Reform in No. 10? As the prospect gets more likely, the hand-wringing gets more theatrical. Should Reform somehow form the next government, we are told, Britain will descend into a dystopian ‘far-right’ nightmare of book-burnings, jackboots and midnight raids. Heavy words are thrown about very lightly: fascist, authoritarian, and my new favourite ‘post-democratic’.

The real problem is not this name-calling. It is the scale of what Reform would have to do, just to shepherd the country back to its relatively sane status of 1996

The real problem is not this name-calling. It is the scale of what Reform would have to do, just to shepherd the country back to its relatively sane status of 1996

This is, of course, nonsense. With Farage as PM, the world will not end. Britain will not become some kind of Fourth Reich. What will be genuinely scary, and squeaky on the old keister, is the sheer scale of the task Reform would face, and the ferocity of the resistance it will provoke from a progressive establishment that has not lost power in several generations – arguably since Margaret Thatcher’s resignation.

But back to the phantom menace. Progressives have a pathological thirst for a ‘far right’ to fight. In America, the Southern Poverty Law Center, once a respected civil rights outfit, has been exposed for its promiscuous labelling of mainstream conservatives as ‘hate groups’, and is now facing serious charges of funding its own opposition. Here in Britain, we witnessed the bizarre spectacle in 2024, post-Southport, of vast demonstrations against far-right bogeymen who simply did not exist. City streets were filled with protestors standing bravely against a threat that lived only........

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