reclaiming it. I pressed again. What would Reform do differently?

“Be radical,” he said, in the manner of Liz Truss. The conversation detoured into Reform’s greatest hits: council waste, leaving the ECHR, cutting foreign aid, stopping the boats. All things I agree with. None remotely relevant to bridging a £150–200 billion fiscal gap. When I pointed this out, he pivoted back to migration and, for good measure, declared I was the reason the Tories are “f**ked.”

Clearly my polite persistence was starting to grate. Things turned tetchy. As I stood up, he tried to land a jibe about my GB News exit. It flopped like a Reform economic policy announcement.

Reform’s economics aren’t just unserious. They’re anti-serious. They promise European-style public services, large-scale nationalisation, low taxes, and no plans for growth. Fantasy. But the truth is, recent incarnations of the Conservative Party haven’t been much better.

Tory governments have spent the last decade dodging reality. They’ve opened the door for populist fantasists by refusing to confront the country’s structural problems — kicking the housing crisis, productivity stagnation, uncontrolled immigration, and public sector inefficiency down the road while printing money and inflating asset bubbles. They ran out of seriousness long before this lot started monetising the void.

Now, with the hull already breached, you get characters like Jake Berry. Useless in government, now defecting to Reform, pretending to be outraged at a mess they helped create. It’s the political equivalent of setting fire to the kitchen and then storming out because dinner isn’t ready. How is it possible that productivity in the UK has barely budged since 2008, in an age of smartphones, high-speed internet, 5G and automation? Fairweather politicians like Berry, that’s how.

Take energy. Everything we consume is linked to its price. Food, transport, heating, building materials. Bring energy costs down, and we bring down the cost of living across the board. Yet Reform’s idea of an energy policy is to ban the infrastructure needed to deliver it. Cheap power with no wires.

Housing follows the same pattern. For most working families, rent or mortgage payments swallow 40 to 50 percent of their income. Build more homes, lower prices, increase disposable income, and people start families, invest in their communities, spend in the economy. It’s not complex. It’s basic economics.

We end up with hosepipe bans every summer in one of the rainiest countries in Europe because we haven’t built a reservoir since I was born. The country is full of minor crises that all stem from the same problem. Not enough gets built, and supply doesn’t keep up with immigration-linked population growth.

On spending, the contradictions are just as bold. We told 18-year-olds they could afford £9,000 tuition fees and a ridiculous interest rate. The same voices now argue that millionaires must get winter fuel payments, or the social contract will collapse. At the time, I supported the tuition fees policy. I didn’t join my friends at the protests. I believed the country needed to make hard choices. So why is that logic only ever applied to those under 40?

I tried to make this point directly. There’s no way to meaningfully cut taxes or control spending without confronting the sacred cows of British politics: the NHS funding model and entitlement related benefits, like pensions. All parties refuse to touch them. He, true to form, ignored the point and pivoted back to migration and ad hominems.

Unless we start building homes, energy, transport, water, social and communications infrastructure — whilst cutting and reforming where it actually matters — the British state will stay bloated and broke, promising everything and delivering very little.

All of this creates a gap and an opportunity. The country’s ready for something better.

Her name is Kemi Badenoch.

She’s a rare figure in British politics, one of the few who might say, “No, you can’t have absolutely everything.” More importantly, she could make the case for what comes next — a programme of conservative renewal rooted in growth, realism, and national responsibility. Not vibes politics. Not magical thinking.

If she chooses to seize the moment, there’s space for a serious conservative counter-offer. One grounded in supply-side reform, fiscal honesty, slashing unsustainable migration, a muscular civic nationalism that demands integration, and the political will to confront the very vested interests that Reform pander to and too many Conservatives indulge.

That would mean facing down the real drivers of public spending, including age-related entitlements. It would mean fixing a planning system that blocks growth. It would mean standing up to the party’s reflexive NIMBYism and politely telling some of our most loyal voters that endless rising house prices, printed money, and government subsidies aren’t an economic strategy.

Reform isn’t the future. Conservatives have been to this movie before — it’s Boris Johnson 2.0. No wonder Jake Berry and Andrea Jenkyns feel right at home. Yes, Nigel Farage says popular things. Who disagrees with deporting foreign criminals or halving crime? No one. But his plans are a warmed-up fantasy for those who mistake soundbites for solutions.

If the Conservative Party wants to survive, it needs to stop pretending and start building. Fast.

Kemi, over to you.