The Octopus and the Handmaid: Reform’s Epsteinian Cultural Agenda

From Epstein’s web to Reform’s proposed raft of policy ideas, creeping misogyny now risks redefining women’s rights in Britain

This week’s reader contribution comes from Claire Jones, who has put together a thoughtful and carefully argued exploration of misogyny, power and politics through the lens of the Epstein files and the wider ideological currents shaping parts of the modern far right. It’s a provocative contribution that connects several strands of the current political moment and raises questions that are well worth engaging with - before it’s too late.

Bearly Politics remains open to reader submissions. If you have an idea, analysis, or piece you think would be a good fit for the platform, you’re always welcome to get in touch at iratusursusmajor@gmail.com.

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By Moshe Shalit - CC BY 3.0

Pampered by the press as ‘the next government in waiting’, Reform continues to poll strongly. We’re familiar with how the party fosters racism through its hostile rhetoric and flagship immigration stance, but its ubiquitous misogyny receives less attention. A Reform win at the next general election will be partly because enough people either didn’t know, or didn’t care, about its views on females. For International Women’s Day, I’d like to explore these views through the lens of the Epstein files.

The Octopus

The web of Epstein’s influence, in all its vast complexity, is now coming into full view, like a multi-armed, gigantic octopus being lifted from the seabed. We’re seeing Epstein the enabler, matchmaker, wheel-oiler, and co-ordinator extraordinaire in a multidimensional kleptocratic network of corporate, political, cultural and sexual interest.

You’d need a 3-D modeller to trace the complex inter-connections he orchestrated between climate denialists, fossil fuel industries, political lobbyists (Brexit, the Kremlin) the tech broligarchy, racists, eugenicists, Israeli intelligence, and more, all whilst supplying a deadly pipeline of women and child victims to the depraved subculture he cultivated. It’s all coalescing into one repulsive integrated whole.

Network participation is layered like an onion with peripheral involvement shading into roles that have varying degrees of knowledge and whistle blowing capacity on Epstein’s darkest activities. We may never know all the players or precisely which layers Epstein’s UK friends occupied. But only the outer layer is free of guilt by association of colluding with a monster.

Creeping patriarchy

Little St James was the black heart of Epstein’s misogyny, but the objectification and dehumanisation of females there was driven by a culture of extreme patriarchy. Patriarchy – the presumed superiority and dominance of males over females - is increasingly popular with the far-right and central to viewpoints such as Christo-fascism – the fusion of patriarchy with Christianity, authoritarianism and white, right-wing nationalism.

This regressive ideology lurks in Project 2025, in the Christian nationalism of JD Vance, Stephen Miller and in far-right parties across central and eastern Europe. It calls for a return to a traditional Christian heterosexual, patriarchal family model in which the primary responsibilities of females are homemaking, procreation and subservience to the male family head. For ‘guidance’, listen to pastor Dale Partridge’s homily on, amongst other things, why a women’s vote must never cancel her husband’s.

Handmaids UK

Extreme patriarchy is also spreading its tentacles in the UK via organisations such as Jordan Peterson’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). Linked to the right-wing think tank Legatum, ARC emphasises traditional gender roles and women’s duties as breeders.

Patriarchy is very much alive and kicking within Reform. Its intrepidly retrograde Christian nationalist policy creators, James Orr, Danny Kruger and Matthew Goodwin, are currently defining Reform’s cultural agenda in patriarchal terms straight from the wider Christo-fascist comfort zones they share.

Orr opposes abortion in all cases and pushes the pro-natalist policy of families having more children “to boost birth rates”. Kruger, also a keen pro-natalist, personally supports the reversal of no-fault divorce. He wants a “re-set to sexual culture” and challenges the rights of pregnant women to ‘absolute bodily autonomy’. Goodwin wants a “biological reality check” for girls and tax increases for childless couples.

Securing the property

Goodwin recently virtue-signalled that the “sexual exploitation of women and girls is because of open borders”. This devious but false claim uses females to attack the liberal left, but arguably, also contains unspoken proprietorship - ‘protecting our women and girls’ implies ‘ownership’ and the need to end foreign interference with our property.

In an equally stunning patriarchal vein, Farage, admirer of Andrew Tate as an “important voice”, describes men as ‘more willing than women to sacrifice family life for career’, and objects to the 24 week abortion limit as “ludicrous”.

To enshrine women’s demotion to 2^nd class citizens, Reform has pledged to drop the 2010 Equalities Act which provides legal recourse for maternity leave, sexual assault, domestic abuse and employment discrimination. Reform also plans to ditch the ECHR thus thwarting it’s use by women as another court of appeal. You can hear the sound of doors closing.

All these narratives call for controls on women’s mental, physical and developmental freedom and autonomy and constitute a clear attack on women’s rights.

