The Reform Party is a most wonderful institution, based on false hopes, narrow views and a host of inherent contradictions. Just like the USA under Donald Trump it is no surprise to see that its Neuro Linguistic Programming style rhetoric has been successful. If you throw in enough of what people like to hear you are bound to catch a whole lot of attention and, probably, support.
Let’s look at some of their core statements of policy and what they stand for.
Sovereignty
The Reform Party will ensure that no foreign court institution or treaty will override the will of the British people or the authority of Parliament. Well, we can all agree with that pretty much in its entirety. However, what does it mean? It is a little bit of nonsense that sounds strong and secure. However, for decades Britain has been at the mercy of so many treaties and institutions that we had no control over that we ought to be realistic.
Since we decided, by the narrowest of margins, to leave the EU which was originally set up to ensure peace and economic stability in Europe, we have been bullied and pushed around by economic factors so complex and impossible to address with strength that our sovereignty is perpetually at risk. Our strongest ally has decided that their best way to deal with us is the same way that they deal with all the other weaker nations like Venezuela and Cuba and Iran, bully them until they do what the USA wants. Friend Nigel would have climbed so far into bed with The Donald that we would be, at this very moment, strafing perfectly innocent and oppressed civilians in Iran with our own missiles and bombs as and how the USA dictated. Not a lot of sovereignty there I am afraid, but ooh that statement sounds so good.
Cut Net Zero
Good one this. We have high energy bills because we are a highly developed country with phenomenal infrastructure. All Western nations have high energy bills, ours are much lower than many. Fancy a Cuba style situation where your energy bill is zero because there is none? Look at reality, we pay a lot because we get a hell of a lot. And I am sure that your grandchildren will be very happy with such a policy when they are seeing the ice caps disappear completely, the sea rise all because ULEZ was a bit of an inconvenience and those wind farms looked so ugly against the sky.
Revitalise British Manufacturing
Can’t disagree with this, but we need to know what this means. It is coupled in practice with a few other policies: Make work pay? Nigel certainly makes his work pay, except for the work that he is supposed to do for his constituents in Clacton. He is rarer there than woolly mammoths. Making work pay means higher wages which means higher unit costs for all that British manufacturing and that means inflation, which means higher costs and so on. Oh yes and removing all those cheap low skilled migrant workers who are actually vital to our economy, doing the very low paid work that keeps things cheaper and that British workers will not do. Oh yes and helps our farmers so much. Who, by the way, are very much not an homogenous group, there are rich farmers and there are poor farmers. The poor ones, frequently tenants of the rich ones, enable the “poor farmers” to plead their case for more subsidies and less taxes. So it is in the interest of some farmers to make sure other farmers are poorer.
And the key ones:
Stop the Boats and Secure our borders.
Well, there are many things you can do to stop the boats and to secure our borders yet successive governments have not done them. The reason is that we are a free and a humanitarian society and most of the measures that will work curtail everyone’s freedom and will contravene humanitarian principles. Maybe we are comfortable with all that, but I would have reservations about almost all the more stringent methods. Then there are the costs of finding all these illegals, keeping them under lock and key until we find how to remove them and so on. And maybe we need to look at our lives and how we are able to have such a high standard of living – because we do. Could it be that the problem lies with how the world uses its resources and who has the lion’s share? Back to energy bills and manufacturing again. Rich countries like the UK are rich partly because we can utilise pressure on other countries to get what we want if they are weaker than we are. If we spent more time and effort making sure that less developed countries got a fairer share and better use of resources then these illegals would not feel the immense pressure to try to arrive here for a better life for themselves and their families. Perhaps if the USA and the UK and Russia and China didn’t bomb and persecute other nations then there would be less refugees around to bother this sceptred isle.
Just a few thoughts around the realities of modern politics that Nigel et al would rather didn’t come into the equation. After all, what Donald said charmed the working class of the USA, but now he is in for his second time it is still the billionaires and wealthier people who are doing better, the blue collars are still firmly rooted at the bottom of health and economic benefits. Nigel will do the same if we let him. Do you remember all the rubbish about how great Brexit would be for us all? Those of us who believed it (I didn’t) really do have a lot to blame themselves for. And unless we get better trade with the nearest countries to us (Europe) it will get worse.
I shall look at some other policies later.
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