A Week in Politics #3

Liam McArthur (Photo: Orkney Liberal Democrats)

It's the end of another week in which the main news stories have been about Reform UK.

Zahawi’s jump to Reform: principles for sale?

Nadhim Zahawi’s defection to Reform UK is being sold by his new party as a grand ideological awakening. In reality, it looks far more like a careerist pivot dressed up as conviction. This is the same politician who previously attacked Nigel Farage in strikingly moral terms — reportedly calling him “deeply racist” and even saying he’d be “frightened” to live in a country run by him — only to now appear alongside him as the latest “big scalp”.

If you can denounce a movement as dangerous one year and join it the next, voters are entitled to ask: what changed — the country, or your prospects? The reporting that Zahawi sought (and was denied) a Conservative peerage shortly before switching parties makes the motivation feel uncomfortably transparent. He can insist he’s just a “foot soldier” and supports Reform's vision, but defections of this size are never just about policy.

There’s also a bigger question: what does this say about Reform? Fraser Nelson’s warning — that “the risk for Reform is that it starts looking like a lifeboat for thwarted Conservatives, not a vehicle for change” — lands because it captures the pattern perfectly. A party claiming to smash the establishment is increasingly staffed by people who were the establishment until it stopped rewarding them.

And in Zahawi’s case, the contradictions are especially glaring. Reform has been dogged by rows around vaccine misinformation and conspiracy-adjacent rhetoric. Zahawi, the former vaccines minister, now finds himself defending a party ecosystem that has flirted with exactly that. If Reform is serious about governing, it needs coherence — not just name recognition.

There's another danger: the corrosive message this sends about politics as personal advancement rather than public service. When voters already think Westminster runs on ego and intrigue, a defection that reads like a reaction to a blocked peerage reinforces the cynicism.

Finally, a note of caution about Reform’s polling “boom”. We’ve seen protest surges before — sharp spikes driven by anger, headlines and novelty. They can be real, but they can also be brittle. Even recent polling commentary suggests Reform’s support can stall once tactical voting dynamics kick in and scrutiny rises. Zahawi may be betting his future on a wave that doesn’t last.

Reform Scotland and the “branch office” problem: Malcolm Offord’s appointment

Reform UK’s decision to install Malcolm Offord as its leader in Scotland is unexpected — and, frankly, revealing. Offord is hardly a “man of the people” insurgent: he’s a former Conservative minister, now repurposed as the face of an anti-establishment party. Whatever you think of his abilities, the symbolism is odd: Reform claims to be a populist revolt, yet keeps hiring from the very political class it denounces.

But the bigger issue is democratic legitimacy — and this is where the appointment starts to look not just ironic, but potentially foolish. The reports make clear Offord wasn’t elected by Scottish members, or by anyone in Scotland at all; he was appointed from above. If that’s correct, it undercuts Reform’s entire pitch that it is “giving power back” to ordinary people.

Because what could be more telling than a party that talks endlessly about sovereignty and voice — while treating Scotland like a managed franchise?

This is the “branch office” mentality in its purest form: Scotland gets a leader chosen elsewhere, for a Scottish political fight, by a party machine headquartered and controlled in England. It’s not just a bad look; it’s a strategic own-goal. Scottish voters are famously allergic to being talked down to or administered at arm’s length — whether from London governments or London parties. If Reform wants to make headway north of the border, it can’t simultaneously posture as anti-centralisation while practising it internally.

From a Liberal Democrat standpoint, there’s also a constitutional point. Devolution works best when Scottish politics is treated with respect: distinct priorities, distinct democratic accountability, and a recognition that Scottish voters aren’t a provincial audience for a Westminster drama. Appointing a leader without a Scottish mandate signals the opposite — that Scotland is merely another theatre for Nigel Farage’s brand.

And that matters because internal culture predicts external behaviour. If Reform isn’t democratically confident enough to let members — or at minimum Scottish stakeholders — pick their own figurehead, why should anyone believe it would govern democratically under pressure?

Reform can insist this is just an organisational decision. But organisational decisions are political. This one says: central control first, local legitimacy later.

Jenrick’s defection: the farce, the sacking, and Badenoch’s unexpected backbone

This week didn’t just bring one Conservative defection to Reform — it brought two. And Robert Jenrick’s is the more politically consequential, not least because of how it happened: not as a triumphant march, but as a plot apparently uncovered mid-act. Reporting suggests Badenoch’s team obtained a near-final draft resignation speech and media plan that had been “lying around”, triggering Jenrick’s swift sacking from the shadow cabinet and suspension from the party.

