Craft Politics

Reform UK is having the best year of its life. Official opposition in Wales. Seventeen seats in Scotland. Over 1,400 councillors. And yet Middle England still hasn't climbed aboard.
This week on Craft Politics: Darren Grimes, Reform UK councillor, deputy leader of Durham County Council, and one of GB News's most recognisable voices, joins Joseph Lavoie and Andrew Percy to answer what Reform actually is, where its next million voters come from, and whether it can govern or just campaign.
We discuss:
The ceiling problem. Reform won more council seats on a smaller vote share than the year before. Is this a party filling the void left by Labour and Conservative collapse, or something structurally stronger?
Where the next million comes from. Darren's two-pronged attack: prove economic credibility to the Sussexes and cultural compatibility to the Red Wall. And why Essex, not just Durham, is now in play.
Not Thatcher's party. Why Reform would nationalise British Steel, why it's past the ideological purity of the 1980s, and how Darren's Labour-voting grandad changed his mind about Maggie.
The Burnham threat. Andy Burnham is coming for the same voter Reform wants. Darren's response: nobody in County Durham knows who he is, and Manchesterism isn't going to solve the North's problems.
The migration radicalisation. A majority of British voters now support detention of illegal migrants. Darren's warning: if Reform doesn't get this right, people will conclude the ballot box is broken and go to the horseshoe of doom.
Government in waiting. What Reform's first 100 days would look like, from scrapping green levies to lifting the cap on medical school places, and why Whitehall needs grabbing by the balls.
Also discussed: HMO Britain, why the BBC immigration argument was always wrong, the billionaire who just left taking £330 million in tax with him, and whether Darren has parliamentary ambitions. Spoiler: the call might come.
Find Darren on GB News and follow him on X.
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Craft Politics is a cross-border political podcast where Canadian and British experts come on to answer one sharp political question per episode. Co-hosted by Joseph Lavoie (former senior advisor in a Canadian Prime Minister's Office) and Andrew Percy (former UK Conservative MP).
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/craft-politics/id1790715962
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Zaw8zZHe7qiFYIby7lKRB
Web: https://www.craftpolitics.fm
Joseph Lavoie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephlavoie/
Andrew Percy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-percy-b996b431a/
Guest inquiries: joseph.lavoie@crestviewstrategy.com
#CraftPolitics #UKPolitics #ReformUK #CanadianPolitics #Anglosphere

Ten days ago Ginny Roth posted a thread arguing that Canadians need to stop being shocked by Donald Trump and start making hard choices from a weak hand. Jason Kenney replied, accusing her of "craven cynicism masquerading as hard-headed realism." And now the Canadian right is having it out, complete with name-calling (Maple MAGA? Really?)
So we brought Ginny on to make the argument herself.
Ginny is a partner at Crestview Strategy, was director of communications for Pierre Poilievre's 2022 leadership campaign, and writes for The Hub and the National Post.
What we got into:
The magic politics button. There's a button every incumbent in the country can press right now — attack Trump, elbows up — and it converts straight into public support. Her worry is what that does to the decisions they're supposed to be making.
We were closer to a deal than you think. And when it fell apart, you could see which pundits were quietly relieved.
What she's actually afraid of. Ten years from now, the politics of this moment will have passed and we'll want open markets back. Ginny isn't sure the public support will still be there. NAFTA was hard fought the first time.
The age split running through this. If you're established and 55-plus, this trade war costs you very little. If you're 40 and can't buy a house, you pay for it twice. Ginny says it maps almost exactly onto the conservative infighting.
Draw a hard line on the right. The takeaway that surprised me most — the answer for Poilievre and Badenoch isn't running to the middle. It's being clear about what they won't talk about, and admitting nobody on the right plays the role Buckley played anymore.
Andrew on the mushy middle. His phrase, and he means a coalition where nobody gets everything — with lines on the right you don't cross, same as the ones on the left.
Also discussed: whether Canadians are being sold a pup on replacing the American market, what Kenney took from COVID, why Ginny doubts half the MAGA accounts in her mentions are real people, Andrew's proposed impurity test, and the ostriches — who did nothing wrong except get bird flu.
Find Ginny at The Hub and the National Post, and on X @GinnyRothTO.

