What is The Reform Party For?

Parties. Here is some simple political philology. What is a party? A party is a part. A state is a whole. Here is a brief history of party:

• Throughout all history, from ancient Athens until after the English Restoration of 1660, parties were no more than factions: disliked, subversive cancers within the body politic, causes of civil discord, to be exiled at any cost. Everyone liked wholes, not parts, in politics.
• From 1660 or so to 1830 or so, parties were English: and there were two, Whigs and Tories. Both of these names were slurs: Whigs were wild Scots and Tories were wild Irish. But they became names for occasionally hegemonic regime formations: Whigs under Walpole, Tories under Pitt the Younger. The two parties were, roughly, Whig = rich, classicising, condescendingly egalitarian and Tory = less rich, ecclesiastical, resolutely hierarchical, though their foreign policy could flip and flop and no one should expect the words ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ to have any consistent meaning across the decades.
• From 1830 to 1920, parties became fully respectable, and also became mechanised: Tories became Conservatives; Whigs, Radicals and whoever else became Liberals. So parties were named, and were supposedly principled. (However, ditto: ‘no one should expect the words “Liberal” and “Conservative” to have any consistent meaning across the decades.’) Every even slightly republican or constitutional regime around the world copied the party system. Parts were no longer sent into exile, but considered a sign of good government.
• From 1920 to recent times, parties in Britain were Labour for the working class, Conservative for everyone else, in theory at least: until Britain stopped working and Blair and his successors had the bright idea of making Labour the party of hypocritical middle class morality: the Tories became the second party of middle class morality, but cynical rather than hypocritical.

Next lesson. Parties are important. But not as important as you think. Parties are important but not directive. A party can be seized, as Trump seized the Republican party, or as Corbyn seized the Labour party, or as Johnson seized the Tory party. And every ruler of a party is, in effect, not simply the leader of that party but the leader of a coalition inside but also outside that party. Every Badenoch or Jenrick who comes along has one eye on the party structures and various influential figures, but also has another eye on the general public. Boris Johnson, famously, was a hit with the general public, and not merely the Tory public. He appealed to sections of people out of the old coalitions. Blair, arguably, was the same. Thatcher not so much at first. To be a great leader it is not necessary to be good at policy or thinking or even leading: you have to be good at organising coalitions around oneself: and doing this, or having it done for you, while being persuasive, appealing, influential, possibly nepotistic, offering possible legs-up the greasy pole.