Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
When Tim Montgomerie was suspended by Reform UK last week I was shocked, but not surprised.
Shocked, because this is a party that presents itself as the defender of free speech. Yet here it is suppressing a Reform-aligned commentator for commenting on Reform — which, by the way, is what he said he’d do when Nigel Farage recruited him.
Certainly, it’s the sort of thing he did when he was a member of the Conservative Party. In fact, this website owes its existence to Tim’s determination to speak truth to power. In one capacity or another, he was a constructive critic of every Tory leader since Michael Howard — and yet none of them suspended his membership of the party.
Obviously, Reform is a very different kettle of fish. For reasons I’ve previously set out, I think it’s a fundamentally unstable organisation — hence my lack of surprise at this latest act of self-sabotage. And yet we shouldn’t let the specifics of this episode distract us from the bigger picture — which is the suppression of viewpoint diversity across all the main parties.
I’ll begin with the current party of government. The so-called Soft Left is now so dominant that the other strands of Labour thought, from New Labour to Blue Labour, have been pushed to the sidelines. Furthermore, dissenting individuals like Rosie Duffield or Diane Abbott, have been treated abominably.
The struggle for control between Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham was a civil war within the Soft Left — but, even then, the eventual victor lost no time in purging the losing side from his government. Compare that to the Labour Party of yesteryear when you could find individuals as distinct as Denis Healey, Michael Foot, Tony Benn, Peter Shore and Roy Jenkins all serving under Jim Callaghan. Yes, eventually, Jenkins and his allies quit to form the SDP, but that couldn’t have happened unless Labour was so bursting with viewpoint diversity as to contain the potential for a whole new party.
Let’s move on to the Liberal Democrats. One might think that the “nice” party would be a safe space for differing perspectives. But tell that to David Campanale, who was deselected as a Lib Dem parliamentary candidate in 2024 over his Christian beliefs. After a protected legal battle, the party has now admitted religious discrimination — though it continues to fight Campanale’s claim for compensation.
Next up, the Green Party — and its treatment of members who dare to stand-up for their “gender critical” beliefs i.e. the modern-day heresy that men cannot become women. But, of course, one can hardly expect an unqualified commitment to free speech from a party with plans to subject all media outlets to state approval.
So that just leaves the Conservative and Unionist Party — arguably the most ideologically diverse of all the main parties. Within our ranks you can find Tory traditionalists, free market liberals, one nation conservatives, full-on libertarians, establishment centrists, neocons, palaeocons, Anglofuturists and even the occasional post-liberal communitarian like me.
But is viewpoint diversity under threat in our party too? An early sign of trouble was the stifling conformity of the 2024 leadership election in which meaningful debate was suppressed in the name of party unity. More recently, we’ve witnessed the entirely unnecessary example that was made of Gavin Barwell — and, worst of all, the imposition of ideological tests on would-be Conservative candidates, including former MPs and ministers.
Of course, we wouldn’t have parties at all if there was no internal discipline. For instance, we absolutely need leaders with authority, a whipping system in Parliament and collective responsibility on the front benches. But making windows into men’s souls? That’s not conservative at all.
Of course, in any party there are those who see politics as a reductive struggle for power. Lenin, via Trotsky, summed it up as the “who, whom?” question — which concerns itself not so much with what is being done than who is doing it to whom.
However, I’d remind those applauding the current purge of the candidates list that the boot used to be on the other foot — and may, one day, return there. When the Europhiles were in charge (including supporters of British membership of the single currency) they could have answered the who/whom question by purging the party of Eurosceptics. Some of them may wish that they had. But I’d say it was a good thing that pluralism survived within our party — and that it should continue to do so.
We should also think long and hard about where the slide toward ideological monoculture is coming from.
On one level, it’s a natural consequence of multiparty politics. When elections were dominated by two big parties, the Conservatives and Labour pretty much had to be broad coalitions. Now that we’ve replaced the old duopoly with five medium-sized parties — plus the SNP in Scotland, Plaid in Wales and Restore in, er, Great Yarmouth, the coalitions are narrowing. Indeed, the temptation is for each party to carve out a niche as opposed to broadening its appeal.
But that’s not all that’s going on. We also need to factor in the encroachment of the woke Left, which is sceptical — and often actively hostile — towards free speech. At the same time, from a more centrist direction, there’s the obsession with “misinformation” and the associated demand for the heavy-handed regulation of the internet.
Even when those two particular influences are firmly resisted on the Right, there’s still the underlying and much more insidious influence of post-modernism. We live in an era which confuses the perception of reality with reality itself. Politics, whether Left or Right, has become infested by the cult of comms — the presentation of policy prioritised over its development and implementation.
Is it any wonder that in terms of party management the policing of thought and speech has become a substitute for true leadership? Why seek to win hearts and minds when you can bureaucratise the process of asserting control?
Well, here are some reasons:
Firstly, bureaucracies have a habit of growing beyond one’s control. The “HR-ification” of organisations is a case in point. Some forward-looking employers have realised that their Human Resources departments are the source of more problems than solutions — and have consequently abolished them.
Secondly, internal dissent isn’t just something to be tolerated, but, within reasonable limits, carefully cultivated. Even medieval monarchs had their court jesters and Roman emperors a servant to whisper reminders of their mortality. It’s better to hear the truth — or at least a second opinion — from a critical friend than not at all.
Thirdly, it isn’t always the case that complaints are best heard behind closed doors. When Kemi Badenoch was asked about the frustration of former ministers with the candidate selection process, she compared the party to a company whose employees ought not to express their unhappiness publicly. I hope, on reflection, she can see just how inappropriate that analogy is. A party is not a business; it is a civic association. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of its participants are not staff, but volunteers.
Fourthly, suppressing public debate within a party does not stop covert briefing — indeed, shutting off the safety valve of open dissent, may encourage more backstabbing.
Finally, never forget that even in a multi-party system, the party with the broadest appeal has the best chance of winning. Right now, that’s Labour as led by Andy Burnham. Unlike Tony Blair, he doesn’t have what it takes to dethrone the Soft Left, but he has been able to draw upon other Labour traditions to reach out to ex-Labour voters, especially in the North. Eventually, he’ll come unstuck, but for the moment it’s working.
Ultimately, a party leader can use his or her control of front bench appointments, candidate lists and membership rolls to crush internal dissent. But that won’t work on the people who matter most i.e. the voters. Winning them over — or at least enough of them — will require so much more than a one-note performance.