In the complex world of electoral maths, doing the homework to find the right solutions has become the only route to survival

“Another associate of Harborne’s said he was “slightly geeky” and viewed the UK “like a mathematical equation that is producing the wrong answer” FT 5th Dec 2025

This line in a profile of the Thailand based ‘aviation entrepreneur and crypto investor’ known in his home of twenty years as Chakrit Sakunkrit, or Christopher Harborne to Reform UK, to whom he’s donated a whopping £9 million war chest, struck me.

Funnily enough it’s actually applicable to every one of the now five parties vying for life in the UK political landscape.

Aren’t all of them wrestling with a highly complex equation to try and persuade as many British voters as possible that they have the formula to deliver what they want, and at the same time deliver what Britain, in every area of life, needs, to not only survive but thrive?

Harborne, or Sankunkrit, like a large number of people – many who read this site every day – think Reform and Nigel Farage unquestionably has the answer. I don’t share the view it’s unquestionable but the Conservatives have had to accept in 14 years some of their formulas for that equation started producing the wrong answers. They paid for that, and whatever their opponents think, that fact is driving their work on new solutions. There’s still a lot of work to do.

Labour, and  Starmer in particular, seem to have produced 18 months of wrong answers, to the point where astonished opponents have been left asking themselves if the ‘mighty geniuses’ of Labour’s landslide victory in 2024 – the ones that are still left in government that is – haven’t spent their time in office working out the most wrong answers and deliberately picking those to try first.

There are many papers talking about the very visceral dislike of Starmer inside Labour at the moment and how he’s really at threat with the Times revealing that Ed Miliband is seen internally as the favourite to replace him.

I once laughed in front of Ed Miliband when he told me he wanted to be Prime Minister after the electorate had ensured he wasn’t. Well it seems he might get his wish after all, though the reaction on the Right to the news seemed to be the same as mine when reminded of the Disney character Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast singing

“Be our guest, be our guest”. Miliband has been beaten once, he can be again.

However the point is, having argued in opposition they had got the UK equation right, Labour are forced to accept they hadn’t done their homework, and probably should have known that ‘we aren’t Tories’ was so simplistic an answer it wouldn’t have passed muster in a mock for GCSE maths.

Is this all because Reform are right that the two ‘main establishment’ parties can no longer produce the right answer?

They’d certainly argue that, and many are utterly convinced they are right.

They’ve certainly lots to say about the problems that need solving, they’re a little vague on how to fix them. The truth is, like the Conservatives, who’ve had to completely go back to the drawing board, they are still working that out. Farage knows, whatever he says publicly that his new outfit does need to work out real answers that will stand up, and that the longer his party leads the polls, the more demand they’ll be for answers that actually convince.

The same applies to Badenoch as the Conservatives slowly, but noticeably, show the green shoots of revival in those same polls.

It would seem Starmer and Labour cannot pull themselves out of a doom spiral let alone stop the economic one they have undoubtedly fostered, and there’s some reflection this weekend that they are starting to realise whole chunks of that majority are not just at risk, but gone. Red Wall MPs on small majorities in particular.

The hypnotist pied piper of the Greens, dragging children in his wake with a seemingly intoxicating tune of economic and trans fantasy seem to continue convincing credulous people that Corbyn was right but the wrong man, and that if you can pretend to make breasts bigger then why not be capable of making Britain bigger and better? The solutions fall apart when you look at his ‘workings’.

The LibDems, despite a rousing if wholly inaccurate speech by Daisy Cooper MP on Question Time, arguing small boats only happened because of Brexit that got her an enthusiastic round of applause, have actually slipped back in the polls. It seems fighting Brexit and Trump are not the solutions the equation or the electorate begs for most.

So what’s the problem?

The problem that’s dogging all the parties, vying over small electoral margins now, is they aren’t assessing whether all that voters want – an extremely important foundation of being a winning party – is actually deliverable. And not being honest about it.

This may sound heretical, but it’s true. Former colleague Andrew Neil encapsulated the problem when he observed the British people want Scandinavian levels  of welfare and public services, and mid-Atlantic tax levels.

Ok, our electricity is way too expensive, and not actually about to get cheaper – Putin and that chap Miliband again, the great hope for Labour’s future, can be thanked for that – and we don’t build enough houses so it remains absurdly expensive to buy or rent – the Tories must take their share of the blame for that, though I like the commitment to abolish stamp duty.

However we can’t pay for the levels of public service we expect from our Government from the current taxes we pay, the highest tax burden ever, and must keep borrowing to match the seemingly unlimited demand for welfare, health care and servicing the debt that creates. It’s not tax that will produce the solution. It has to be reducing public spending.

I defy any party to go into the next election saying they want to significantly raise taxes – not just the chimera of a wealth tax by the way – and actually get elected to government.

Besides it’s not the next general election that is the immediate focus. Mr Harborne did not give his nine million donation for that. He like almost everyone else in politics has put a big red ink marker on May next year.

We are inexorably moving to a new phase of the new politics of this country. Conferences done, everything is now about – and I don’t think this is an exaggeration – ‘surviving May’.

Reform don’t, of course, see it as survival but explosion. They confidently predict May will be the signal that the Tories and Labour are dead. They have some cause to make that case with their polling, though dropping slowly and consistently, still a healthy number of points ahead of all the rest. But given it’s a set of local elections the performance of their councils, increasingly fractious and at odds with their rhetoric they still have work to do.

What they could, and want to do is establish a national presence, and in Scotland and Wales they have that chance.

There’s still talk of whether ‘Badenoch can last after May’, though recently that’s been much louder about Starmer and Labour. Which or neither, or both, may be still in doubt but that May is the next big gateway on this political obstacle course is very fixed.

Again with the tin ear of a party in deep trouble – I’d know I’ve seen it happen myself – Labour have once again looked at a problem, and chosen the worst solution. The optics are very odd: Introduce digital ID cards on spurious grounds, get rid of hereditary peers in the House of Lords and then stuff the place with their own supporters, postpone mayoral elections they’d undoubtedly and demonstrably lose, and you get the impression Labours solution to the conundrum of difficult electoral maths is ‘less democracy’

The ever excellent cartoonist Matt had it right when he quipped this week, that Eurovision could be about the only thing Brits are allowed to vote on.

Having voted in favour of Brexit, that interminable row that still fractures our politics, the British electorate now have the spectre of it all being revived, not because joining a customs union with the EU was always their plan – although with Starmer you can never guess what position he’ll adopt or abandon next – but because they are desperate for a plan, any plan, that they think might stem their failing fortunes.

The UK is indeed a complex equation, that has been for more than 14 years, pushing out some wrong answers. The ones it’s demanding need to be honestly assessed as much as any parties proposed solutions. Can you deliver solutions that improve everyone’s lives, or do you just promise the earth and hope they believe you.

Does wanting something harder, make it more of a reality or even realistic?

The Conservatives have an opportunity, but as I’ve said before it’s not an easy one. To be honest with people about the things they want and spell out equally honestly what’s achievable and what’s mystic moonshine dressed up as an excess of political will and might. Honesty is becoming currency in this new political landscape.

It’ll feel a shorter road to May than the calendar suggests, all parties need to get on top of their equations and produce some credible solutions to our knotty problems.