Is Jenrick Hiding a Dagger Under His Toga?

For those who don’t know, a new right wing political party has formed in the UK. It’s called Reform UK and is the latest incarnation of previous xenophobic, rabble-rousing collectives (yes, the extreme right is just as keen on rousing the rabble as the extreme left) called the British National Party (BNP) and the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) respectively.

It’s mostly a bunch of amateur wannabees led by the arch xenophobe and political non-achiever, Nigel Farage. It aims its message at the small minded, those who know nothing about the history of population movement or the existential imperative of constant flux, and those who cheer mightily when the tabloids assert that all migrants are criminally minded and the committing of a single crime by a single migrant proves the fact beyond all doubt.

You would think that such a party would have little chance of doing well at a general election, wouldn’t you? The BNP and UKIP never did very well, so why should this latest incarnation? Well, because Britain – like most western economies – is having a hard time at the moment with inflationary pressures, falling living standards, homelessness, and the proliferation of food banks for the new poor; and the three traditional major parties seem to have little clue as to how the situation might be improved. So, who do the more mentally-challenged in the great British electorate blame for this perilous state of affairs? Why, the immigrants of course. It’s all their fault, and Reform UK is the party raising its stock by promising to excise the cancer. And that’s why they’re doing well in the polls.

And now we have another neat little twist. A man called Robert Jenrick, a right wing member of the Tory shadow cabinet, apparently said that he was considering defecting to Reform, and so the Tory party leader had him expelled. (Whether that was a big mistake or not seems to divide opinion. I think it was, but that’s another story.) And so Jenrick has now turned his back on the Tories and become a member of Reform UK.

This is where it gets interesting. Jenrick has been up there with the big boys in a major party, and so he has far more big time experience – and therefore more political capital – than Nigel Farage. Is he, I ask myself, planning to take over the leadership and push little Nigel aside? Is there even some sort of conspiracy going on? It happened before with Theresa May and Boris Johnson (or so it seemed obvious to me at the time.)

And this is where I get scared. If the ne’er-do-wells and amateur wannabees in Reform win the next election, we Britons will be in a similar position to those good Americans suffering under the yoke of Trump. That’s a worrying prospect.