Much as I agree with many of the policies as promoted for the Reform Party, I am concerned at the views and apparent lack of sense by some of the people being put up for election. The latest character, Robert Kenyon, standing in the Makerfield by-election, appears to be rather a bad choice.
Firstly, he may claim that he voted for Brexit but all the evidence of his reaction to the declaration of our referendum result and posts of social media around that time contradicts that claim. Naturally, no-one will ever know where he put his cross on the day but my bet is that he was not a great supporter of the UK leaving. That, in itself, is not such a big deal and I can see many people are a bit disillusioned with how things have been negotiated since but my main concern is just how silly his tweets or comments have been. They seem no better than some bloke of limited intelligence having a rant after a couple of beers in the pub. Indeed, I am not sure I would want the type of person who feels he has to comment in that way to other people's messages or posts. His language and attitude lack any class and, looking at how he has behaved and the other things he seems to have supported or shared with a thumbs-up emoji, which in itself, tells us a lot about his lack of grey matter and ability to communicate in society, tend to make me rather unenthusiastic about having him as a Member of Parliament and getting £75000 or so from out taxes plus a massive pay-off and great pension when he gets kicked out a some point in years to come.
The final straw, and something which now has made me think again about supporting Reform, has been his comments about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He seems to think that Russia were 'within their rights' to invade Crimea in 2014. I see no comment from him criticising Russia since either. Even if we accept that Crimea has had a fraught history and no-one outside Ukraine seemed to put up much resistance to Russia at the time I fail to see any argument that supports invasion.
Reform also seem to be quiet on most matters concerning Russian activities, reflecting largely the extraordinary silence recently from anyone in the States with any degree of influence on the war in Ukraine. One has to wonder where their policies would lead if elected. I fear that, much like Trump, Farage would not wish to spend any money on further support and would just hope that it all goes away in time. Frankly, a Reform government would have an extraordinary amount of work on its plate anyway with no obvious plan as to how they would implement the changes and so foreign policy generally is likely to take a back seat.
I watched the Makerfield candidate on Question Time yesterday evening and had to smile at just how pathetic all the candidates came across. It was like watching a cartoon.
The Liberal Democrat made almost no impact whatsoever and the only thing I can now recall, apart from his slightly odd appearance and his not really suiting a moustache, was the mention of his husband for no apparent reason other than perhaps to get the vote of a young chap in the audience wearing a remarkably pink and fancy shirt.
The Conservative had an almost permanent smile. An older chap who spoke a lot of sense but seemed quite out of place and was more ignored by the audience, and Fiona Bruce, than even the Liberal bloke. There was not, it seemed, a single Conservative supporter in the audience anyway and I think he and Fiona realised that.
The Green lady smiled even more than the Conservative but hers was one of those smiles that comes either just before or just after they make a sarcastic remark or are convinced that they know best whatever the other person says. She seemed only concerned in getting the Reform bloke to talk about what he had or hadn't said many years ago about what he might like to do to Carol Voderman's bottom. No-one in the audience, or the panel for that matter, questioned the Green Party's policy on not having any border controls, allowing people to use drugs and supporting Hamas or Hezbollah, probably both, as well as maintaining a list of all the jews in Britain. You do have to wonder what has happened to the Green Party. They used to be concerned about whales and the countryside. Now it's Gaza and, er, Gaza.
Andy Burnham was the Labour candidate and, of course, his sole job was to get through the evening without slipping up so that he could win the by-election and take over as Britain's Prime Minister. He managed that reasonably well, although you got the impression that he didn't have any solutions for any of the problems that the government has got itself into and, in the end, is unlikely to make Britain any better place at all. Indeed, by being somewhat more electable at a future General Election than any of the other obvious candidates, Britain could become considerably worse in the longer term if he were able to keep Reform or the Conservatives out of power for a further five years.
To get back to the Reform candidate, I had, at least, expected him to be able to present himself well, with some passion and good old Reform banter and protestations and instant, one-line recipes for fixing things. Instead we saw him floundering and way out of his depth, woefully unprepared and definitely not someone we would want to be running any department in the country. According to the polls before the show, Reform were running Labour a close second and, had someone called the Restore Party not being standing, they might have stood a chance of winning the seat. After the show Labour were 10 points ahead and I fear for the worst.
Unimpressive as Reform looked that night, I see their victory as the only way to avoid a long-term socialist destruction of all that I care for in Britain over the years ahead. I don't like all their policies and the candidate is rubbish but they are the only party with any chance of beating Labour at this time. I would vote Reform in Makerfield and would encourage anyone who does live there to do so.
Let us hope that the next General Election is some time away so that Kemi Badenoch can continue to impress people and regain the trust of so many Conservative voters who turned away from the party in 2024. I believe Reform have now peaked and, as we see more of their rather poor candidates on TV, I predict that their vote share will diminish with that of the Conservatives growing once more. It may well be that we have an even split across the parties as I think the ridiculous Greens will steal votes from Labour and the Lib Dems so we could even be looking at 20-20-20-15-15-5, the 15s being for the Greens and Lib Dems and the 5 for the usual rag-bag of Independents, Monster Raving Loonies and Islamic State supporters etc.
Whatever else one may conclude from that, one thing is certain, much as big change is necessary, it ain't about to happen as no combination of parties would have enough authority to do much more than collect taxes and talk a lot.
The trouble is that unless the Conservatives and Reform can start to work together and demonstrate that they have learned lessons from their previous failure, in the case of the former, and that they have solid and well-researched policies for fixing Britain, in the case of the latter, then the public will remain largely unimpressed by anyone and we will find ourselves sleep-walking into Socialism.
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