Nigel Farage should not take lessons from Liz Truss on the Blob
Listen to me instead
For the man on the Clapham omnibus, it is clear that something is going wrong; last year’s British Social Attitudes reported only 40% of people believe we should keep the current system ‘to produce effective government’, but answers vary. For Labour, it was simply that the Conservatives were running it - a theory that seems to have lost favour now that they are in government themselves. For the accelerationist philosopher Nick Land, the problem lies in modernity itself, by creating an unstoppable coupling of aggregating complexity and speed that overwhelms deliberation, planning, and control. In a recent documentary, ‘The Prime Minister vs. the Blob’, Liz Truss put the blame squarely at the foot of a tangle of beauracrats that conspired to bring down her policy agenda. Reform may soon come to believe the same thing. Reports from The Times that Nigel Farage has held talks with the ousted PM on how to take on ‘the Blob’, and how to engineer a major overhaul of the state.
This meeting is an indicator of two emerging trends within Reform; first of all, that the party is starting to think seriously about power. As one source told The Times, “It’s not just a case of thinking about policy, it’s about working through delivery in the face of institutional resistance.”
But the second is an ongoing weakness in the party’s institutional capacity; one that, if it continues unaddressed, might render effective governance impossible. Truss has been turned to because beyond its now-four MPs Reform has little bench depth and remains, under Farage, an unprofessional outfit. Whilst there are suggestions a new think tank may be started, there is a suggestion that ‘Resolute 1850’ is actually more about securing funding from the US; it also remains an open question, given Farage’s obvious and consistent personal difficulties with being outshone by people of talent – of which Rupert Lowe’s dismissal was the latest incarnation – how much of an actual effect it will have on policy. It remains more than likely policy will continue to be ‘developed’ through boozy lunches with Farage, rather than serious political analysis
To some extent, no matter how useful the meeting was, it will have come at a loss for Reform. Despite unveiling Blue Labour-style policies on steel renationalisation, the meeting with Truss risks reigniting accusations that the party has little more to offer than reheated Thatcherism; at the worst, some of her electoral anthrax will rub off on them; at the very least, it will leave voters confused as to where the party sits.
But it is unlikely to have been of much use. There is undoubtedly a problem with how Britain is governed, and with a bureaucracy hostile to right-wing policy. But ‘the Blob’ is a much larger and more diverse ecosystem than just the Civil Service, and in Truss case serves as little more than a right-wing coping mechanism, whose real function is to mask her own failures in governance, rather than to offer any meaningful insight.
If Farage wants to learn how to dismantle a hostile bureaucracy, he should be looking to America, rather than meeting a failed PM. The Project 2025 initiative offers a blueprint for rapidly reshaping the administrative state — something any populist insurgency must take seriously if it hopes to convert electoral success into lasting institutional change.
The real answer to Britain’s governing problems is that the decision space - the viable political choices available to leaders - of our politicians is collapsing, constrained by quangos, international obligations, legal activism, bureaucratic resistance, fiscal oversight, activist pressure, and the growing social conformity of an increasingly narrow political class. The answer to that, one suspects, will take longer than a boozy lunch will allow.