Tories, Trump, Twitter

Thoughts on what 2025 means for the British right

There is no denying that 2024 was an annus horribilis for the British right. The 2024 election finally coalesced the latent issues with the Conservative Party, delivering the most comprehensive defeat in their history. By some reckonings, even with Reform claiming seats, this is the least right-wing parliament any OECD country has ever mustered. 2025 will largely be about the aftershocks of that result.

The current struggles of the Labour government will be a source of hope but also frustration for the right. The government had a poor inheritance and has handled it badly. There is a lack of coherence, both internally and externally. It already feels bedraggled and far less secure than anyone with more than four hundred seats ought to this early on. In the end, however, there is little the right can do about this. The hallmark of opposition is impotence. There will be no way to force an election, let alone to win one. The right can only watch on as Labour either continues to falter or edges towards delivery.

Instead, the coming year will be dominated by the fight between and for the right. Electorally, this will be the continued tussle between the Conservatives and Reform. The latter will be trying to sustain their polling position and translate it into local election success and momentum on the ground. The Tories will largely be manning a rearguard against that and hoping, somehow, to find a way of skewering Farage. The scraps over Christmas were a warning.

At the same time, there will be a deeper, if less obvious battle – over the ideas which are shaping the right. Now, frankly, few of our politicians are that tuned into political philosophy to have this fight outright. However, in the people they listen to, the ideas they take on, and what they put out to try and persuade the public back to the fold, there will be a steady undercurrent. A fight for what conservativism, and the right in general, will be looking to stand for in the 2030s and beyond.

A big part of this will be driven by the Trump effect. A big portion of the party is America-brained. Their obsession with US politics is partly driven by linguistic commonality but also by the flow of money. None of this hinged on Trump's success, but his re-election has changed the dynamic. For a party or a bloc that has lost, nothing is more attractive than copying a winner. There will be plenty of forces on the right who think they can import that sort of magic.

There will also be plenty trying to export it, too. There is enthusiasm for the US right to a Trumpian International, and they have the cash to drive it. Musk's interventions are the tip of the spear on this and point towards American actors becoming more involved in UK politics. As the parties, outriders and think tanks on the right all scrabble to keep the lights on post-defeat, this will be a very attractive cashflow option. The combination of seeing it work in the US and having more people to push it could see the British right push to something more like Trumpism over the course of this year.

This is likely to combine with James O'Malley's prediction that this could be a heavily "online" opposition. It is generally true that the Conservative Party is more inclined to read Tweets than tomes. The Muskian takeover of Twitter has probably intensified and changed nature. MPs who spend a lot of time on the app will be seeing far more content from the right, far more from the states, and far more from the fringes. There's a risk here that the right of 2025 makes the mistake of the left ten years ago of getting caught in an online feedback loop, which gradually detaches them from large chunks of the electorate.

The result of this is likely to be a right that starts to look more nativist, more corporatist and more pugnacious in style than what has gone before. It will probably pivot more towards what Tony Blair saw as the "closed" model of the future. The Tories will become more set in their pivot away from the middle classes. A Cummings-style, growth-focused start-up party may make a play for the ground they have vacated among the professional classes, especially in the most male and aspirational bits of that demographic. The right will hope that this will deliver the sort of electoral coalition that powered them in 2019, and did the job for Trump in November.

Whether this works is tricky to judge. Trump is wildly unpopular in Britain, except among the people who have already voted for the Reform and the Rights of the Tories. Some of this is perhaps aesthetic opposition rather than political, but he is a tricky character to moor yourself to. This is especially true now he is back in charge. There is every chance that once in office, Trump will do things in America which look bad from the outside – either by adversely affecting America or by hampering Britain. If this is the case, intellectual, financial and physical links to Trumpism could become a drag, an approach that really excites a chunk of the electorate but is far from enough to turn that into a tangible victory.

It is, however, harder to see where the other ideas on the right come from. So far, there has been little appetite to grapple with some of the questions of the future of public services and the economy that have come in the wake of the Tory defeat. Perhaps this year, the new MPs will come into their own a little more. There is some reason for optimism about the 2024 intake. Generally, they are people who have come up through moderate politics, were drawn as young adults to the party in the late 2000s and perhaps have more in common with traditional Tory blocks. Now settled into Westminster, this is the year they may start to think towards the future of a party they are locked into being a part of.

All of this will be overshadowed, however, by the real electoral fight on the right. The 2025 local elections could barely be a better set piece for Reform and the Tories to come together. Although council reorganisation may shift the polls a bit, these are set to echo the 2021 locals, which were a Tory post-Covid high point. With all-out elections across a swathe of Tory shires and new mayoral contests, too, it is the perfect chance for Reform to demonstrate that they are more than just a general election protest party.

Farage's outfits are already plunging money into these, wanting to take them seriously and be seen as serious. They should stand a strong chance. The Conservatives still have little answer to the Reform threat, seeing them more as siblings going through a phase than a real opposition. That is a mistake, with Reform showing far more resolve to have the fight.

Local elections are also well suited to incumbents. The electorate and turnout are smaller, making it easier to surge. In lots of these places, Tory councillors will be unused to fighting tough elections. Their campaign data and infrastructure will be limited, and many will be somewhere between complacent and lazy. An effective Reform campaign, could scalp many. This would be a coup for them and would heighten the structural problems with the Conservatives.

A large block of councillors is the one remaining institutional strength the party can still boast of. These are a vital resource. The practising of "tithing" means they donate significant sums to the local party (usually 10% of their income as an elected representative). They also do a large chunk of campaigning and organising, as well as dragging their friends out with them. A cull of councillors will take a lot of that away. Given the age of many Tory elected members, lots will drift away rather than wait four years for another chance. In places where Reform becomes the party of local ambition, this could help normalise and professionalise the insurgents – though the pressures of actually running councils may be difficult for them.

A bad election night for the Tories will also be psychologically significant. It will compound the sense of loss from last year. It may well accelerate the possibility of a leadership challenge. Certainly, it will fuel sniping at the current set-up. Bad locals have generally predicated unrest at the incumbent leadership. It will also bolster Reform, giving them the sense that they are a real party rather than a Farage phenomenon.

By the end of 2025, we should know two things. The first is which of the parties on the right looks more enduring. This year, there will be a test of whether Reform can professionalise and deepen its position. It will also test whether the Tories can stop them. The other is the intellectual shape that the right is likely to take for the next few years. 2024 was the year of the shock, and 2025 the year of the aftershock. With another twelve months past, the shape of the ground could still look very different.