Here is the simplest way to understand how the populist politics of the likes of Reform and Restore work: Imagine 200 people are waiting for NHS treatment. One is an illegal migrant. You convince the other 199 that the reason they cannot get better access to the NHS is that one person. Suddenly, you don’t need to propose policies addressing decades of underinvestment, workforce shortages, capacity problems and inefficiencies. You just announce a policy to deport that one migrant and present it as the solution. Now apply the same logic to crime. Constantly highlight crimes involving migrants until people start to believe that migrants are responsible for crime generally. Then, when people ask how you will solve crime, the answer is simple: deport the migrants. Housing? Blame migrants. Public services? Blame migrants. Pressure on infrastructure? Blame migrants. The appeal is obvious. Complex problems that require complicated, expensive and sometimes uncomfortable solutions are reduced to a single identifiable group that can be blamed. But then you add another part to the strategy. You relentlessly attack the government that is actually trying to deal with those underlying problems. First, you claim they are doing nothing about migration, even when the available statistics show that migration & asylum numbers are falling. When that same government makes difficult decisions to address the wider structural problems, such as raising taxes to fund public services, you present those decisions as an attack on ordinary British people. So you create a perfect political trap. Blame the migrant for the problem. Blame the government for not removing the migrant. Blame the government again when it takes the difficult decisions necessary to address the real underlying issues. By the time the population have voted you into power, it's too late for them to realise you didn't actually have any viable policies. You now have all the power and you can start delivering on all the promises you made to your wealthy donors, and those who voted you in are left scratching their heads, wondering why everything got even worse.