That detail matters, because it turns what Jenrick wanted to frame as statesmanlike principle into something closer to slapstick opportunism: the grand betrayal, foiled by admin. Even Reform’s own optics suffered — with the day lurching from Badenoch’s pre-emptive strike to Farage’s press theatrics and the broader impression of a right-wing movement driven by ego and intrigue rather than any settled programme.

The outside commentary has been brutal — and revealing. Iain Dale’s verdict was unsparing: “Self serving hubristic bollocks from a man who wouldn't know a principle if he stumbled across it… This is one defection I suspect Reform UK will come to regret. With every word he's proving Kemi right.” Dan Hodges skewered the ambition underpinning it all: “Robert Jenrick can attempt to rationalise it as much as he likes. The reality is if he thought it would get him closer to Downing Street he’d have been standing next to Zack Polanski this afternoon.”

There are two clear takeaways from this.

First, Jenrick’s story reinforces what is becoming a pattern: Reform risks looking like a refuge for thwarted Conservatives rather than a coherent alternative. Fraser Nelson’s “lifeboat for thwarted Conservatives” line was aimed at this exact dynamic — a party built around grievance and celebrity recruitment, not democratic renewal.

Second, the episode is fascinating for what it does inside the Conservative Party. By removing Jenrick in such an emphatic way, Badenoch has — at least for now — eliminated an obvious rival. That doesn’t mean she’s untouchable; the Conservatives have a long history of finding new ways to melt down. But it does make her position more secure than it was a week ago, because the most plausible internal challenger has gone.

And here’s where Badenoch deserves a measure of credit. By acting quickly, she’s effectively saying that Farage can have the backstabbers and the permanent plotters. It’s a choice to draw a line, and it implies she may try to make her party more distinctive from Reform, not less — to present herself as the anti-chaos option on the right. Perhaps she'll recognise that parroting Reform's lines, especially on immigration and "culture war" rhetoric, doesn't make a credible opposition.

That’s also why James MacCleary’s jab landed so cleanly: “An opposition so dysfunctional it can’t oppose itself properly! Jenrick sacked over a plan to defect to Reform.” The public doesn’t just see policy disagreement; it sees farce. And in a country crying out for serious answers on health, social care, local government finance and the economy, this week’s Westminster psychodrama is exactly the kind of politics that drives people away from democracy altogether.

Grok “nudify” climbdown: a real win Labour can’t seem to bank 

Elon Musk’s X moving to block Grok from “undressing” images of real people is a significant climbdown — and an important protection against abuse, harassment and the non-consensual sexualisation of women and children. It didn’t happen because the platform suddenly discovered a conscience; it happened because regulators, campaigners and public pressure made “do nothing” too costly.

For Labour, this should be an easy political win. The government has been under pressure to show it can regulate powerful tech platforms and enforce safety standards online. A high-profile reversal by X is proof that state pressure — and credible consequences — can work.

And yet Labour’s broader problem is visible again: they often struggle to tell the story of power being used well. They communicate caution and process; they rarely communicate outcome and impact. That may be responsible governance, but it can look like timidity. The public sees the harm, sees the climbdown, and then hears… not much.

On the wider issue of alleged "censorship", it's important to point out that online safety and free expression aren’t opposites. Open debate can be defended while still insisting that non-consensual sexual imagery — whether “real” or AI-generated — is abuse. If X is restricting the tool in jurisdictions where it’s illegal, that’s also an implicit admission that the technology was enabling wrongdoing (whatever claims are made to the contrary). 

The task now is to lock in these protections with clear rules, transparent enforcement, and meaningful penalties for platforms that drag their feet until threatened. This week shows the leverage exists. The question is whether ministers will use it consistently — and communicate it confidently.

A “peace prize” for Trump: ridiculous — but also revealing 

The spectacle of a Nobel Peace Prize medal being presented to Donald Trump is ludicrous — and Norwegian politicians have rightly called it “absurd”, with Nobel officials clarifying that while a medal can be physically gifted, the status of laureate is not transferable. The fact that this needs saying tells you everything about the unseriousness of the stunt.

But it also points to a grim reality about diplomacy in 2026: international politics increasingly revolves around managing one man’s ego. If a foreign political figure believes the best way to influence US policy is to flatter Trump with symbolic trophies, that’s not just farce — it’s strategy.

