Greco-Roman wrestling
Sir: Rod Liddle suggests that some, perhaps many, middle-class voters on the right or centre right are deterred from supporting Reform because of their perception of the party as an unsavoury embarrassment (‘Can Reform smash its class ceiling?’, 23 May).
Harold Macmillan in the second world war appreciated that the Americans – ‘great, big, vulgar, bustling people, more vigorous than we are’ – represented the equivalent of the Romans taking over from the declining, but perhaps more cerebral Greeks – the British. But he also argued: ‘We must run Allied Forces HQ [in Algiers] as the Greek slaves ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius.’ He would have appreciated the irony of Reform stealing the mantle of opposition to the left from the waning Conservatives, who might still aspire to wield the canny influence of experience and maturity in the existential struggle.
Both parties need each other. If Andy Burnham’s Labour party, loosely aligned with its Liberal Democrat and Green fellow-travellers, is to be defeated in 2029, the Greek Conservatives and the American Reformers must cooperate.
Adrian Crisp
