It’s in a blogger’s best interests to keep up a regular presence online but as regular readers will know, I am occasionally beset by periods of gloom when I can’t bring myself to say anything at all. To describe this as writer’s block is to mischaracterise it. This is a fully fledged slump. There is nothing new to report and all I really have to offer is a counsel of despair. It’s when I get like this I find it wise to go away and do something else entirely.
For that reason, I was away last week sitting at the end of RAF Lakenheath runway getting my fix of F15Es, while this week I’ve made myself a neat little model Harrier GR1. Speculation about the local elections seemed superfluous. Usually, local elections are little more than an opinion poll on the performance of the sitting government. This one is no different in that we will see Labour's unpopularity reflected in the results.
These elections, however, are also a health check on our democracy, where we will see multiple seats falling to sectarian influences, and foreign born individuals who have no business even being in this country. That will be the analysis to look out for, because cleaning up this mess has to be the first priority of any future right wing government. But it's not going to be Reform, evidently.
Reform UK has stood a number of foreign candidates to the displeasure of its supporters. The leader of Reform UK in Portsmouth has hit back after the party was criticised for selecting a Bangladeshi man to stand in next year’s city council elections.
Addy Mo Asaduzzaman, 23, who came to the UK on a student visa and has leave to remain in the UK, was announced as the candidate for the Central Southsea ward on Monday. But on social media, some followers criticised the decision saying “non-brits should not be allowed to stand, and Reform should not be endorsing this”. Councillor George Madgwick, who moved to the party in July and is now the group leader in the city, said the comments were “frankly disgusting” and the abuse was “appalling”.
It was already bad enough that Reform is an ideologically rudderless entity with nothing approaching an intellectual foundation, but this is symptomatic of a party that will take on literally anyone and has completely lost touch with what it is actually for. I’d already picked up on signals that this was the case and predicted as much. A party that has no system of principles will take on anyone.
This is especially depressing for me. I’ve completely given up hope of an electoral solution. This, taken with the lamentable slop of Restore Britain, underscores that the British right is incapable of getting its act together. It’s also a confirmation that all of my efforts over the last couple of years have been a comprehensive failure. Nothing I’ve said has made the slightest impact.
Worse still, I get the feeling that Reform’s disarray is broadly reflecting of our political culture. Culturally we are in deeper trouble than anyone realises. We’re now seeing electoral addresses in foreign languages and half the country doesn’t even see what the problem with that is. We are that supine. We should also recall that not long ago, a psychotic African walked into a children's dance class in Southport, slaughtered three little girls, and nobody lost their job and nobody was deported. It will keep happening.
In the meantime, we have the dismal prospect of a Labour leadership contest, where for some reason, Labourites can’t see that Angela Rayner is a rancid skank with the IQ of a potato - who most certainly will not revive the party’s fortunes. This might just be enough to tip the country over the edge and into economic oblivion, suggesting that we could be looking at a general election sooner than anyone realises. For what that’s worth. One gets a sense, though, that I’m very far from alone in my sense of resignation and exasperation. A summer of discontent awaits.
You do have an impact Pete. You are adding weight and insight to right wing thinking. Sometimes the world turns slowly.
At the moment I’d say it’s impossible to be serious about British politics without being depressed. Reform and Conservative were the only even allegedly rightwing options on my ballot so I voted Reform. At least in my area they are led by a working class actual Brit. Oddly, the only hope that Reform might do anything worthwhile lies in the extent to which the media and Establishment parties still so obviously hate them, but your criticisms are accurate. For what it’s worth on my Substack with my small reach I’ve said that any rightwing party that’s serious should properly engage with you.