The French Pesidential Election earliers this year showed that 42% of those who voted (probably more, but these are the "official" figures) backed a candidate who largely rejects the mainstream.

That's a lot of people. If we consider how the Remainers kept banging away after the Referendum we should NOT give up. They had 48% of the votes cast. Have they simply surrendered? No. They keep on insisting we rejoin the EU.

This seems to be a feature of "the Right". Defeatism, the idea that each win for the opponents of traditional ideas can never be overturned. The idea that in order to beat them, you have to become them (the Tory way, with their LGBTQ committees and pandering to the BAME vote).

Le Pen got as far as she has because she understands that "capitalism" isn't "right wing". It can be "left-wing" and virtue-signalling. So, she supports an economic model of the centre-left, of localism and opposing big business.

But in the UK, UKIP and Reform UK cling to the "Anglo-Saxon model of economics" (free trade, free markets, laissez-faire) and voters quite rightly think "we like them on identity issues but don't trust them to not sell off the NHS or offer tax breaks to the rich at the expense of the poor".

Must this only happen in France and other Catholic nations (bearing in mind that they are more in tune with concepts like Distributism and Protectionism) or can we achieve it here?

If we can capture the white working class Labour vote (those who would NEVER vote Tory under any circumstances, rather than the fabled Red Wall voters that did) then we have a chance to create a new opposition. By splitting Labour in half. Because one of the old parties has to collapse before a new one can emerge. And if it is to be a party "of the Left" lets make sure it has "socially conservative and nationalist" values to add to the left-of-centre economics.

Much research has been done over the past few years on this. The left-right axis is not clear cut. One can be a socially conservative anti-capitalist or a socially liberal opponent of socialism as much as the old idea that people should be consistently left wing or right wing on every subject.

So, we can win, but only by ditching free marketism and forcing the "Left" to decide what they oppose more - Tory "global capitalism" or Populist "left economics nationalism"...