Against Christian Nationalism
Why Reform is winning, and how they could lose
In September, Danny Kruger — former advisor to Boris Johnson and MP for East Wiltshire — defected to Reform UK from the Conservative Party. In many ways, this new addition seemed natural. Kruger is a sincere Brexiteer and opponent of mass migration. He represents an affluent, rural seat which could plausibly fall to the Liberal Democrats at the next General Election if the right-wing vote remains split. Most of all, Kruger brings a thoughtfulness which Reform is generally (and mostly accurately) perceived as lacking, and therefore lends the party credibility.
Immediately upon his defection, Kruger was appointed head of Reform’s ‘Department of Preparation for Government’. It’s still not entirely clear what that role will entail, and where the boundaries with the new roles for Richard Tice and Zia Yusuf (‘Head of DOGE’ and ‘Head of Policy’ respectively) lie, but it is clear that Kruger will have a significant influence on the building of Reform’s leadership team and their agenda for government.
This was followed the Sunday before last with the announcement of James Orr, a Cambridge theology don, as Farage’s newest ‘senior advisor’. Kruger and Orr are friends and it is very likely that Orr played a central role in negotiating Kruger’s defection to Reform. Much as with Kruger, the precise nature of Orr’s role is not yet defined, but it seems he will also play a substantial role in recruiting ‘highly talented’ individuals to serve both in the party’s central office and in parliament. Orr is closely connected to US Vice President JD Vance (even helping arrange his visit to Britain), as well as other key figures in the MAGA sphere.
Both Kruger and Orr have historically been thought of as ‘Christian conservatives’ and ‘communitarians’, but both have moved away from this position more recently. Colleagues at the Pimlico Journal who have discussed the issue with Orr can confirm his condemnation of so-called ‘post-liberals’, often the worst manifestation of socially conservative politics in Britain, and Kruger (who submitted a video message of support to the decidedly non-communitarian Looking For Growth conference last week) was outspoken in his criticism of Reform’s welfarist turn earlier in the year.
For that reason, one should not be concerned over the appointment of these individuals in particular; indeed, both provide an intellectual seriousness which will be required to construct the governing agenda that Reform will need to implement to achieve a successful first term. Nevertheless, their appointment — and, perhaps even more importantly, the increasingly strong connection between Reform and the US Conservative movement — has raised questions about the possibility of a turn towards political Christianity in Britain. It is worth exploring why that would be a mistake.
Reform have been topping the polls for a year now, and are consistently ten points ahead of Labour and up to fifteen points ahead of the Tories. They have achieved this despite an ongoing public feud with Rupert Lowe, scandals surrounding former Reform MP James McMurdock, chaos around the role of Zia Yusuf, and relentless attacks from the three legacy parties and their allies in the media. The reasons behind Reform’s continued success are no secret: net migration continues to run above half a million each year, the locking-in of the post-COVID surge in entries through the granting of ILR has yet to be addressed, the economy is virtually stagnant, and taxes are going up. In short, the government is failing on immigration and the economy, the two issues that voters consistently rank as most important in their lives.
The public understand that much of this is the fault of the Tories, although they may not have a consistent narrative on exactly why this is the case. Lockdown, Brexit, austerity, immigration: too much or too little of each are blamed, but the consensus is that their failure was near-complete. Similarly, they understand that Labour is doing precisely nothing to address any of these challenges — indeed, Labour are overseeing an increase in small boat crossings as they raise taxes even further to pay for illegal immigrants’ housing and imprison those who dare protest against it, all whilst freezing pensioners in their homes and stealing farmers’ inheritances.
Reform’s platform is simple and easy for even a disengaged voter to grasp. They promise to lower immigration and deport illegals with one hand, whilst reviving the economy with the other. Their economic policies are not yet well-developed, but are vaguely understood to involve increasing growth by lowering taxes — killing two birds with one stone, or so it seems. This approach is saleable enough, at least for the time being, whilst being sufficiently vague that people who support the party solely on immigration are reassured that they won’t crash the economy à la Liz Truss. It may prove an effective strategy to avoid talking in detail about economic policy for as long as possible since this would divide the coalition and open them to attack. It’s also important that Reform avoid the trap that the Trump Administration seems to have fallen into, where poorly thought-out experiments with the economy distract from popular efforts on migration and harm chances of re-election.