Don’t be fooled

‘But’, the Reform curious wail, ‘we want change - migrants and Labour must be punished and removed. So, we’ll take the US route and ignore Reform’s misogyny as non-serious, or too unpopular to survive’. Left-leaning progressives join the dismissive fray, insisting that culturally, Britain has moved on from this hopelessly backward-facing misogyny.

Yet Reform is unashamedly pushing back with their patriarchal narratives. Why?

One reason is sheer manospheric arrogance combined with the belligerence of a party looking set for power – the macho ‘just try stopping us’ mindset.

Another is that Reform’s ideas are still camouflaged. “Re-setting sexual culture” could mean any number of abuses of women’s rights once Reform is in power, but, for now, can be trained on DEI and LGBTQ issues which reverberate with the right-wing electorate. Similarly, ‘reversing no-fault divorce’ is just Kruger’s “personal view” – for now. Farage’s abortion concerns only imply the need for minor tweaking - for now. And pro-natalism links nicely with great replacement anxieties whilst sounding mildly patriotic – heroic Brits can keep non-whites at bay by breeding more.

The ambiguity of Reform’s statements provides space for moderation whilst simultaneously positioning the party for much more full-throated future iterations of misogynist ideas. Orr’s advice that Reform should “hold its cards close to its chest” and keep certain operations under wraps before entering government” reminds us that the party’s position isn’t static.

Human shields

Reform can challenge accusations of misogyny by pointing to women in its senior party roles. But this defence has no more clout than Trump trying to deny his own blatant misogyny but listing the fawning Barbie doll chatbots in his administration. Arguably, women in Reform are serving, like Reform’s non-white cabinet members, as useful pre-election human shields for a party that’s essentially both racist and misogynist.

Reform’s coveted misogyny is reason alone for women across the political spectrum to heed what Reform might mean for them, and to recognise what a hugely dangerous backward step supporting Reform would be.

But we should also recognise that Reform’s misogyny sets a cultural tone of readiness for Epsteinian abuse by providing a direct pathway from regressive, patriarchal policies to sexual exploitation.

The slippery slope

Epstein’s network reveals how the corrupting influence of power is a gateway drug for depravity. With excess power, whether as elites or via the privileges of patriarchy, players disengage from norms and stray further afield. Favours, financial rewards and the secrecy of illicit deals create useful bonds for kompromat and further corruption.

Epstein’s network is a forum for experimentation and risk taking, both financially and morally. ‘Getting away with it’ by stepping beyond legal red lines is a self-substantiating way for the manosphere to perpetually reassert control, dominance and virility. The Trump regime’s coercion of leaders and nations, like the abuses on Epstein’s island, are all ways of exercising the same male supremacist drive across different spheres. Epstein’s sex traffickers and guests parallel Trump’s sadistic geopolitical harassment of Greenland and Zelensky - ‘you will suffer (more) if you disobey’.

Life support machines

Reform policy is being forged against a transnational backdrop of extreme patriarchy. This framework is the quiet kick-off for Epstein’s darker world.

The research is clear that patriarchal conceptions of women’s role are intimately linked with sexual abuse. Patriarchal values contribute to the perpetuation of sexual violence (Murnen et al, 2002; Spencer et al, 2023; Trottier et al, 2019). These values are ingrained in power dynamics, gender hierarchy, and societal norms that drive gender-based iniquities.

The Epstein files are strewn with heinous crimes against females, including “sexual slavery, reproductive violence, enforced disappearance, torture, and femicide”. It’s a world in which women and children are viewed as discardable commodities and where legitimacy is given to “the kinds of people who get high on making others suffer”.

The determination of Reform’s policy setters to weaken the infrastructure underpinning women’s equality and rights over their own bodies, once realised, risks dehumanising and corralling them back into their historical duals roles of procreation and sexual pleasure. Projects like pronatalism come together with Epstein in the perception of females as essentially abusable life support machines for babies and vaginas.

I’m not, for a moment, implying that Kruger and co indulge in Epsteinean depravity. But I am asserting that he, along with Goodwin, Farage and other Reform policy creators, are re-positioning society in ways that orientate male thinking towards a future of increased sexual abuse.

Pushback vs forward movement

We should be as deeply alarmed by Reform’s misogyny as we are by its racism, climate denialism and attacks on workers. Women are directly affected because Reform poses an acute, existential threat directly to them.

Epstein was not an aberration. Both he and Reform’s policy makers are hitching a ride with a far more ancient, long-standing misogynistic mindset spanning human history. Reform is part of a clamour across the global far right to push back against threats to white male supremacy. If Reform wins power, regressive misogyny will start normalising again, encouraging the patriarchal manosphere to push boundaries ever further, taking advantage of new norms and tolerance levels.

The issue is not about whether parliament would retain the power of veto over the roll out of Reform’s misogynist policies. It’s about how dangerous it is even to give these ideas any traction in the first place by letting Reform win power. These are not battles that 21^st Britain, as a supposed beacon of human rights, should be having. Women must come together on International Women’s Day and beyond to halt this menace.