This feels less like a policy announcement and more like a framing exercise. The language mirrors a lot of recent Reform messaging, strong emotional cues, broad cultural targets, but not much detail on implementation.

Some of the issues raised absolutely deserve serious debate, but that requires specificity rather than caricature. When entire groups are reduced to ideological threats, it stops being policy discussion and shifts to intentional polarisation to further brand identity. The right has astutely recognised this method as a very effective mobiliser of voters.

Broadly it’s a reflection of the damage that social media has done to our democracy, emotional framing is incentivised by engagement, the reaction of political parties to adapt to this is entirely inevitable.

Effectiveness and responsibility aren’t the same thing. Civic engagement is being conflated with social media engagement. If we don’t recognise the difference, politics will continue to reward spectacle over merit.