Reformland

 To my mild surprise, I now find myself living under a Reform County Council.

Mild surprise only, as only the most deluded tribalsts approached this week's local elections imagining that it would be anything other than a bloodbath for the two main parties, safe to say, though, I didn't see them taking Lancashire.

It's too grand to say historically, as the history's pretty recent, but the pattern over the last few years has tended to eastern counties being the most susceptible to the anti-immigrant rancor of the various incarnations of Faragism, be it UKIP, the Brexit party or this current iteration. Lincolnshire and Kent? Yes, I could see that, Lincolnshire's the epitome of left behind, and Kent, deeply Tory Kent, is very much the front line in the emotive small boats story. But Lancashire? Pragmatic, hard-headed Lancashire? Apparently so. Party fealty normally runs quite deep around here, so it was a surprise that areas dyed-in-the-wool red and blue turned overnight that quite-pleasant- actually shade of Reform turquoise.

And I get why, I really do. It was always going to be a wipe-out for the Tories, and after fourteen years of staggering misrule, and clearly no sign of having learned any lessons from getting their clocks comprehensively cleaned at the last GE, this proved to be the case. As for Labour, any goodwill they carried over from the election win evaporated quickly amidst a tonne of policy missteps and poor communication. Labour activists speak glumly of having the suspension of the winter fuel allowance chucked in their faces, because people who hate people on benefits quite like their own benefits.

(I'll break for a moment here and observe that Labour administrations are generally given a bit less rope than Conservative ones, and a populace that allowed Tory psychodrama to play out over years has already decided pretty quickly that Labour are toast, but there's a long way to go before the next GE, time enough to turn things around, but the omens aren't great)

It's very hard to get enthused by the current Government, and even though local elections should never be fought on national lines, they always are, so the locals were a live opinion poll on HMG, and the results were not good.

Reform then, benefited from protest votes against both main parties. But why them? It can't have been policies, because they don't have any, a friend reports speaking to people whose sole response was "they'll do something about the immigrants"

You'd be amazed at how little influence Coumty Councillors have on Government immigration policy.

Can it solely be that? I don't think so, I can't think so. I speak to a lot of people, it's part of my job, and the subject doesn't really come up that much. Polls regularly show the cost of living, the NHS and the economy as of equal or greater importance to voters. Prior to the last General Election YouGov had 18% of voters citing it as the most important issue to them.

I do sometimes wonder if its resonance has less to do with real-world outcomes of immigration than it does to an enduring tabloid fascination with the topic. I'm prepared to bet that for most people who cited it as a top concern it actually has little to no impact on their lives.

I think, more prosaically, that for a lot of people, things are shit. They've been shit for a long time and they're not showing any signs of getting any better. And these people want someone to blame, and someone to punish. Easy to blame to people who you don't know and easier yet still to punish the people who handily give you the chance to do so by voting fairly regularly.

And so now we have a Reform County Council. Why them, though, and not Lib Dem, or Green? Why, when seeking to beat up the ConLabs, have our electorate plumped for the slightly more dingbat, racist-adjacent part of the spectrum? It's not a pragmatic decision, these are people with no experience of local government at all (and, while it's quite funny to think of the nasty shocks that await them, it's also a bit worrying, I know a fair few County councillors, and I'm painfully aware if their workload and what an involved job it is, the though of a bunch of newbies getting the job at the same time is, ah...concerning), and I can't believe every Reform voter is a card-carrying bigot, so why them?

I think that the answer is that they're a tabula rasa. Lib Dems and Greens are known quantities, you can be fairly confident what their policy positions will be. Reform, though, are wildly incoherent, and this inconsistency means that voters can project their own concerns onto them. They can be all things to, if not all people, then at least enough to get a healthy vote out and, crucially, they all you that none of this is your fault. Life has been done to you and they will enact vengeance on your behalf. It's the same logic that allowed Donald Trump to cast himself as the scourge of "elites" while being, um, a billionaire.

Look, no one ever said it made sense.

The problem for them though, is that reality has now hit. They find themselves in charge, and actual running of things has to occur. It's possible that they may prove to be highly competent, but I'd say the odds were against it. It's also probable that even when they do fuck up, voters won't be swift to punish, as it takes people a fair old while to admit that they might have been wrong (I'm sure you can still find the odd defender of Brexit here or there, should you try to), but eventually it will come crashing down, it always does, for Nigel Farage's political vehicles. Borne aloft for a few years on sympathetic, asymmetrical media coverage, they generally fall to bits under the weight of their own internal contradictions. And when it does, the collapse of the vote will be savage.

Won't matter to Nigel though, he'll probably have a new party by then. Some other gruft to flog.

The question will be, how much damage will have been done to local services by then?