Right-wing fight night

For the English upper middle classes who just wanted to be left alone, right wing politics used to be a relatively simple affair. You wanted low taxes and were willing to go along with the latest waffle about family values and compassionate conservatism. Leaders apparently had to be chosen on the delicate balance of being neither too nasty nor too nice. 

Margaret and Roger just wanted the entire country to be like Weybridge or Northallerton. Was that too much to ask? Instead, they got the Boriswave and MPs hosting chemsex parties. Now, they have to listen to speeches about industrial policy and AI. They have to pretend to understand the historical references Danny Kruger makes in his speeches. 

To help these sorts of people decide what to do, The Spectator recently hosted “The Fight for The Right” — a debate between Matt Goodwin and Danny Kruger for Reform and Claire Coutinho and Nick Timothy for the Conservatives. At 7pm they filed into the atrium of Emmanuel Hall in Westminster with all the enthusiasm of being coerced into the school play of their 2nd wife’s child whose prep school they had somehow found themselves paying for. 

Someone who works for a newspaper once told me that subscribers don’t actually part with their money to read its writers. They do it because they want to belong to a club where they get a vague sense of cultural exclusivity and the mistaken impression that the editor cares about what they think. The Spectator readership had taken this arrangement one step further by starting to actually resemble the magazine’s writers. 

Slouched at the sides were Rod Liddle look-alikes, all boozy and morose, gazing resentfully at huddles of socially awkward young fogeys in auburn sweaters who may as well have been the young Michael Gove. There were men fiddling with their glasses in the way Toby Young does. Douglas Murray physiques and attire were on display. A photographer attempted to take photos of people trying to enjoy themselves but he was repeatedly waved away. 

Tina Turner’s Simply The Best faded out and then Isabel Hardman, the magazine’s assistant editor, took to the stage. “If it gets too rowdy,” she said, trying to encourage a sense of pugilistic fun, “Then I’ll step in.” But the audience were too old and posh for that sort of thing.  Nick Timothy was first up. He said all the usual things about coming to terms with having apparently ruined the country and then started talking about Disraeli and Burke. 

Timothy is obviously not an unintelligent man, and this betrays a sense of having been haunted by thousands of hours of schmoozing with the party’s faithful and having to deal with its MPs. There is a suspicious and forced bonhomie, like the headmaster of a minor public school struggling to conceal the realisation, slowly eating away at him, that he has wasted his life on a lost cause.

Kruger had already left one lost cause. Now he was in Milbank Tower preparing Reform for Government. Kruger is often presented as a sort of sinister JD Vance religious figure by the Guardian because he has written a book about how we should turn the country into a sort of worthy Dorset village. But behind the podium he has the affected and plummy charm of Hugh Grant playing a sexually repressed Anglican vicar. 

Perhaps this is deliberate. Kruger, a former speechwriter for David Cameron, has come to apparently despise the form. Dark warnings must come from a caricature rather than a polished politician. “There are towns and cities transformed for the worse because of what we did,” he said to an appalled silence. The Tories are forever hated and now England is on the cusp.

Claire Coutinho followed up with something instantly forgettable. And then it was the turn of Matt Goodwin. Hardman obviously did not like Matt Goodwin. At the start, she had introduced him by patronisingly reminding everyone that unlike the others he was not an elected politician. Later on, when he started one of his riffs about free speech, she interrupted him and quickly moved on. Ever since the Matt-GPT scandal he had found himself in a zone of open contempt from which ruthless and successful operators usually emerge. He had even started to lean back in his chair and point his finger like Richard Nixon. 

The second round was a sort of Jeremy Kyle underclass family bust-up on the sofa where everyone was encouraged to exchange barbs. There was the usual fare about how nobody could trust Farage and a boring exchange about how Reform was encouraging Scottish Independence.

Nick and Claire soon realised that repeated Badenochisms about “having a plan” weren’t enough, so they tried to paint more of a picture. Coutinho said she had been working on powerpoints about Net Zero. Timothy had been studying the Muslim Brotherhood and there were serious lawyers working behind the scenes on leaving the ECHR. At one point Claire warned of Reform’s illiberal tendency. “We don’t want cancel culture on the right,” she said and at the sound of the two Cs the audience bolted into life and applauded. 

As it turned out, they largely agreed on everything. “I’m a nice guy,” said Timothy when provoked by Hardman into being less reasonable. The potential death of the world’s oldest political party was really a matter of social embarrassment. Behind the scenes, they were apparently all still friends. Kruger described the debate as “a very painful experience.” And so the audience was forced to imagine them all in a social setting getting on. This was less the glamorous Westminster shindig , more the suburban downward spiral of Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party in which the guests gradually work out over the course of an evening that they all despise each other. 

The last decade of podcasts and blogging has severely psychologically damaged some people

The evening was wavering, so it was time to hear from the audience. Listening to anyone talk about British politics now gives the impression that the last decade of podcasts and blogging has severely psychologically damaged some people. There were the usual braying Question Time exchanges about housebuilding, young people and whatever pet cause had been stewing inside of them for years. There was even an obligatory question from someone who works for the NHS.

What is the point in all of this? Even the panel seemed bored by their own confected responses. Kruger is right, the medium of political discussion is dead. Nick Timothy was in his element arguing with Akhmed Yakoob types outside Villa Park. You can learn more about Matt Goodwin by watching him drive open-top through Gorton and Denton begging people to vote for him. 

By the end of the evening, Kruger and Goodwin had managed to overcome the earlier vote in favour of the Tories. Their performance meant that Reform was now the preferred party of the right among The Spectator audience. There was little excitement about this swing. Something had merely happened, the mood had shifted and no one could really explain why. Everyone seemed desperate to leave the scene. 

David Starkey was hobbling towards the exit in the posture of a pensioner protecting himself from seagulls, menaced by a trail of autistic suited teenagers. “I listened to you on the Peter McCormack show,” said one referring to the bitcoin guru from Bedford who runs a podcast. “You’re a legend, a real legend.” Others were offering their unsolicited wisdom. “We don’t just want reheated Trumpism do we?” Starkey pretended not to hear. It was hard not to feel sorry for him. There could be at least four more years of this.