I don’t advise watching the horror film ‘The Devil Inside’ but it should be more famous.
Not for the script, plot, acting or cinematography all of which are just very bad.
But because, in 2012, Paramount the producers of this abysmal film made on a tiny budget, successfully marketed it using the following quote harvested from a critics review:
“The kind of movie that will have you discussing it long after you’ve left the theatre”
Well yes, it’s true those were words included in the critic’s review. What the film producers left out was his zero-star rating and his verdict the film was “garbage”. So bad indeed you’d be discussing just how bad on the way home.
It’s a classic case of the Masterpiece Paradox, referring to the disingenuous-if-technically-accurate ploy of pulling published words out of context to create the opposite effect of their overall meaning.
A critic might write, “This is an ambitious disaster that tries and fails to be a masterpiece” or perhaps “If you think bad acting and a nonsensical plot make a masterpiece, this is the movie for you,”
And sure enough the PR team create the marketing quote which simply states
“…a masterpiece…”
You get the idea. You can probably see where I’m going with it, too.
That Reform poster ‘quoting’ Kemi Badenoch was a double dose of the paradox. So disingenuous it was almost a complete lie, it has been defended by all their recent recruits sent out to defend it in the face a lot of deserved pushback.
Here however I think we learnt something.
Reform are very good at tactics but not so good on strategy.
In their defence their base liked it, not much fussed by the furore, and it has been picked up as ‘food for thought’ by those ‘political no-man’s landers’ I’d describe, without malice, as ‘Reform curious’.
However the truth is, despite an almost constant barrage of attacks on the Tories this year, and less on the party they claim to be the real opposition to, it was never about Badenoch or the Tories.
It was about Restore.
Evidently not to restore faith in the integrity of politics but like the anecdotal trend from street gangs some years ago, where new members had to pick a proper fight with strangers as a rite of passage to gain acceptance in the ‘crew’ this was about showing wavering voters in Makerfield that they were as tough, rigorous and determined on race and immigration as Restore, when Lowe’s party are eating into the votes they’d need to defeat Andy Burnham.
I said yesterday on social media “Reform bitterly complaining Restore are splitting their vote is peak politics for 2026”
It’s second only to this bizarre trope that Restore are some kind of Tory Trojan horse.
First as I wrote on Tuesday the Conservatives have enough challenges running their own party right now to credibly imagine they are Machiavellian puppet masters for Restore.
Second despite, as pollster Scarlett Maguire has pointed out many Restore curious voters in Makerfield suggesting they think the party is less radical and hard over than Reform, an analysis of either’s policies suggests the opposite, putting Restore further away from the Conservatives than Reform.
Third Restore only exists at all, because of two men, Farage and Lowe and their excessive and seemingly irreparable falling out. Reform need to own their mess and stop pretending there are hidden hands at work, a tactic they have long employed when caught out.
And fourth Kemi Badenoch this week denied that she’d have Lowe in her party at some future date. “I wouldn’t go that far” she said, despite supporting Lowe’s presence on a Select Committee.
What is this all about then?
It’s all about this strange by-election, in strange circumstances with some potentially nationally important outcomes. Makerfield may maketh a man, but who we don’t yet know; the local plumber who talked of ‘pish’ or the man whose economics could send us down the drain.
It won’t be the decent Tory candidate for sure, as (if I’m mentioning polling) he is currently on one percent, a not incomprehensible position in the circumstances but one dismissed at the Conservatives’ peril.
It also might have something to do with the polling from Find Out Now (a polling service that Reform have enjoyed big leads with) which suggested one in five people who backed Reform UK at the last general election would now vote for Restore Britain.
The sample size of 1000 is not unusual as a representative one and 19 per cent of them now backing Rupert Lowe’s breakaway party.
You might think that’s a lot to place on one issue, until you switch viewpoint to Nigel Farage’s ‘address to the nation’ and a Times article – curiously not in the format of one of his beloved surprise press conferences, for which I can find five million reasons he’s not been doing recently – appealing to Trade Unions to switch affiliation from Labour to Reform.
Now on the face of it, it seems a reasonable tactical response to a piece ten days ago in the Telegraph:
“Reform UK is as popular as Labour among trade union members, polling shows.
A new survey shows the two parties tied on 28 per cent support among unionised workers, and a 20-point drop in support since the election for Sir Keir Starmer’s party.
Nigel Farage’s party beats Labour among members of Unite and the GMB, which are Labour’s biggest and second-biggest union donors.
Mr Farage was also seen as the leader who would do the most for working people, although Sir Keir led in a head-to-head with the Reform leader.”
Tactically it makes sense during a tough and demanding by-election against Labour as the big rival to try and ameliorate some of the Restore drift by appealing to fed up Labour voters.
Nor is this new, after Reform has backed policies such as steel nationalisation and reopening Welsh coal mines and even before this latest offer has said he wants to have a “sensible relationship” with unions.
Now almost all the big unions have rejected the offer – a case of ‘Brother’s where art thou?’ and one suspects are they are just fed up with Starmer but might quite like the prospect of a Burnham premiership, but if the tactic was understandable the strategy is less so.
How can a party, a majority of whose MPs are ex-Tory MPs, who now adore piling onto their old colleagues, and whose outriders admit part of Reform’s mission is to destroy the Conservatives, claim to be ‘real Conservatives’? Ditching associations with Thatcherism, supporting left wing policies, and wanting a deeper relationship with increasingly left agitating unions is a funny way of showing you’re a party of the Right.
Finally a recent tweet from Reform’s Laila Cunningham about the horrific incident in Belfast, via the horrific murder of Henry Nowak, rather made the point about a confused strategy.
“They let them in. Then call you racist for complaining. They will now debate our right to express anger and pontificate about the legitimacy of the public’s reaction. And the House will be “united” in condemnation, not of the failure. Of us.”
She didn’t specify, having said recently on TV that immigration positions had been tricky on the doorstep in London during the locals, who the “They” is but the “them” was a pointer to the Sudanese man now arrested in connection with the attack.
Of course she didn’t specify the ‘they’, because the ‘they’ in this case are two of her ex-Tory colleagues who were in the Home Office at the time. The two who seem to suffer from a professional amnesia that effects the year January to November 2023, during which time the Sudanese man in question was granted permission to stay.
When an Egyptian man Alaa Abd El-Fattah whose offensive and violent historical tweets emerged, Reform were most insistent though incorrect that Tory ministers granted him permission to stay in the UK. You can’t have it both ways! If that’s the prism you apply then Braverman and Jenrick ‘gave’ this man the right to be in a place he could end up doing what he’s done and did nothing about it.
See how it works?
Three examples where tactically you can see why they might do what they do, but wonder about the real thought behind long term strategy.
They can mock the current Conservative long term strategy they insist is not working – and I say isn’t working, yet – but on the issue of strategy I think they are overselling themselves with just a week to go to polling day in Makerfield.