Reform conference: ‘Is a British autocratic government really so unimaginable?’

The possibility of a Nigel Farage premiership fascinates political commentators and terrifies Labour’s top brass. But a Reform government is in itself neither particularly interesting nor frightening. Its policies would be more than usually cruel and destructive, but the democratic cycle will limit its power and one day see an end to it.

The danger is that it becomes more than a premiership. What if we elected an authoritarian leader – whether or not it’s Farage – who was, like Donald Trump, determined to mount a serious attack on the democratic checks and balances that constrain his power and prevent Britain from becoming a dictatorship? The truly terrifying prospect is that this project might be successful. 

Which is why my new play, Make England Great Again, is set just after a future general election which has been won by the Britons First Party under its charismatic leader Max Moore. Moore sets out to use democracy against itself, to attack all other sites of power – the civil service, the judiciary, the media. They must either bend to his will, or face destruction.

At the same time there is the revival on the London theatre fringe of a 2019 play called At Last, which looks at the human consequences if such a project did succeed – the judicial beatings, the arbitrary imprisonments. Writers James Lewis and Alexander Knott set it after the fall of the authoritarian government, and citizens from both sides – the oppressed and the oppressors – are giving their stories to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Toeing the line

Are we scaremongering?  I don’t think so.  We have had warnings. Here’s the latest.

It does not matter much that Reform has just revoked the credentials at its conference of a newspaper which persistently criticises it – The New World, formerly known as The New European. I am sure The New World has the means to find out everything its readers want to know about Reform without credentials. But suppose Reform was the government? Then its decision would have real significance, and it would be in a position to frighten other newspapers into toeing the line.

READ MORE: ‘Reform will own the week – Labour must own the future’

In 2016 The Daily Mail, which once cheered on Oswald Mosley, ran a splash headline ‘Enemies of the People’ – a phrase which had not been much heard since it was regularly used in the 1930s by Stalin’s henchmen, generally about Trotskyists. The Mail was using it about three judges who had ruled that the UK government would require the consent of Parliament to trigger Article 50 and give notice of Brexit. Their crime was to have ruled against the wishes of then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.

For a full list of the enemies an authoritarian leader would wish to neutralise or destroy, we can turn to Dominic Cummings, who was the chief adviser to  that same Boris Johnson.

In a lecture this year, Cummings said “The old political parties, the old Whitehall institutions, the old media, the old universities, the old courts constitute a political regime. This regime has become cancerous. The cancer has metastasised and the cancer is attacking everything healthy in the country; all the healthy institutions and healthy impulses are the target of Whitehall.”

Checks and balances swept away

This can be read as suggesting that all alternative sources of power must be eliminated so that the supreme leader is able to do exactly what he (or, perhaps in the future, she) wishes.  All the checks and balances, without which the makers of the American constitution rightly believed freedom and democracy could not flourish, are cancerous and must be swept away.

Subscribe here to our daily newsletter roundup of Labour news, analysis and comment– and follow us on Bluesky, WhatsApp, X and Facebook.

Hitler (let’s not shrink from the comparison) did exactly that.  His 1933 Enabling Act, officially the Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich, gave him power to enact laws without Parliament, and without legal challenge. He could, and did, ban other political parties and suppress opposition.  

Is it really that bad, you ask? Britain isn’t Germany in 1933, with a democratic constitution just a decade old; nor Russia in 2025, with an even more recent democratic constitution. It isn’t even the USA, where Trump, apparently with the approval of millions of Americans, has embarked upon a project seemingly designed to ensure that all judges and federal employees owe loyalty and obedience to the president alone.

READ MORE: Labour Party Conference 2025: Full LabourList events programme revealed

Are we immune?

But are we immune? Just a few years ago, the US looked protected.  But a few clear-sighted Americans anticipated this moment eighty years ago.  “When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labelled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika.  It will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism’” said former US Vice President Henry Wallace, quoted in a 1944 article on “American Fascism” in The New York Times.  

History shows that the far right succeeds when the left seems to have failed.  The high tide of pre-war fascism in Britain came just after the failure of the second Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald to do anything about poverty or inequality. The modesty of Keir Starmer’s ambition fuels the authoritarian right.

My play opens with Max Moore, just six days into his premiership, going to King Charles III to ask for a dissolution of Parliament and a new general election.  Why?  You’ll have to make the trip to Highgate Village in North London to find out.

Make England Great Again is at Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate Village, 30 September to 5 October and 13-19 October. 

At Last is at the Lion and Unicorn in Kentish Town, 4-13 September. 

• SHARE: If you have anything to share that we should be looking into or publishing about this story – or any other topic involving Labour– contact us (strictly anonymously if you wish) at [email protected].
• SUBSCRIBE: Sign up to LabourList’s morning email here for the best briefing on everything Labour, every weekday morning.
• DONATE: If you value our work, please chip in a few pounds a week and become one of our supporters, helping sustain and expand our coverage.
• PARTNER: If you or your organisation might be interested in partnering with us on sponsored events or projects, email [email protected].
• ADVERTISE: If your organisation would like to advertise or run sponsored pieces on LabourList‘s daily newsletter or website, contact our exclusive ad partners Total Politics at [email protected].