Ten years ago, everyone who was supposed to know — the British government, the Bank of England, the IMF, half the world's economists, even President Obama — said Leave couldn't win. Then a campaign with no party, no machine, and almost no money beat all of them. We're not here to relitigate Brexit. We want to know how you actually pull that off.
So I brought in Nick Varley, who ran the ground campaign for Vote Leave and built a 12,000-strong volunteer army from a standing start — twenty people and no referendum date — in eight months. He now leads UK campaigns at Crestview. Nobody is better placed to explain the part of Brexit the Cambridge Analytica story always skips: the shoe leather.
What we got into:
The army from nothing. It started with Nick cold-calling Eurosceptics one at a time — "Alan, do you know anyone else who thinks like you?" Not scalable, not glamorous, and the foundation of everything.
It wasn't really about immigration. For the twelve thousand, Nick says, it was sovereignty: "I could live with X, if we the voters had the power to decide."
The "skint" theory of politics. Nick's whole model: politics runs on whether people feel broke — which is why "you'll be poorer if you leave" sounded, to a lot of voters, like an insult from the very people who'd made them poorer.
How Obama backfired. The "back of the queue" line — a British staffer forgot to translate "queue" into American — and why Project Fear kept turning voters into angry voters.
The worst arguments. Kittens (yes, kittens) for Leave; the "punishment budget" and the imminent collapse of the world's fifth-largest economy for Remain.
Why Alberta should be watching. Referendums don't release pressure — they harden identities, and the losing side doesn't go away. Why Joseph thinks the first Alberta vote is the dangerous one.
Also discussed: bendy bananas, why a chocolate bar became a "chocolate-flavoured product," Scotland's "double leavers," the SNP sweep, and why businesses that pick a side in a referendum tend to regret it.
The through-line, ten years on: once a voter crosses an identity line, they rarely cross back. That's the warning Canada should take from Britain.
Nick Varley leads UK campaigns at Crestview Strategy — find him on LinkedIn, link below.

We're trying a new episode format, so let us know what you think of it. We didn't have time to record a full show, we have as a short and snappy take on this week's by-election results in the UK and what it means for Keir Starmer's future.

A week ago, the Henry Nowak case was the story dominating the news agenda. Then Belfast caught fire — literally — and two separate stories became one. Percy and Joseph work through how a murder in Southampton and a knife attack in Northern Ireland became one national tinderbox.
What we got into:
This week's number: minus six. Nigel Farage's net approval on his handling of the Nowak case — the worst of any senior leader in Britain. Andrew has a Boris-shaped theory about why it might not matter.
Two nights of Belfast riots. Water cannon in Newtownabbey, twelve injured officers...and expectation that a third night will rage on. Why Northern Ireland's fire burns on different fuel than England's.
Why hasn't Canada had its Southampton? Same immigration anxieties, same online ecosystem, no riots. Andrew's answer involves dinghies, hotels, and what people can see from the war memorial.
The thug problem. The rioters are making it harder to fix the very system some of them claim to be angry about — and the only winners are the actual far right.
An opening for Kemi? Badenoch sits at plus twelve and keeps quietly stacking strong performances. We ask whether anyone will notice before they have to.
Starmer's "island of strangers." The line that resonated, the 180 that followed, and what it says about who's allowed to talk about immigration.
Also discussed: Vancouver's curiously invisible World Cup, the case against $500 tickets, why Andrew is boycotting Belgium over his grandma's tortoiseshell cigarette case, and his suspiciously great skin and hair on CBC.
For Last Orders: Joseph is finally on to Wind of Change, the podcast asking whether the CIA wrote a Scorpions power ballad — and Andrew remembers Baroness Meta Ramsay, the softly spoken Labour peer he treated like his grandma on foreign delegations, who turned out to be one of MI6's most senior officers. Obituary linked below —https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/meta-ramsay-death-mi6-spy-b2985761.html.
If you haven't yet, find us on Apple Podcasts and YouTube, leave us a five-star rating, and drop your questions in the comments — that's what the Postbag is for.