Stupidity or Death

Why the Right can only win stupid

It has never been easier to imagine a successful right-wing party in Britain. A majority beckons, built on strong but serious changes to the immigration system, repealing net zero, and pro-growth supply-side reforms. The party could provide real solutions to the excesses of the ineffectual liberal state apparatus. Pro-growth, pro-graduate and anti-immigration, appealing to the nation from Bacup to Battersea, victory would seem inevitable.

There is one problem, though. This isn’t going to happen.

Donors, think tanks and intellectuals all look for a great synthesis between the establishment-busting credentials of Reform UK and the professional accents of established Conservatives. The issue is that much of the right-wing vote is aimed precisely against the professionalism that would be required to enact the changes it wants.

Take immigration. With the possible exception of trans issues, this is the only issue the Right has won the argument on this century. There is widespread sentiment that migration not only needs to be lowered, but that many recent arrivals need to return to their places of origin. Doing the latter is incredibly difficult and isn’t helped by the fact that we don’t even know how many people are in the country in the first place.

The credible political solution to this would be an austere but effective system of removals, leaning on the most boring and procedural elements of each case. This could remain incredibly radical, but the aesthetics would be dull. Of course, the act of moving someone to another country against their will is always going to have an ugly element, but the entire drama could be staged in the most boring terms possible. The internet has already come up with a bon mot for this formula: pantsuit deportations.

This may seem the rational strategy, but those voters most incensed by immigration won’t accept it. They want to hear the words “mass deportations” come off their politicians’ tongues, and revolutionary rhetoric about “removing threats to our way of life” instead of merely requiring people to leave when their visas expire.

Those who want populist change on immigration aren’t doing this irrationally. After so many betrayals on the issue, climaxing in the Boriswave, they want to be unequivocally told that a revolution is coming. The issue is that this impulse decreases the chance of their policy preferences becoming reality.

The great irony of this is that it was the Conservative government of 2010–2024 that brought naturally right-wing voters to this revolutionary fervour. Its policies, from immigration to net zero and diversity, gradually, then suddenly, destroyed the basis for sensible conservatism. Added to this, the voters it betrayed are now constantly confronted by videos on social media showing asylum-seeker crimes, boats crossing the Channel and general disorder. Unsurprisingly, in this environment, a purity spiral develops in which the loudest and most foolish solutions win out.

Although it is easy to portray these voters as stupid, it wouldn’t be true; they are just revolutionaries. In their eyes, only a decisive break from the current way of things will do. For them, a rejection of populist form is just the prelude to a rejection of populist policies.

The issue for Britain’s Right is that a party needs these voters to win an election. There is a strong tendency to appeal to the voters you wish voted for you: those smart, successful corporate types in the City. The reality is that not only will this constituency never win you an election, but professional women, who make up half of it, are implacably opposed to your agenda. If the Right wants to win, it’s going to have to win stupid.

We have already seen this work once. In America, the Trump phenomenon has successfully grafted the impulses of the white working class onto enough professionals to win two elections. Here, though, in a land of Lib Dems and with effectively zero broad conservative culture, the task will be far more difficult.

It is tempting to think about what a sensible conservatism might look like. The answer is that it looks like losers. Kemi Badenoch may have serious ideas some centrists can nod along to, but “respectable conservatism” is a terrible electoral strategy. Right-wing voters want a priest, not an accountant.

Trump is, in many ways, the archetypal stupid king. He provides the slop populists want, but is reassuring enough that corporate suburb-dwellers know their wallets won’t be affected. This may not always result in fluent government, but populist voters almost enjoy the political pain, as taking flak for radical rhetoric shows that a politician is suffering for them.

This isn’t a matter of unintelligent voters, but of an electorate so lacking in trust that it needs a political performance that will damage itself to show it understands them.

In Britain, things are much more difficult, but the same rules apply. It may seem unpalatable to those who just want supply-side reform, sensible immigration policy and an end to diversity mandates, but if they want to win, they’re going to have to win stupid.