Politics: the wrecking ball

By Richard North - July 12, 2025

Looking around at the broader news agenda, as I often do when seeking out items for the next blogpost, I cannot help but admit that I am less enthused by the majority of the items I see, stricken by a narrowing horizon which distorts priorities and interests.

My problem is straightforward in that I’m with Betz in expecting a civil war to emerge within five years or so and thus see the steady breakdown of law and order as a sign that we are drifting towards that condition.

While one would like to pursue avenues for the reform and improvement of society – not least The Harrogate Agenda – and explore complex constitutional issues such as the question of whether to denounce the ECHR, any prospect of change in the foreseeable future looks remote.

In our fractured and increasingly violent society, the grip of central government is steadily weakening, with politicians demonstrably able to grasp key issues and offer sensible (or any) solutions to intractable problems. The regime’s inability to implement desperately necessary reforms to the benefits system is a case in point and its attempts to deal with illegal immigration are nothing short of pathetic.

Bogged down in day-to-day problems, the government certainly does not have sufficient bandwidth to deal with complex constitutional reforms – even if it had any interest in going down that rabbit hole, which it doesn’t.

Neither is it realistic to expect that we will see any change in emphasis should Reform UK ever get near power, which is possible in the current climate of disillusionment with the established political parties.

Why any expectations would be dashed is set out in an interesting piece in The Times written by A N Wilson under the admirably explanatory headline which declares: “Reform voters simply want to smash things up”.

I’ve seen this sentiment expressed elsewhere, in somewhat different terms, to the effect that all Reform wants to do is “stomp on the uniparty”, functioning as a wrecking ball, bringing the system down without much concern as to what will replace it.

Wilson expands on this theme with his sub-head in which he confides that “Intelligent friends are turning to Nigel Farage in such despair with our politics, they are prepared to vote for a death cult”, with one of his friends explaining the nature these wrecking ball politics.

A vote for Farage is Samson being led forth from the prison house in Gaza and grasping the pillars of the house wherein sat the three thousand lords and ladies of the Philistines. One mighty heave and the liberal establishment, the civil service, the virtue-signalling north London dinner party, would go belly up.

Wilson picks up this theme, noting that the advisers to the mainstream parties are coming back anxiously from their focus groups and saying, “If you can only introduce a bit of Faragist rhetoric into your next speech, you will save the red wall, or the former Thatcherite wing”.

This, writes Wison, implies that a vote for Reform has anything positive about it rather than being what it is, a desire for collective hara-kiri. Farage, he says, is not Tebbit Come Again, nor is he the radical who will let the red-wallers have more money to spend on benefits, even though some of his wilder promises suggest that he is.

In Wilson’s book, rational analysis of our present situation reveals to any sensible person that politicians, whatever their supposed beliefs, are completely powerless.

He cites “the worldwide phenomenon of migration, caused by wars, famines, climate change and other huge factors” which are “way beyond the control of pygmy party leaders in Westminster”.

These will keep on happening, he warns, and the tangled complexities of human rights law will still enmesh any European leader hoping to deal with the matter – even if, like Farage, they promise to hoist the Jolly Roger, rip up all treaties and agreements made decades ago, and exit from the European Court of Human Rights.

In a similar way, he tells us, any fiscal promises made by anyone in Westminster, whether Conservative, Lib Dem or Labour, are not really worth hearing.

The fates of Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss showed that small-fry politicians are powerless against the world markets; and the UK Debt Management Office determines that we, the taxpayers, spend more on servicing the national debt than we do on schools, agriculture, roads and defence put together.

Thus, all the current government can offer is a continuing deterioration in all aspects of our lives, from our economic wellbeing to law and order, immigration, and much else.

Inevitably, by the time we get to 2029, we will be further down the line towards an impending civil war, with little prospect of turning back. Most likely by then, the nation, like A N Wilson’s friends, will be in an iconoclastic mood.

I can thus see the electorate voting for Farage precisely because he has no policies, simply because they want him to be, and will be expecting him to act as a nihilistic wrecking ball.

In that scenario, it will be Farage who presides over the final collapse of the state and our descent into a full-blown civil war. As such, planning for future constitutional reforms needs to take second place to developing strategies for survival and mitigating the effects of the violence.

I fear we must go through a long period of instability before we reach a resolution – with much blood-letting – before we again have a stable government and a population minded to look at the longer-term. In the meantime, it is a question of sauve qui peut, reading the runes to detect early signs of collapse with a view to taking timely avoiding action.

Such pessimism could, of course, be over-egged. This nation has extraordinary resilience, and the ability to pull back from the edge, as it did in 1926 and the General Strike, and again in 1984-5 with the miners’ strike – which was closer to revolution than most people care to admit.

One thing which could turn the tide and shake us out of this bout of introspection is an external “adventure” – another war which, as in 1939, could serve to re-unite the nation and rekindle a sense of national identity.

As much as Betz is forecasting a civil war, there is a gaggle of generals and others predicting a European war with Russia as the protagonist. The latest of these is General Sir Patrick Sanders, who is telling us that Britain must prepare for war with Russia in next five years, urging the government to build bomb shelters as, he says, “Moscow’s threat to the UK grows”.

His thesis, in common with many of his colleagues, is that: “If Russia stops fighting in Ukraine, you get to a position where within a matter of months they will have the capability to conduct a limited attack on a Nato member that we will be responsible for supporting, and that happens by 2030”.

Personally, I think that is unlikely, the warnings of impending doom at the hands of Russia being redolent of those of the Cold War warriors, and about as realistic. Sanders, of course, thinks otherwise. His view is that, as the Cold War ended, the West was lured into a false sense of security and that the “peace dividend” has made Britain vulnerable.

But if Sanders is right, then effectively, we are embarking on a race against time as to whether his thesis, of Betz’s scenario prevails. On balance, though, the likelihood is the latter, as the damage done by decades of mass immigration proves irrecoverable.

We are a very different nation from what we were in 1989 at the end of the Cold War. We are meaner, poorer, fractured and less trusting, with resentment bubbling to the surface over the imposition of alien cultures, and their preferential treatment.

Betz talks of the most unstable situation arising in moderately homogenous societies, particularly when there is a perceived change in the status of a titular majority, or significant minority, which possesses the wherewithal to revolt on its own.

Where there is a perception that the status quo has been invidiously unbalanced, we are on the countdown to a civil war, and that scenario we have in spades, far more real and immediate than any Russian threat.

Says Betz, the fact of the matter is that the tools of revolt in the form of various appurtenances of modern life are just lying around, knowledge of how to employ them is widespread, targets are obvious and undefended, and more and more formerly regular citizens seem minded to take the shot.

If there is any way of stopping the clock, that is where our attention needs to be focused.