At the Politics in Pubs Central London event we were joined by Hugo Timms, Staff Writer at Spiked Online to answer the question:  Are we run by a Uni-Party? If you would prefer to listen to the podcast please click here.

His answer is yes, at least for the past decade. He treats the uni-party as a shared progressive consensus rather than a formal merger of parties. Hugo traces the phrase to a 1944 US newspaper claim (later shown to rest on a forged letter) that Franklin Roosevelt’s circle had helped pick a Republican opponent so as to create one-party rule.

Hugo goes on to argue Labour and the Conservatives barely differed on the three biggest recent issues:

• Net zero. Theresa May locked it in in 2019 via an amendment to the Climate Change Act, with no Commons vote. He says Labour has accelerated it, including ending new North Sea oil and gas licences, and that a Burnham-led government would likely go further.
• Immigration. The 2016 Brexit vote and 2019 election were partly about border control, yet in the “Boris wave” which followed: about 3.8 million long-term visas from 2021–24, with net migration peaking near a million. Hugo states illegal arrivals are somewhat lower under Labour, but that the dip looks Europe-wide rather than a Labour achievement, and that voters still feel borders are not controlled.
• Covid lockdowns. Closing schools and businesses and restricting civil liberties had cross-party support. Starmer’s criticism of Johnson, he says, was that restrictions were not tough enough; when Johnson lifted them in summer 2021, Starmer called it reckless.

Who holds the consensus in place. Asked whether this is politicians or a permanent bureaucracy, Timms says both, plus the courts and outside groups. He cites the PCS union (about 200,000 civil servants) voting to spend £3 million from its war chest against Reform, treating a populist government as a threat to democracy. He points to a 2024 Supreme Court ruling that future carbon emissions must be weighed in oil and gas licensing (overturning a Surrey council decision), and to the ECHR making deportation of illegal immigrants effectively impossible. He also says think tanks and NGOs sit outside lobbying rules.

Who is inside or outside. On his definition, the Greens are firmly in the uni-party (net zero, open borders, lockdown enthusiasm). Reform is not, because it wants to break the consensus. The Conservatives are trying to leave it—he notes Kemi Badenoch saying she would drop net zero and extract “every last molecule” from the North Sea—but he is sceptical, given how many current figures were in government while those policies were set. Labour remains embedded in it.

Consensus itself. He accepts that agreement can help, talking about English education reform from Kenneth Baker through New Labour and Michael Gove as an example, though Hugo says Labour is now undoing parts of it (including pressure on private schools). The older democratic consensus he wants—strong and free country, sustainable debt, work over welfare, citizens first—is, he argues, being replaced by national self-loathing.

Local government. Councils are financially squeezed: statutory duties (including SEND) far exceed what council tax can fund, most money comes from central grants, and about half of English and Welsh councils have faced bankruptcy risk. Examples include Birmingham’s failed IT system and equal-pay settlement. Reform-run councils have had limited impact because local powers are constrained.

How the uni-party could be disproved. Timms says the parties recruit the same people: an Oxbridge, staffer, think-tank, NGO cadre with little private-sector experience. He calls Andy Burnham’s cabinet “exhibit A.” Politics, he argues, is increasingly a CV line and a route to later consulting wealth (Rishi Sunak at Microsoft and Anthropic; David Cameron and Greensill). About 140 MPs stood down in 2024; non-recontesting Conservative MPs averaged age 56. Breaking the pattern would mean recruiting people with real-world experience, as Reform and Badenoch have said they want, and actually reversing the immigration and net-zero consensus. Covid, he says, has already been memory-holed by its strongest supporters. Net zero may be easier to unwind than immigration. Until that happens, the uni-party claim stands.

The evening then paused for a break followed by audience questions.

Upcoming events

All our future events are advertised here: Upcoming Events.