How Reform Turned Itself Into a Contraceptive

There is a quiet, unreported demographic experiment under way, and it is not going well for the hard right.

Young Gen Z women are drifting Green. Young Gen Z men, or at least a noisy subset of them, are drifting towards Reform. This is being discussed as if it were some abstract political curiosity. It is not. It is a mating problem. And politics, inconveniently for Reform, is not just about tax bands and potholes anymore. It is shorthand for values, empathy, reality testing and whether someone thinks climate change is a hoax invented by cyclists.

For a growing number of women, Reform does not read as “different opinions”. It reads as “no thanks”. Immigration obsession, culture war theatrics, climate denial, performative grievance. These are not aphrodisiacs. They are mood killers. Nothing dampens romance quite like discovering your date thinks Greta Thunberg is part of a global conspiracy and that Nigel Farage is a misunderstood truth teller.

Meanwhile, left leaning men are having a quietly excellent time. They believe climate change is real, women are people, and that facts matter. This turns out to be wildly attractive. Not because it is exotic, but because it clears the very low bar of living in the same reality. They are not shouting. They are not angry. They are not trying to explain why empathy is a weakness. They listen. This is apparently intoxicating.

The result is a growing surplus of politically estranged young men, marinating in resentment, convinced they are being unfairly ignored, while blaming feminism, wokeism, migrants, cyclists, vegans and wind turbines. Anything except the possibility that their politics might be the problem. This, in turn, pushes them further right, completing a neat little doom loop.

Politics has always shaped families, but rarely so directly. If your worldview reliably repels half the population at dating age, it is not a growth strategy. Parties survive by reproducing themselves culturally and literally. If Reform values are a red flag in the dating pool, they are also a demographic dead end.

So yes, right wing politics may not die out because it is defeated in debate, exposed by economics, or shamed by history. It may simply fail to get a second date.

Which would be a fitting end. Not with a bang, but with a lonely pint, a furious post on Facebook, and the dawning realisation that shouting at reality does not make it swipe right.