Change

With bonus essay on why I left Glasgow

Editor’s note: for those who want the Glasgow ‘tea’, scroll to the bottom.

In the private members club located in the offices of British news website UnHerd, there hangs a fine art print, by artist J.G. Fox. The work is pride of place above the fireplace; it depicts ‘The Political Herds’, in Victorian watercolour style, announced in elegant green lettering unfurling itself across the top of the print. A non-exhaustive list of the ‘herds’ selected for inclusion: Monarchists (one little figure in a burgundy tunic clutches a sign calling for ‘BEZOS FOR KING’), Capitalists, Crypto Bros, Communists, Alt-Right, Antifa (fighting each other, of course), Feminists, Femcels, Black Lives Matter, Randians, Traditionalists, Clown World Guys, The Cancelled, The Religious and Podcasters.

Tongue in cheek though it is, the artwork is instructive. What denotes a ‘political herd’ now? According to UnHerd, anything from profession, single-issue cause, old school political outlook or faith. On the outlet’s shop — where you can buy a copy of the print for £350 — they describe it as documenting “today’s manifold political herds and micro-groupings — the kinds that UnHerd tries to understand and document every day but not join”. The latter part is patently untrue; when founded in 2017, UnHerd was the first constituent state in the burgeoning rightwing media empire of hedge fund manager Paul Marshall. It publishes a wide range of writers and thinkers yes, but as political journalist Samuel Earle noted in 2023: “beneath UnHerd’s claims to nonpartisanship lie Conservative-friendly foundations and a range of rightwing interests, for which the site’s “heterodox” range of writers appear to offer convenient cover”.

‘The Political Herds’ print by J.G Fox.

I could write about Paul Marshall for days; he has swiftly become one of the most influential figures in British media, simply by dint of having money and mixing hard-right beliefs with populist instincts — a recipe perfected by Nigel Farage. Marshall is the man responsible for GB News. Last year he snapped up a legacy media brand, The Spectator, which is the oldest weekly magazine in the world, and demonstrates it through the rigidly conservative politics it trumpets. He’s also the father of Winston Marshall, the former banjo player in Mumford and Sons, who left the band to pursue his dream of dribbling into a podcast mic opposite the likes of Laurence Fox (and bankrolled by his father).

Marshall Senior understands that the power of the press still endures, especially if you invest in high-quality writing and journalism. Even as someone vehemently opposed to the sort of stances UnHerd is trying to normalise, I can recognise the standard of work is so often a cut above much of its competition. The Spectator is dross but the dross is usually well-presented and smoothly argued. I’m sure to a believer, it is quite the satisfying read. GB News is Marshall’s grubbiest project, real knuckle dragger stuff but that has its audience too, and its rage-bait clips are perfect fodder for the swamp of social media where so many spend their days, absorbing a torrid stream of declinist ranting, mixed with solutions that mostly amount to ‘a pogrom of [insert marginalised demographic] will bring your weekly grocery shop costs down’.

Lots of members of varying British ‘political herds’ now buy into the latter rhetoric, or ignore it because they wish to be convinced by other parts of a political agenda trumpeted by Nigel Farage’s latest political vehicle, Reform UK. Divergent as the political herds (which, I would argue, emerged as a result of mainstream politicians replacing long-term policy with short-term PR stunts) are, they’re bonded by one thing: being very unhappy. A worrying cross-section are plumping to express this dissatisfaction via new-found allegiance to a party led by the human embodiment of Toad from The Wind in the Willows.

I was tempted to call Reform ‘insurgents’ but that would be to give credence to their myth-making, which positions the party as anti-establishment and a fresh force in politics. Nothing could be further from the truth: Reform is just an old car with a new paint job. It is literally the Brexit party, renamed in 2020 after they achieved their aim of suckering Britain into leaving the EU for the promise of bundles of cash and ‘control’ waiting just over the horizon.

Nigel Farage, eyeing 10 Downing Street.

Needless to say, such riches haven’t materialised. But it’s fine, because now Reform are here, ready to finally enact change! What does change look like? Well, clearing the land of all immigrants (read: browns, blacks, anyone not pink and swollen like an uncooked sausage) and then ripping the absolute arse out of the state. Reform UK’s economic policies — which few manage to read, distracted by the bombast of the party’s leaders promising to turbo charge Channel wave machines to stop small boats — are of the extreme Thatcherite sort, slashing taxes (which sounds nice until you stop to think about what happens to our public services), and cutting “red tape”. This, in financial speak, means deregulation. Lots of it. Deregulation is what got us into this mess.