It’s dangerous strategy, because it nudges global decision-making away from institutions and towards personality. If the incentive structure becomes “praise the strongman and maybe he’ll help you,” then the losers are predictability, rule-based order and smaller nations who rely on stable systems rather than personal relationships with volatile leaders.

Yes, this is ridiculous theatre, but theatre matters when the audience is a leader who responds to spectacle. We can mock it — and we should — but we also need to be clear-eyed about what it signals: a world where the currency of influence is flattery, not law.

For the UK, the lesson is uncomfortable. Our interests — on trade, security, climate, Ukraine, and human rights — are better served by steady alliances and multilateral coordination than by improvising around one individual’s whims. If Washington’s mood music is dictated by Trump’s feelings, then British diplomacy has to be more disciplined, not less: anchoring policy in partnerships, not personality.

So yes, laugh at the “peace prize” pantomime. But don’t miss the warning underneath it: the global system is being tugged towards ego-management dressed up as statecraft. 

West Midlands Police chief retires after “political and media frenzy”: processes matter

Chief Constable Craig Guildford’s decision to retire “with immediate effect”, citing a “political and media frenzy”, was probably inevitable — and, in the circumstances, right.

That doesn’t require anyone to pretend policing is easy. Police chiefs have to make hard calls under uncertainty: public order, intelligence, risk, resourcing. There will always be controversy when safety decisions intersect with major events and community tensions. But the "political and media frenzy" was foreseeable and entirely of his own making.

But this case also underlines a vital principle: process matters. Transparency matters. Accountability matters. If a force makes an exceptional recommendation with major public impact, it must be able to show that the decision was taken through proper channels, with clear rationale, lawful footing, and robust communication. When those basics break down, the result is chaos: mistrust in communities, politicians piling in and operational policing becoming inseparable from a media storm.

Guildford himself said the drama had become “detrimental” to the work of officers and staff serving communities across the West Midlands. That’s the key point: whatever your view of the original controversy, the force cannot be effective when leadership becomes the story every day.

The way forward isn’t performative outrage from Westminster, and it isn’t blind defensiveness from policing either. It’s clear governance: independent scrutiny, proper documentation, and communication that respects the public’s right to understand major decisions — without compromising operational integrity.

In a heated national climate, policing must be protected from becoming a partisan football. But that protection is earned through professionalism and procedure — not demanded.

The Scottish budget: the week’s real story — grown-up politics delivering Lib Dem priorities 

Buried beneath the Westminster soap opera is the most important political development of the week: the Scottish budget — and what it proves about how politics can work when parties act like adults.

Some commentary has lazily branded it “an SNP budget”. That misses the point. The SNP did what minority governments are supposed to do: engage, negotiate, and seek support by responding to other parties’ priorities. Scottish Liberal Democrats, in turn, engaged constructively — not to “bring down a government”, but to improve outcomes for people across Scotland.

Liam McArthur’s response captures the tone: Scottish Liberal Democrats were clear the budget needed “meaningful measures to improve the lives of people across Scotland in areas such as health, social care, transport and education.” He welcomed, among other items, increased healthcare funding to address gaps in dentistry and mental health and support for neurodiversity services — pressures that are often most acute in rural and island communities.

McArthur (pictured) also pointed to concrete transport wins that will matter day-to-day: a commitment around peak fares on Northern Isles ferry services — “lifeline services for islanders” — and support for an “accelerator model” for the Northern and Western Isles to help unlock infrastructure investment. On top of that, the continuation of 100% rates relief for island hospitality businesses for the next three years is exactly the kind of targeted, practical intervention that keeps fragile local economies alive.

More broadly, Scottish Lib Dem messaging has been explicit that this is what you get when you negotiate seriously: “hundreds of millions of pounds” aligned with Liberal Democrat priorities. That’s how to use leverage responsibly.

And it speaks to something Alex Cole-Hamilton has argued repeatedly: budgets should be about making people’s lives better, not constant gamesmanship. There are elections for changing governments. In between, there is governing — and opposition that tries to win improvements rather than just win headlines.

From a Liberal Democrat perspective, this is the antidote to the UK-wide drift toward personality politics: evidence that pluralism can produce results; that compromise isn’t betrayal; that devolution works best when it’s treated as a serious democratic arena, not a stage for imported culture-war antics.

In short: while others chased drama, Scottish Liberal Democrats chased delivery — and Scotland is better off for it.