Are you ready for the nine-word culture war?

During the recent Conservative leadership contest, I was largely of the view that it was of little consequence whether Kemi Badenoch, or Robert Jenrick, or the previously eliminated James Cleverly or Tom Tugenhadt emerged. All conventional wisdom, from 1979, 1997 and 2010, led me to believe that we were highly likely to be at the start of a multi-term Labour government, and that the Conservatives would rattle through two or three leaders before they found one who was ready to take a credible message to the electorate and return the party to Downing Street.

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However we are now, I think, compelled to ask whether conventional wisdom is dead in western democracies. We are compelled to unthink everything we thought before the re-election of President Trump.

We have been warned. Populist nationalism has disrupted politics, and entered government, across Europe, from Hungary to Italy to Sweden, with an omnipresent risk of further disruption in France and Germany and elsewhere. Here, in this year’s election, Nigel Farage’s Reform party attracted over four million votes, which under a proportional system would have returned around 75 seats and, who knows, perhaps led to a coalition government with the Conservatives.

We know the playbook, too. Focus, rigidly, on a small set of key issues which light the blue touch paper of substantial portions of the electorate and provide a simplistic solution. Immigration. Transgender rights. Net zero. It does not have to be consistent or coherent, and it does not require depth. Nine words should do it.

And so, we return to the UK. Labour’s Budget had all the characteristics of a government which sees itself at the start of a 10-year term. By the time the next general election rolls around in 2029, according to the OBR, tax will be the highest it has ever been, comprising almost 40 per cent of GDP, mortgage rates and house prices will be going up rather rapidly, and the economy will be barely growing. The pound in the pocket of the worker will not travel far.

Labour’s big bet is that the Conservatives will not be in any fit state to capitalise on it, allowing them to return to office wrapped in the blanket of moderate competence. Maybe they will be proven right.

Or maybe not. Ms Badenoch is not generally thought of as a politician with significant depth, but there is little doubt she has finely honed right-wing instincts. She is a walking, talking headline. She has the nine words, and if we are now operating in a political arena where that is all she needs, then perhaps she is in the right place at the right time.

Has Sir Keir Starmer got the political nous to defeat the radical right? (Image: free) Net zero makes you cold and poor; we produce all the energy we need right here to keep you warm and make you rich. Illegal immigration stops you getting a GP appointment and takes resources from your school; we have all the people we need in this country and we just need to get them working. When I send your daughters to school, they will come home at the end of the day as girls, not as boys. You work all week and you can’t buy a beer on Friday night; it’s Labour’s fault and I will cut your taxes to make it better.

And so on.

Different messages to different audiences, but all aimed to pick the scabs that have not healed properly because moderate incumbents have lost touch. President Obama’s strategist, David Axelrod, said of today’s Democrats: “You can't approach working people like missionaries and say, ‘We're here to help you become more like us’. There's a kind of unspoken disdain, unintended disdain in that.”

That is the story of centrist and, particularly, soft-left parties across the world. They have hijacked ‘progressivism’ and used it to imply a moral superiority; life would be cuddlier if you were all more like us.

Labour at Westminster hold over 100 seats which require less than a five per cent swing to be overturned. 25 of them require a swing of less than one per cent. This is a shaky, shaky majority. Ironically, they may be saved by Mr Farage and Ms Badenoch fishing from the same pool and effectively cancelling each other out. On the other hand, if those two can come to some sort of accommodation, then a combination of global trends and electoral mathematics would leave Labour in desperate trouble.

Here in Scotland, our election is right around the corner. Eyebrows were raised when Reform polled 7 per cent in July; roughly what they would need to return a seat from every Holyrood region in 2026. Eyes got wider last week when they polled significantly in excess of that in local authority by-elections. And all of this without a leader.

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In 2026, a clever, nine-word campaign based on a few key issues - abolish the Scottish Parliament, scrap net zero, ban social gender transitioning in schools, reward the workers with a tax cut and punish the shirkers with a benefit cut - with a figurehead who can do even a half reasonable job of carrying the message, could fillet the Tories and do a bit of damage to other parties, too.

Huge numbers of very decent, very reasonable, but very displeased working people would find themselves in vigorous agreement with more than one of the list of demands. I, a soft free-market capitalist liberal, would find myself in vigorous agreement with more than one of the something-for-everyone list.

Holyrood’s mainstream should heed Mr Axelrod’s wise words. America may not be an outlier.

Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters, and co-host of the Holyrood Sources podcast. He is a former communications chief for the Scottish Conservatives