Konstantin Kisin

The Tories failed.

But what the public do not know is that the Tories failed despite many of their ministers being talented and brilliant people.

This is not a joke.

It's a tragedy.

Having met a number of the people who would be at the very top of your list of incompetent, self-serving, unprincipled, slithering creatures, I can tell you the tragedy is that most of them are none of those things.

Many were good, capable people trying their best within a party that had lost its way.

dealing with an openly rebellious civil service and operating within the suffocating straitjacket of powerful Blairite legislation which curbed their ability to actually govern the country.

Put simply, you need Tory failures to avoid reform failing in the same way.

This was, of course, what President Trump and his team learned from his first term in office.

They spent four years trying to do things and being obstructed at every turn.

It was only on his triumphant return to office that the Trump administration has been able to actually implement their agenda.

This explains part of my lack of acute concern about this trend within reform.

This was always going to happen.

Indeed, by the time of the next election, I expect the entire Tory right to have switched to reform, with up to 60 reform candidates being current Conservative MPs.

But the other reason for my optimism is that ultimately the direction of a political party is set at the top.

Nigel Farage, his immensely impressive great Cardinal James Orr, and the rest of the leadership cadre are no wets.

As long as they're in charge, reform will remain radical in the healthy sense of the word.

They're not extremists, which is a strength, not a weakness.

The very online world rewards the hotness of one's takes, but electoral politics in Britain rewards a strong, clear-eyed focus on the silent majority who are tired of economic stagnation, illegal immigration, rising crime, and crumbling infrastructure.

The public are angry and they are frustrated, but they aren't extremists, nor will they tolerate extremism.