Given this, it’s crucial that Reform messaging stays on track and continues to focus on issues where they are strong. Immigration, ‘Net Stupid Zero’, and making it easier to see your GP — that is the narrative the public is buying. Anti-immigration voters understand that the Tories cannot be trusted, so Reform are the only show in town. All that is required to keep them on board is the occasional statement along the lines of ‘it is still our policy to deport criminals’ and ‘we remain committed to the Tristan de Cunha processing centre’. NHS retail politics is as simple as promising ‘more money’ while shutting down any broader talk of ‘reform’ in public, since this makes people think of privatisation and is therefore a pointless vote loser (at least for now).
Net Zero is very fertile ground because a large fraction of the population still doesn’t understand quite how disastrous it is going to be (despite having a generally negative sense of the policy). If you inform these people that the Tories had planned to ban new boilers, and that it was Labour that got rid of that policy, they would need to sit down in shock. There are long lists of simply insane Net Zero requirements of which the public is still largely unaware, and so a long series of policy announcements could be made which all effectively boil down to ‘we will simply not ban everything you like’, repeated ad nauseam until it sinks in.
Despite these obvious truths, there are some who wish Reform would move in a different direction, filling the pages of their next manifesto with the whims and wishes of conservative Christians. Whilst a tiny fraction of the British population, these people are particularly prominent online — I personally estimate that they make up only 13% of British right-wing X users but are responsible for over 50% of coal posted on the site — with personalities such as Connor Tomlinson and Charlie Downes advocating for the re-centring of the right around political Christianity.
Following this path would clearly be a disaster for Reform. I say this as a conservative Christian myself. I oppose both abortion and euthanasia, but the fact is that the general public simply do not agree with the Christian perspective on these issues. The best way to avoid worsening the current settlement on such things is in fact to avoid bringing them up in the first place, not to actively campaign on them. The poor return on these issues has already been made clear: Nigel Farage is still hit with anti-abortion accusations for having tepidly suggested that lowering the term limit from 24 to 22 weeks might be sensible (the average is 12 weeks across Europe), and assisted suicide is perhaps the most popular policy in recent memory (and that popularity extends even to generally conservative-minded voters). Any manifesto promising to re-open these issues will needlessly leak votes to the Left.
To illustrate further, let us examine the the recent debates on abortion and assisted suicide.
Abortion was a political non-issue in Britain for many years, but it became the hobby horse of one MP, Stella Creasy, the member for Walthamstow and the first woman ever to have a baby. Even she only picked it up because the then Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, had frozen her out of the front bench, and she thought herself too important to be a normal backbench MP. Her advocacy drew the ire of anti-abortion groups in the UK, who proceeded to organise protests in Walthamstow town centre in which they displayed huge photos of aborted foetuses.
That these images represent the reality of abortion is obviously true, but one can hardly be surprised that members of the public passing by would react with disgust, and would blame their discomfort on the people displaying the pictures rather than the abortion practitioners responsible for creating their content. This also seemed only to further provoke Creasy, who ramped up her pro-abortion campaigning, foisting the issue on Northern Ireland through an amendment to the Northern Ireland Act 2019. She then took the opportunity of Labour’s victory in 2024 to press for full decriminalisation of abortion up until conception. Anti-abortion campaigners were therefore not merely defeated, but unintentionally shifted the legal position even further from their ideal.
Anti-abortion campaigners also employed tactics such as praying by the entrances to abortion clinics. From a Christian perspective this is perfectly reasonable, but from a secular one it came across as intimidating and earned no good will. In fact, anti-abortion campaigners engineered high-profile stunts around such prayer being made illegal — one woman who was praying silently could have denied this to the police when asked, but chose not to, and pro-life campaigners shared the video far and wide. Sadly, whilst the British public shares some of the Right’s outrage on particular violations of freedom of speech, they are by no means entirely reliable on the subject, and the woman did come across as rather dotty.
