Reform should not abandon free markets

Britain’s free market liberals, like this author, have got lucky in Reform UK not lurching towards interventionism. After all, the electoral expediency of doing so is enormous. 

Farage and most in his orbit sincerely believe in free markets … But for how long can liberals hold the reins?

Why is this situation so? Nigel Farage and most in his orbit sincerely believe in free markets — and, the counter-elite which Reform takes seriously would castigate them for any serious deviation. But for how long can liberals hold the reins? For alongside the siren song of electoral expediency, there exists the opportunism of social democrat infiltrators, and the intellectual tension of their nationalist communitarianism with their free market liberalism. 

As Steve Davies has recently explained, politics today is undergoing a realignment where the economic question of state control of the economy is falling to the cultural question of whether the state should uphold a nationalistic or cosmopolitan identity. When it comes to being a nationalist or cosmopolitan, the divide among people is now very deep.  The public self-report as having much more in common with their Brexit bedfellows than their fellow political party voters. When asked what their favourite brands were, Remainers chose among them EasyJet, Airbnb and Instagram, while leavers chose HP Sauce, Bisto and PG Tips; a clear divide between the outward looking and the homely. Perhaps most obvious is the greater salience of immigration in the national debate today — a long term trend since 1994 with only a brief respite following Brexit.

The economic question, however, will remain of some importance to voters. And since the cultural question leaves people with very entrenched views – Davies finds “almost no one is a swing voter” between nationalism and cosmopolitanism — much of future electioneering will involve cosmopolitans and nationalists trying to reach across to voters on their own cultural side but opposed to them on the economic question. 

This brings us to Reform UK. It — and its forerunners the Brexit Party and UKIP — have always been rooted in free market liberalism. Indeed, Alan Sked originally called UKIP the Anti-Federalist League harking back to Richard Cobden’s and John Bright’s Anti-Corn Law League. Farage has advocated for flat taxes, drug legalisation and cuts to benefits and many Ukippers, including Paul Nuttall and Douglas Carswell, believed in NHS privatisation too.

Given Reform’s ambition to win in 2029, it would not be cynical to expect them to try and increase their vote by lurching towards interventionism, as writers such as Rod Liddle have advocated. After all, 11 per cent of Labour’s 2024 vote is Reform curious, and when asked whether employers and landlords have too much power, 70 per cent answer “yes” compared to just shy of 40 per cent for Reform’s 2024 voters. It is worth pointing out, though — when speaking about voters being free marketeer or interventionist — that these are relative terms and on an absolute scale most people are interventionists not too far from Corbyn. Over 70 per cent of people want to see gas, water, electricity and railways run by the state and perhaps worse, 75 per cent want to see rent controls, including 68 per cent of Reform voters, and 70 per cent want price caps on food too.

So, Reform could especially gain from proposing nationalisation, price controls and wealth taxes, since these policies are constitutively popular with national interventionists, but, crucially, with nationalist free marketeers too. Yet what do we see? Not a lurch to interventionism, but, rather, a slight return to free markets since 2024. With Robert Jenrick’s entry, we’ve seen Reform reverse course on scrapping the two-child benefit cap and nationalising water and energy, as well as a commitment to keeping the OBR too. This contrasts with most of Europe where we see the originally nationalist free market parties having turned leftwards, e.g. the National Front under Jean-Marie Le Pen turned to interventionism under the new name of the National Rally led by Marine Le Pen and the Alternative for Germany have undergone the same transformation. Britain’s free market liberals are lucky this hasn’t happened. 

Why is this? Generally, due to a basic understanding of economics, free market politicians are a lot more free market than their voters, — thus, Reform politicians don’t face as much political pressure to lurch to interventionism from the Tories than they otherwise would. But this can’t be the full story. The best explanation is that Reform is strongly committed to free markets. Nigel Farage has described himself as a “Gladstonian liberal”, originally being inspired into political interests by J. S. Mill’s On Liberty. Richard Tice is a Thatcherite and Robert Jenrick is widely seen to be a free marketeer too. Whether or not Farage, Tice and Jenrick take much interest in political philosophy (and I don’t think they do) the liberal element in their economic policy is clear. Yet whether a disposition to liberalism generally will last is a distinct question. For within Reform UK there is a serious intellectual tension.

On the one side, there exist communitarians such as Danny Kruger who see the role of the state as helping people lead the good life through their families, communities and the country at large. For them, free markets are “secondary” — they exist to serve the aforementioned. Kruger is explicitly against liberalism: “Freedom is not an end in itself”. On the other side, there exist liberals such as Gawain Towler who propound that after defending the realm, the state must simply “leave us our liberty and our property, and get out of the way”. According to him: “That is the whole of it”. Though the free market obviously arises from this political philosophy, opposition to mass migration is ill fitting, to say the least. Although Reform’s liberals and communitarians currently seem to be hanging together alright, especially in their broad support for free markets, can this go on as power creeps closer? 

Will there not be conflicts over policies such as banning the burka, assisted dying, childcare subsidies and encouraging reindustrialisation? Will the supposedly savage benefit cuts Reform intends to make, while sitting well with liberals, not set off communitarian concern about northern towns decimated by them? Perhaps of greatest worry to the liberal side is that communitarians might impede planning reform — by, for example, blocking development on the greenbelt to preserve local areas. Or what about free trade being supported by liberals destroying cherished agricultural areas? I suspect we will see disagreement over recently announced policy on increasing taxes on migrants for the sake of supporting the country, and greater rights for women at work for the sake of the family. And this isn’t to mention social democrat opportunists, who seeing the most stable new coalition of votes being national interventionists, will steer Reform that way. So, at least three large forces in Reform will become increasingly prominent in the years to come

Against nationalist communitarianism possibly undermining free market support, however, stand a media, social and intellectual counter elite who would ridicule Reform’s top men for any serious defection from free markets. Crucially, they would not dismiss them. While lockdowns exposed the myth that the British people are a freedom loving people, the counter elite, compared to the general population, has a half decent number of libertarians in it, including Steve Baker and Alister Heath. And then there exists a still larger group of classical liberals at the Telegraph, Spectator and GB News, including David Frost, Tom Harwood and Madeline Grant; alongside all the free market think tanks which help fill the aforementioned pages and airwaves. Basically, the classical liberal counter elite might end up stopping the greater deviations from free markets which might be engendered by a populism of the nationalist communitarian variety. 

Three further points support free market liberals still holding the reins of Reform into the future. First, Reform at the last general election drew 39 per cent of their candidates from the “petty bourgeoise”, made up of small businessmen, self-employed professionals and landlords, a far larger share than the 8 per cent for MPs who were elected. Since it is these people who most suffer from the state’s boot, we should expect them to keep opposing interventionism. Second, many up-and-coming young people in Reform, such as Caleb Van Ryneveld and Lauren Smith, are free marketeers. Third, Restore Britain will have a cleansing effect in taking out the ethno-nationalists in Reform who never got on board with any liberalism to begin with (despite Lowe himself subscribing to Ayn Rand’s ultraliberal Atlas Shrugged). 

Britain’s free market liberals have been lucky with Reform UK. Farage’s genuine commitment to free markets has stopped them from taking the electorally expedient path of interventionism. But free marketeers in and around Reform are up against serious force, alongside opportunism from defecting politicians and the push of their nationalist political philosophy towards a more collectivist approach to the economy. They should not change course.