Why I Am Not Defecting to Reform
A great realignment has happened in politics: nationalism-cosmopolitanism is now the main axis, not socialism-capitalism. I am not seeking re-election but if I were, Reform UK is not for me.
Steve Davies new book, The Great Realignment: Why the New Right is Here to Stay, was published last week. Together with the Fighting for a Free Future team, I was glad to attend the launch event. For the jacket of the book, I wrote:
The Great Realignment explains the persistence and power of the new right not as a passing protest, but as a structural and enduring transformation - one rooted in large-scale social, economic, and cultural changes that have created an entirely new political map, with identity and sovereignty supplanting economics as the defining cleavage of contemporary politics.
This book is an essential read for everyone who does not want to be surprised constantly by the development of politics in the West. It is indispensable.
In the UK, the stellar rise of Reform UK is the outworking of that great realignment. As the book sets out, it is a realignment taking place across much of the world with Trump, Meloni and others ascendant.
This realignment is the fundamental reason I will not be defecting to Reform, and I would not defect even if I were seeking re-election. Economics has apparently retreated to at most a secondary concern and many on the new right, Reform included, remain firmly in favour of policies of intervention. At a time like ours, that is profoundly risky.
