Harry Richer is the Director of Fighting for a Free Future, under Chairman the Rt Hon Steve Baker. He has worked as a senior aide in the British Parliament and has also co-written multiple publications on Austrian School economics, including the 2024 Springer book The Age of Debt Bubbles.
As the Labour conference closes and Tory activists begin to descend on Birmingham, you would be forgiven for thinking that right versus left is still the major dividing line in British politics. It is not. A new divide has taken over Britain; it cuts across all political parties, albeit at different levels. The divide now defining British politics is between the reality-based class and the fantasy-based class; it is between those who base their views on facts and the reality of the world, and those who base their views purely on emotions, feelings, and “experiences”. One side uses facts as evidence for their views, even if they disagree on solutions. The other side argues from a fact-less, fantasy-based worldview.
This is why Andy Burnham can state that we have had “40 years of neoliberalism” despite Britain having the highest-ever tax burden, the highest-ever levels of public spending in real terms, and the greatest restrictions on civil liberties in peacetime. These facts do not matter; what matters is that our Prime Minister feels like we have had decades of extreme free-market economics. We see this across some of our most important political debates. It doesn’t matter that the NHS has never had more money in real terms; I feel like the Tories cut spending, and so they did (Cameron ring-fenced it from austerity). I feel like the NHS never got the £350 million per week that the Leave campaign suggested it would, and therefore it didn’t (Theresa May gave the NHS far more during her time in power).
On social issues, the fantasy-based class sees Britain as a cesspit of racism; it is a country that is defined by its colonial past. Racism is everywhere; little progress has been made since the 1970s. Reparations are necessary and a vitally important issue – it does not matter that Britain led the abolition of the slave trade; we owe reparations to countries that held slaves longer than Britain did. British institutions like the Church and the National Trust have fallen into this fantasy thinking. The investigation into Jason Arday itself was an injustice fuelled by racism; the allegations of plagiarism or the seemingly hundreds of alleged inconsistencies in his life story were never evidence of wrongdoing by Jason Arday. I feel like it was a witch-hunt based on lies, and therefore it was.
There is now an entire class of people in the UK who are entirely divorced from reality. The fantasy-based class has never let a fact get in the way of a feeling. Indeed, facts are often treated as a moral affront to feelings. The fantasy-based class judges policies by their intention. Are they compassionate? Are they inclusive? Are they supporting “oppressed groups”? It doesn’t matter what the outcome of the policy is in reality; fantasy politics is all about intention – and that intention is based solely on feelings. To oppose a fantasy-based policy is treated as cruelty. Failure in outcomes cannot defeat the policy because failure does not change the policy’s pure intention.
The Employment Rights Act and the increase in the minimum wage are held up by most Labour MPs as crowning features of their time in power. Sir Keir Starmer spoke about them as core parts of his legacy, and senior Cabinet ministers regularly point to them in interviews. Alongside the NI hike, what has the outcome in reality been of these policies? UK vacancies have fallen by 5% over the last year, vacancies at businesses with fewer than 10 staff are down nearly 25% over the year, and even the Government’s own estimates suggest the policy will cost UK businesses £1 billion per year. Only in fantasy land can outcomes like these be considered a success worth bragging about.
The same can be seen in the arguments for a wealth tax from the fantasy-based class. Most countries that have implemented a wealth tax have either repealed it, taken in far less revenue than expected, or experienced capital flight. These facts – these real-world outcomes – can be discarded because the policy’s intention is pure.
How have we ended up with such a large group in Britain entirely detached from reality? Critical race theory and intersectionality have combined into a comprehensive worldview that now dominates a large section of British thinking. Originally academic analytical tools, they have created a worldview where society is interpreted through identity, power, and oppression. Objective facts are merely a disguise for established power. Every act taken is a decision between siding with an “oppressor” and the “oppressed”. All political struggles are interconnected, and none can be liberated while the current system oppresses others. Evidence is judged according to who presents it. Facts do not hold the same weight across groups. The feelings of an “oppressed” group trump any facts. Reality no longer disciplines theory; instead, theory is used to rewrite reality. Those who were not directly indoctrinated, whether at university or through a local socialist/green/community group, have absorbed it by osmosis. When disagreement or the presentation of facts is considered complicity in oppression, it is far easier to give in than to resist.
The fantasy-based class views everything through this worldview. Nothing can escape it. Every action is defined through this lens. This is an incredibly dangerous situation. This worldview is unfalsifiable and unstoppable, and it appeals to the worst parts of human nature by giving the public things and people to hate while feeling good about themselves for doing so.
At Fighting for a Free Future, we are trying to promote a form of liberty that is imaginative and attractive, one based on storytelling and emotional attachment as well as facts. This is something that the free-market movement must get better at. It is not giving ground; it is combining facts and emotions to try to pull some of these people back to reality and to reduce the threat of this dangerous class. Will it be enough? I don’t know but, ultimately, reality is something not even those living in fantasy land can escape. The real question is: how much damage will they cause before reality bites?
Harry Richer writes at Voices for a Free Future and is on X @harryricher96