An Air of Optimism; A Note of Caution!

Guest post by Andy Mac!

My mate and I were in India when news came through that Boris Johnson had succeeded in persuading Parliament to agree to a General Election to sort out the laborious Brexit process once and for all. By the time we returned from Delhi in late November 2019, the election campaign was well underway. Despite having a few reservations (which I’ve covered on here before), I was keen for a decisive Boris win so as to deliver the will of the Brexit referendum result over three years earlier! When I saw the Channel 4 exit poll at close of voting, I was elated. A project I had spent 28 years of my life campaigning for (our exit from the European Union) was about to be completed. We went to London for the day less than two weeks after the seismic result, and I remember standing outside those impressive wrought iron gates at the entrance to Downing Street singing the Prime Minister’s praises. Ah, that seems like another lifetime ago.

Seeing Boris now, as I did on the news the other night, causes me to feel nothing but contempt for a man who turned out to be the single biggest disappointment since Judy Garland’s Dorothy discovered the ‘great and powerful Wizard of Oz’ was just a wizened Frank Morgan hiding behind a green curtain: a clown shoe politician with an unusual turn of phrase. This ex-Prime Minister, having promised to ‘get Brexit done’ and ‘take back control of our laws, borders, and money’, did virtually nothing you could equate to such grand promises. We gave £39 billion to the EU; we partitioned our own country and left Northern Ireland at the whim of the EU (something we were painfully reminded of yet again this week when the UK-India trade deal was signed (https://www.loveballymena.online/post/northern-ireland-excluded-from-uk-india-trade-deal-government-confirms); and we turbo-charged immigration from countries with incompatible cultures and a plethora of family dependents. It was a Schrödinger’s Brexit, nothing more.

So you’ll forgive me if the last few years has created within me a certain diamond-hardened carapace of cynicism that only a radical shift of the way we are governed will crack. Of course, I am very pleased with the advance of Reform UK in last week’s local elections. Before the day dawned, I forecast a triple whammy for Reform: victory in the Hull and East Yorkshire mayoralty; victory in its Greater Lincolnshire counterpart; and victory in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election. I also predicted they would end up with something in the region of 100 council seats. I was delighted to be proved spectacularly wrong on the latter prediction. Reform UK took almost half the entire tally of seats up for grabs, exceeding even my wildest expectations. Their success last week was crowned last night with a stunning gain from Labour here in Halifax. The affluent Skircoat ward on the south side of the town was once rock-solidly Conservative. Although some demographic changes over the years meant it fell to Labour after the Corbyn phenomenon, last night Reform took the vacant seat with a stunning 36.8% of the vote (8.8% ahead of Labour!). What is unusual about this result is that the Skircoat ward contains many leafy avenues, large detached houses, and significant numbers of the so-called ‘professional classes’ such as those who work at the local infirmary and the Halifax Bank HQ. To capture a ward of this affluence for a party priding itself on its working class credentials means that few wards will be off-limits in this borough come the local elections a year from now.

However, here’s where my note of caution becomes necessary. Much of what Reform have promised is admirable. That said, some of former pledges have been watered down considerably, and the treatment of both Rupert Lowe and Ben Habib have been nothing short of shameful. To disparage both during an interview during the VE Day celebrations was not only unnecessary given their erstwhile relationship, it was also highly inappropriate on such a momentous day. On immigration, I want net negative migration to this country. It has been transformed and ghettoised beyond recognition in so many of its urban centres, I barely make a connection anymore to the Britain of my own childhood. Most importantly of all, we need to have a reckoning in this country with the spread and influence of Islam. It should go without saying that I’m not advocating some sort of hysterical ‘Mississippi Burning’-style pogrom here, but what I am doing is telling readers that the religion itself needs confronting head-on. It needs to be told its ‘my way or no way’ approach to Western society is firmly at an end. For if radical Islam is the snake hiding in the grass, Islam itself is the grass that hides the snake. We have to reassert our own longstanding values and cultural beliefs, making it clear to this most detrimental of minority religions that the days of Sharia law, community isolation, sectarian face coverings, vile Jew-hatred, misogyny and incessant demands to bend the proverbial knee to their immiscible cultural totems are gone and never coming back. In my view, the very futures of both British and wider European societies depend on it.

Furthermore on Net Zero, economic management, foreign relations, the removal of Wokery, etc., Reform UK now has to show its hand. Last Thursday was a corrective move after years of the British public being deliberately ignored and deceived by a gaggle of politicians keener on the power delusions of the role they hold, rather than on its intended purpose in the service of those who elect them. In short, Reform is the public revenge against an Establishment which has lied for decades. If Reform can truly live up to its promises, its rise will continue without equal. On the other hand, if Farage reaches the top of the political tree but then promptly does a Boris in terms of his delivery, Reform will consequently face every bit as much of the wrath of the voting public as the Conservatives and Labour are facing now. Reform postulates itself as this country’s salvation. If our trust is destroyed by them, then our quest to find a GENUINE alternative to this tainted status quo will continue in earnest.