Britain in flux

Britain's political order is in flux. Labour holds a massive majority but polls in third. Reform UK is eating votes from both sides. And the Conservatives are fighting for survival as the opposition party, not just the next government.

This week on Craft Politics, James Wharton — Baron Wharton of Yarm, former Conservative MP for Stockton South, and the man who ran Boris Johnson's 2019 leadership campaign — joins Joseph Lavoie and Andrew Percy to make sense of the UK's three party problem and whether the Tories can find a way back.

We discuss:

The three party trap. Labour won in July with 34% of the vote. Reform is polling first with 27%. The Conservatives sit third at 21%. James explains why first past the post only works in a two party system, and what happens when it breaks down.

Who Reform is really taking from. The working class voters Boris won in 2019 didn't go back to Labour. They went to Reform. And now Reform is pulling traditional Labour voters too. James calls it the biggest shift in Western politics, and it's happening everywhere.

The reassuring insurgent problem. To beat Reform, the Conservatives need to sound like change while looking like government. James thinks that's nearly impossible when you've just lost after 14 years in power.

Why Kemi Badenoch is struggling. She won the leadership by saying almost nothing. Now she's offering no policies, claiming you don't choose from a restaurant menu four years before the meal. James thinks that's a luxury the Conservatives no longer have.

The Boris question. Could he come back? James says Boris still has the one thing no other politician has: people don't change the channel when he's on TV. But the route back is nearly impossible.

Trump's $500 billion Ukraine play. James has a theory: giving Trump mineral rights in Ukraine might be the only way to make Putin believe the US will actually defend it. Strange as it sounds, the gangster approach might work.

Also discussed: why Starmer is trying to woo Trump instead of fight him, the soft spot Trump has for the UK, whether Nigel Farage's distancing from Elon Musk helps or hurts Reform, and the middle class dinner party attendees who never liked Boris but voted for him anyway.

00:00 Welcome and Verdant Putty 2025 — Rare UK brew from Cornwall
01:32 Mark Carney's French debate disaster — Hamas gaffe and language struggles
04:16 The Trump effect on polling — 75 percent Conservative win down from 98 percent
05:06 UK politics primer — Labour's loveless landslide and Reform's rise
09:08 Foreign aid slashed to 0.3 percent — Labour's rank hypocrisy exposed
12:31 The domino effect coming to Canada — Defense over development
18:37 Starmer's Trump strategy — Wooing versus Carney's dollar-for-dollar retaliation
21:54 Introducing Lord Wharton — Boris's campaign chair and old friend returns
23:53 The three-party nightmare — Reform at 27 percent and rising
25:15 The white working class realignment — Brexit to Trump to Reform
26:08 The reassuring insurgent problem — Can Conservatives claim populist ground?
30:26 Boris's magic formula — Reaching working class without losing middle class
31:42 Kemi Badenoch's policy vacuum — The restaurant menu excuse
33:38 The fight for survival — Conservatives risk losing opposition status
35:17 They're all the same — The voter fury driving Western populism
36:55 First-past-the-post breaking down — The three-party system problem
39:38 Trump and Ukraine — The 500 billion dollar mineral rights theory
42:25 The stopped clock principle — Trump's unpredictability as accidental brilliance
45:27 Farage's Trump problem — Reform voters split on the president
47:37 Could Boris return? — The ability to connect that no one else has
49:47 The Boris paradox — Eton-educated classicist who speaks to factory workers
51:12 Teesside versus Humberside — Northern accents and political trends