In all, the campaign against abortion was perceived as negative interfering by out-of-touch religious busybodies, and turned the vast majority of the public off. Anti-abortion campaigning is also, not unreasonably, associated with American evangelicals. This is not a popular group in Britain. This association isn’t helped by the fact that British campaigners have largely cribbed the tactics of their American cousins, even hosting an annual ‘March for Life’ modelled on the American example. Even I, a British evangelical married to an American evangelical, find it off-putting — such is the difference in national sentiments.
As for assisted suicide, the Christian arguments against it have been very poor and often disingenuous. Take, for example, the ‘slippery slope’ argument, which is in itself perfectly reasonable, seeing as the range of cases in which euthanasia is permitted has expanded over time in every jurisdiction where it has been introduced. The problem here is that, as indicated by polling data, most people in Britain are perfectly comfortable with quite expansive access to death-on-demand. Indeed, MPs seem to be much more wary of it than the public, and it has primarily been MPs — not the general public — who have delayed euthanasia’s legalisation and sought to restrict its use. The argument that we can’t put terminally ill people in immense pain out of their misery because shortly after we would be forced to allow the same option to those with only chronic illness (and immense pain) does not work if the general public regard the latter outcome as a good in itself.
Danny Kruger himself spoke against the bill in Parliament with a muddled speech about Britain needing a ‘culture of life’. A few weeks later in a different debate, he made a strange speech about Britain being built on ‘Christian values’, without establishing why, exactly, the majority non-Christian population of the country today should seek to maintain this basis for national life. Perhaps the only major politician who landed a decent argument against assisted dying was Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who said that it would cost the NHS too much money (although, as Stephen Kinnock pointed out, it would of course also save a great deal of money).
You would think that after the success of Vote Leave, any insurgent campaign trying to shift popular opinion would be searching desperately for this sort of argument which appeals to voters where they are rather than appealing to the sentiments of the campaigners themselves. Instead, the Christian Right consistently decides to make arguments that nobody will listen to based on premises nobody accepts. If you are a conservative Christian, you do not oppose euthanasia because of the slippery slope. You oppose it because you believe it is wrong in all cases. If you are not a conservative Christian, you do not care about the slippery slope.
Thankfully, whilst these currents are gaining some traction online, they seem to be receding among those who will actually set the agenda for a future Reform government. It may ultimately prove fortuitous that Rupert Lowe, for all his good qualities, ended up isolated from Reform, as his new vehicle seems to have hoovered up a number of the most egregious offenders in this regard — especially those associated with the Lotus Eaters — and nobody with any history of involvement with Lowe will be granted any kind of position in Reform for the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, we should not be complacent. In the best case scenario, Reform will continue to focus on immigration (the most important issue this country faces bar none), Net Zero, and ‘improving the NHS’ whilst avoiding fruitless controversy over culture war issues. In the alternative, the worst instincts of Christian conservatism will draw Reform’s focus away from these issues and distract the party with unwinnable fights which will lose them votes at the next election, which the country desperately needs them to win. Even if they manage to get over the line despite this, such issues will continue to take focus away from the important things in government, and the party cannot afford such diversions during their first term in office when proving competence and maintaining party unity will be necessary.
Every day, Britain becomes more alien, more foreigners receive citizenship, the interests of those from abroad gain more influence in our politics, and the pockets of immigrants are stuffed with more taxpayer money. Every year that the economy continues in stagnation reduces our children’s income by another few thousand pounds. Every barrel of oil left in the ground is more prosperity left unclaimed.
Reform must be focused on these issues — winning issues which affect everyone and on which the majority of the British people agree. It must resist the false sophistication of the communitarian cries for a ‘culture of faith’ and the post-liberal ‘politics of place’. Internally, a deeper vision for the purpose of a Reform administration and an understanding of the kind of country a Reform government would look to build will be necessary, but these ideas do not provide a useful basis upon which to build an agenda for change.
The British public will never elect the Compact editorial board. They will never vote for the ideas of John Milbank. Community sounds nice, but being rich sounds nicer. Let Reform’s Orpheus sing of bringing prosperity home and sending migrants back — do not jump ship to swim ashore to UnHerd Island.
This article was written by Don Fox, a Pimlico Journal contributor. Have a pitch? Send it to submissions@pimlicojournal.co.uk.
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अच्छा काम सर!👍
Problem is most of these ‘trads' knee-time is split roughly 5/95 between the prie-dieu and the towel.