The Tories and Labour are ‘making plans for Nigel’ but only one might scupper ‘what’s best for him’

That’s it. I’m leaving Britain and going to Norway.

Indeed if you are reading this. I’ve gone.

No, not permanently, I love my country and I believe in it, despite the pervading doom-vibe right now.

I’m taking a brief break in my second home, the land of fjords, high mountains (higher taxes and welfare) Vikings, Crabnobs (it’s a real thing) and Tørfisk!

As MPs leave Westminster for the summer, some will find it’s ‘no holiday’ facing their constituents after the past year. However, Conservative MPs, whilst knowing full well they still have political mountains to climb, are in better mood than perhaps their opponents might have expected.

Reform UK however are already off on a country wide tour to try and maintain the pace they set at the start. There’s no let-up in the desire to really kill off the Tories (I still think a strategically unwise stance but let them think they have already) and woo away Labour voters.

Theirs is the Lawless Britain tour, that features their current favourite hits like “Strapping Male Bobbies on the Beat”, “Off to prison in El Salvador”, and “I predict more riots”

More seriously let’s just accept; their polling numbers are impressive, their leader a hugely capable campaigner and they enter the summer recess with a spring in their step. They are also leaving the ‘bubble’ with a welcome and quite correct increase in scrutiny of their plans. It should be par for the course for everyone, no exceptions.

It’s also clear the Tories have found a spending wedge between Labour and Reform who seem increasingly to sing the same ‘we’ll worry about how we pay for it later’ song. Despite what many in Reform will see as a misstep, but I can’t agree, the Conservatives seem to be heading towards a position where tackling immigration is a really key issue, but it’s the economy, or more importantly how voters feel in terms of their own prosperity, where the fight really is.

Are they two issues related? Clearly yes, but reinvigorating the economy in a credible way is the going to be the prize.  Expect much more on that this autumn at Party Conference.

When it comes to immigration the ECHR question seems to all intents and purposes to be answered. Conservative thinking now seems to be to leave, it’s the ‘how’ people are still waiting for and likewise it’s ‘how’ that’s the one question on Reform promises that they struggle to credibly answer. Maybe they don’t think they need to. Maybe they are right. I don’t think so.

Suella Braverman has launched a blue print for how leaving the ECHR might be done not long after The Doge of Reform, Zia Yusuf missed what he thought was an open goal, trying to blame her and Robert Jenrick over the super-injuncted Afghan settlement scheme. It was done in his usual dizzying tsunami of personal social media posts. One of which wasn’t him – apparently. It’s not often a rightly angry Jenrick types ‘bullshit’ in a tweet.

I really hope Suella doesn’t join them, and I have no clue if it’s even been on the cards, but either way Reform over-egged the attacks, and frankly gave her a few good reasons not to. That her husband left Reform after seven months was both a principled defence of his wife, and an exasperation with the way Reform’s former chairman does politics. I know an increasing number of Reform supporters don’t like it either.

Over on the left, a group of Labour MPs has warned our weather vane Prime Minister nothing less than radical action is going to help him against Farage. Then again with welfare spending, the one area any Labour radicalism has even been tested – and failed – neither Reform nor Labour seem convinced of the Tory position which is simple – that it’s unsustainable at current levels and higher taxes aren’t the answer.

As Nigel Farage proved in the TV studio with Laura Kuenessberg on Sunday inconvenient detail is not his thing, it’s more the articulation of dire diagnosis, and the promise of Reform as the only solution that matters, the how, and the how much is for others, or none.

Those ‘solutions’ are starting to come across like those folksy euphemisms in little books of ‘inspiration’ that sound really profound, clever and right, until you scrutinise them and the sense and credibility wobbles. It reminds me of rather good line a sage observer of politics – and long-in-the-tooth lefty – commenting to me dryly, that:

“The message I suspect the Tories want to land is their Sense and Credibility versus Reform’s Pride and Prejudice”

He doesn’t like either party, but this summer as the Tories start to focus on a political war on two fronts that seems a neat encapsulation of how they’d tackle one of them.

For the all out battles to come Kemi Badenoch part reshuffled and strengthened her pack yesterday because despite a long hard uphill road still to travel I suspect she feels a little more on top of what needs to happen this coming year for the party to start to get a hearing.  One shadow cabinet colleague is a keen advocate of ‘show not tell’ and speeding up on unveiling some of the policy vision seems a sign of that.

To me all the parties are now responding to something that happened over the last twelve months that only the most hindsight-drunk commentators would claim they predicted.

Most opposition parties post-election 2024 accepted that Labour, with their huge majority and with so many promises to change Britain, would get a twelve month honeymoon and the rest would have time either to lick their wounds and start rebuilding, or capitalise on their insurgency as Labour escaped major criticism as a new government finding it’s feet. When that actually happens it is, ironically, like a big black hole sucking in all the available light for any one else.

But it didn’t.

Labour folded quicker in government than a manic origami aficionado, begging repeated questions which they have struggled still to find a decent, not deluded, answer. Suddenly questions of ‘well it turns out they aren’t up to much so what would you do?’ came much sooner than Labour’s opponents were either expecting or ready for.

There is a debate to be had whether seizing the electorate’s ‘hearing window’ by saying something has stolen a lead and denies that window to others. Or whether waiting until you have something credible to say and letting others say things that unravel quite fast works best?

Reform would, and they’ll point to the polls for why, favour the former. The current Tory leadership clearly think the latter is not unhelpful – even useful:

Water nationalisation, scrapping the two child benefit cap, re-industrialising Wales, burying electricity cables, and all the thrust of Reform’s current law and order tour have undoubtedly both grabbed attention, cheered their troops, and also been hit with some heavy flak. Usually, as mentioned, of the ‘how’ and ‘how much’ calibre. Does it often bounce off? Sure but it’s now there as a constant drum beat.

Look, I learned long long ago, when some of my Tory friends were in kindergarten, not to underestimate Nigel Farage. I will also state again for the record, though it annoys some of those Tory friends, that we’ve always got on well personally. We still do.

However, we find ourselves on different sides of the lines, and as talk of merger has gone quieter than the proverbial church mouse, I can see new battle lines being drawn up for the next six months. Labour are still, one year on, trying to climb out of the black hole they dug themselves and are still digging.

Could it be, that as one prominent shadow cabinet member puts it, and that ardent Reform fans will no doubt relish, the fight in a few years becomes increasingly between the Tories and Reform? It’s not such a remote a possibility as you might imagine.

Then watch that church mouse I mentioned start wailing like a banshee.