Jasper Burnside

In having conversations with politico friends, it is always striking the paucity of understanding as to why someone would vote for Reform. While I wouldn’t because of the fundamental reprehensibility of their policy, and the vituperative nonsense they spew, the reasons people vote for Reform are dangerously understandable.

When one leaves London and the Home Counties, it becomes clear that this country and our systems work only for the few. The opportunity for most everyone else has fallen precipitously, as towns have begun to rot, plagued by economic collapse, brain drain, and a spiralling cost of living, leaving many bereft of any feeling of progress. These are not Reform talking points; they are what people feel in their bones, a waking moment of fear about their futures. When you feel there’s no place left for you, no party that you can trust, you must choose differently – not out of blind hope, but in the quiet conviction that something might yet change. This support is not some sudden or even confused thought, but a rational conclusion after years of feeling neglected and left behind.

This bubble in which we study, and its profound disconnection from the rest of the country, is a dangerous luxury. Easy as it would be to simply retreat into the happy homes of ideological security, the paramount need is for us to re-engage with that with which we profoundly disagree. This intellectual quarantine does a disservice to us and allows facile arguments to go unchallenged, preventing us from understanding the nature of its appeal.

“This bubble in which we study, and its profound disconnect from the rest of the country, is a dangerous luxury”

The best argument against Reform is actually engaging, not the petty dismissal. It is the same dismissal which has led people to vote for Reform in the first place, having been scorned and alienated. The intense eye-rolling, casual sophistication, and stifled contempt for the creation of such a society is the very same distaste that, for many people, leads them to support Reform.

Indeed, it is precisely why we require a Reform society. What we require is not a queue of clamorous caricatures, but an articulation of policy and ideas by peers at this university. If you truly want to combat Reform, the solution, at least in this university, is clear: we require a Reform society, something to provide a basis to arguments which are made so bluntly and poorly across much of our media.

If you are serious about countering Reform, we must embrace it and engage with it. This long-overdue debate requires a new society that can champion ideas many find repugnant. So if you oppose Reform and all that it stands for, you must support a new Reform society.

Duncan Paterson

It might be strange to start off a head-to-head by agreeing with the other person, but Jasper does have a fair point: a Reform society would probably contribute positively to the political discourse going on in the student body at the moment, at least to the extent of it as an example of what not to do and what not to say. But if that is the case, why is there not one already? It’s not like Cambridge students are alien to creating problematic societies recently…

I think that, on a fundamental level, one of the reasons why there hasn’t been formed yet is simply because its founders would know the nature of the Pandora’s Box that they would be opening. Following a party line as volatile and vitriolic as Reform’s could lay them open to all sorts of accusations, and it wouldn’t work very well as a political society if they had to disavow Nigel Farage every time he blames the UK’s problems on immigrants, or calls young people propagators of woke ideology. The average Cambridge student, what he might call the “wokerati” but what a normal person would call a well-rounded and considerate individual, is the type of person who is often on the receiving end of his hatred and wouldn’t exactly give the founders a large support base to choose from.

“It’s not like Cambridge students are alien to creating problematic societies recently…”

As Jasper points out, when dialogue dies, so does fair and stable political representation; when the two ends of the political spectrum sever ties, the right falls into an ever-deepening spiral of echo chambers. Blind and deaf, they lash out and the resultant chaos is quite self-evidently displayed. However, his argument that we should welcome them to the table rests on the assumption that a Reform society would want to have a space at all. For a party line that displays so much contempt for other political affiliations, it is hard to believe that their young followers might buck the trend and engage in amiable discourse with their fellow politically-inclined students.

Whilst generalised characteristics of the average Reform student might be the butt of a few jokes, playing with stereotypes is the weapon of the right, not the centre or left-leaning student. As such, when Jasper talks about the caricatures, and the distaste they create that drives people into the arms of Reform, I think he touches on a valuable point about the alienating danger that they represent, but it wouldn’t be like we’d be making the first aggressive move; Reform UK’s policy is built on weaponising stereotypes. Healthy dialogue works in theory, when your opponent doesn’t make a living out of twisting words and images to their own political agenda. As such, although attitudes like those championed by Reform shouldn’t be left to fester in anonymity and should be publicly exposed, platforming them is the wrong way to go about such an endeavour.