𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

We have now reached the end of what could best be described as the Back to the Future conference season. Kemi Badenoch wanted to take us back to the 1980s. Andy Burnham wanted to take Labour back to the 1970s, and Britain back into Europe.

Only Nigel Farage seemed interested in taking Britain forward. First, Kemi. Channelling Margaret Thatcher, she wanted us to believe she had rediscovered her true calling as a Tory tax cutter. Quite the Damascene conversion.

This is the same Conservative Party that spent years telling us it was the party of low tax, then left the country carrying a historically high tax burden. Badenoch and many of the people now sitting around her shadow cabinet table served in the governments that helped put it there.

Now we are supposed to believe they have seen the light. Stamp duty and inheritance tax. Abolish them? You’re the ones that made them mind-numbingly high!

I remember George Osborne promising to take most families out of inheritance tax back in 2007. Then came fourteen years of Conservative government. Fourteen years to deliver. Fourteen years of excuses.

Forgive me if I want rather more than a new generation of empty conference promises. I saw pictures on X of the Conservatives’ attempt at a political Bayeux Tapestry. The actual Bayeux Tapestry tells the story of unwelcome arrivals crossing the English Channel, invading Britain and ushering in decades of decline.

The only surprise is that it depicts 1066, rather than the record of the last Conservative government. Then we travelled another decade backwards.

Enter Andy Burnham and the return of the 1970s. Labour members who were at their conference tell me listening to his speech was the closest thing they have had to a religious experience. I get mine in church on Sundays.

They apparently get theirs watching the high priest of Manchesterism, little more in reality than a Jeremy Corbyn tribute act in a black T-shirt, tell them they were right all along. Taxes aren’t high enough. Railways aren’t nationalised enough. The unions aren’t powerful enough.

Apparently, this is how we will grow a modern economy. Work hard and start a business? Pay more.

Go out to work? Pay more. Buy your own home, do the right thing and pay off the mortgage? Pay more.

He has pensioners in his sights too. What has the poor old British pensioner done to offend the Labour Party?

First came the raid on winter fuel payments. Now comes the threat to the triple lock. Call me old-fashioned, but protecting the incomes of people who have worked all their lives strikes me as a pretty low bar.

Then came Europe. Ed Davey has spent years trying to drag us back towards the EU. This year Burnham decided he would not be outdone. He wants to go further. A closer relationship. A renegotiation. Another deal. You can see where this road leads.

Labour has stopped competing with the Lib Dems on Europe. It has adopted their policy. Think about it. A Prime Minister who has not yet won a general election wants, a decade after the referendum, to reopen the greatest democratic decision of our lifetimes.

You have not won your own mandate yet, Andy. Brexit did. How dare politicians treat that decision as a mistake the British people must be persuaded to correct? How dare they blame the failures of politics and politicians on the voters who did exactly what they were asked to do: make a choice?

And this is where the conference season starts to matter. Because my suspicion is that Burnham is laying the ground for an election in May 2027.

I can almost picture him returning, a little like Neville Chamberlain coming back from Munich, waving a piece of paper and assuring us that he has found the answer. Concerned about tens of thousands of people entering the country illegally? Brexit’s fault. Concerned about weak growth, high taxes and a system that too often makes work feel unrewarding? Brexit’s fault.

Concerned about social care, your pension or how much of your wages the government takes? Never mind all that. Look at the new European deal. An election fought on his chosen question, with everything else pushed to the sidelines.

The boats? Wait for the deal. Adult social care? Wait for the plan. The triple lock? Wait for the small print. A blank cheque, with no clear explanation of how he intends to spend it. Corbynism in a black T-shirt. This time with a five-year mandate.

Which brings us to Reform. Reform does not want to take Britain back to the 1980s or the 1970s. It wants to talk about the future. An outward-looking, confident Britain outside the EU. A growing economy. A country that rewards effort and ends the something-for-nothing culture.

Burnham may ask you next year for a blank cheque, with a European deal held aloft and the awkward questions hidden underneath. Do not fall for it. The Conservatives have had their chance. Labour wants another cheque. The Lib Dems want another referendum argument.

Nigel Farage wants to move Britain forward. That is why I will vote Reform. Britain needs reform.