Tag Archives: birthrate

Diary Blog, 13 November 2025, including thoughts about the serious decline in the white European birthrate

Afternoon music

[Arnold Boecklin, Villa by the Sea]

Police and crime commissioners

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93d4dd3l3lo

Good to see that the stupid “police and crime commissioners” experiment, another still-born idea from the misgovernment of David Cameron-Levita, is going to be binned in 2028. Were it my decision, I would sack them all immediately, without compensation. Mostly either superannuated cops or failed System politicians.

One problem with them (apart from their utter uselessness, and cost) is that they are open to being suborned by outside pressure groups, particularly by the Israel lobby, as happened with the so-called “Campaign Against Antisemitism” or “CAA”, which has tried to worm its way into a number of police forces, both via these ridiculous “commissioners” and also directly.

For once, the Starmer government has done something of which I approve.

Another good aspect of this is that there will be 49 job vacancies fewer for Con and Lab MPs who lose their seats in 2028 or 2029. Let them suffer.

Tweets seen

Hospices for the terminally-unwell, of ancient origin though in the modern era largely pioneered in the UK, must be further supported, not let down by government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospice

Our fake democracy is completely corrupt now.

Non-System political and intellectual figures, including me, Nick Griffin, some others, have been talking and writing about this for some time.

What is important is to see the big picture, then take action.

It is more than possible that at first, in the UK and in the wider world, the white European population will ebb away, become a minority, with the less capable black-brown population being the majority. That is of course the situation already in much of the world.

Under those circumstances, the white minority of the near future (in the UK, and Europe generally) need not accept the political preferences of the inferior majority as valid, either for the white population or for the overall population. “One-man-one-vote” “democracy” will and must come to an end, as “democracy” is presently understood. See below (written some years ago):

However, the “supremacy via births” of the non-Europeans in the UK, even if and/or when it happens (later in the 21stC) will not be the end, because even the black and brown populations are not increasing in size, except in a few parts of the world (Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh, mainly).

Eventually, the world’s whole population will crash. That will save the world, save the environment etc, but leave humanity on a level not far from extinction. It is then that a core of post-Aryan white Europeans or Eurasians will be able to procreate sufficiently to repopulate that future world, and at the same time create a foundation for an even later super-race.

More tweets seen

The appointment of some kind of pseudo-priestess as Archbishop of Canterbury is the final nail in the coffin of the C of E.

The Church of England long ago went the way of all other major UK institutions. It has become useless, a waste of space.

The assertion that all social-national or conservative-populist people are “knuckledraggers”, “thick”, “stupid” etc is ingrained in the “antifa” —and also, often, in the Jew-Zionist— outlook. They find it hard (because implausible) to say such about me (though some have), because it is not easy to cast such stones at someone with an IQ measured at (very long-ago, admittedly) 156, who has a law degree, professional legal qualifications in two jurisdictions etc, and who has lived and worked across the world, but some others on the national or nationalist side are thought fair game, and are unfairly misdescribed.

In reality, the shoe is often on the other foot.

One of the (merely five…) tweets that got me disbarred in 2016 referred to Sarkozy in some such terms as “corrupt little part-Jew“. Well, was I right, or not?

As said above, the PCC idea was misconceived anyway, but I agree with Goodwin; at least, it seems plausible.

So it continues; as a matter of fact, I imagine that there are “conspiracy theorists” who think that the former main System parties, Labour and Conservative (both now misnamed, of course) are somehow deliberately trying to look as incompetent as possible for some arcane reason.

I doubt it. They just are incompetent, ridiculous, people. Starmer-stein. “Rachel from Accounts and Customer Relations” Reeves. Yvette “put up an asylum-seeker in your own home” Cooper. Stupid, uneducated moneygrubber David Lammy, who seems to hate white European people (except, I presume, his white —partly English, partly Jewish— “trophy wife”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Green).

On the “Conservative” side, the same, mutatis mutandis.

Actually, Lab and Con are but two sides of the same coin.

As for that opinion poll, it would translate to a Commons with about 445 Reform MPs (so a huge majority), 52 Greens (making the Green Party, incredibly, the official Opposition), 42 SNP, 40 LibDems, 23 Lab, and 13 Con.

If that poll is anywhere near accurate, it changes the landscape completely. An unstoppable Reform majority in the Commons (but with no members at all in the Lords), the Green Party as nominal official Opposition, SNP as the third-largest Commons bloc, and the “main parties” of the past and up to the present, Lab and Con, all but exterminated.

People are very very tired and angry at the “same old”, and also angry and frustrated at a country gradually sinking into the swamp and where, increasingly, nothing works as it should.

As a matter of fact, I can see the once-great Conservative Party declining, at a 2028 or 2029 General Election, to as low as 12% of the vote (as hard-core very elderly Conservative Party voters cease to live); that would mean only 3-5 Con MPs surviving. End of the line.

Nick Griffin blog

https://nickgriffin544956.substack.com/p/sick-of-tvs-kalergi-plan-breaks

[Nick Griffin]

Worth reading.

My own blog post about the “blacks with everything” TV ads and soaps, written about 7 years ago:

Talking point(s)

Example #1

Example #2

As always, “their” lack of self-awareness is beyond belief.

Talking point

Even Liz Truss, like a stopped clock, is not always wrong.

More tweets

[“Benjamin May is Patron Law’s compliance office for legal practice (COLP). May says he monitored my case for 5 years and spent hours discussing it with Mark Lewis. My questions to May are: 1. Were you monitoring the case when Lewis secretly encouraged the defendants (despite the conflict between your firm and them) to make untrue, unprofessional and unhinged claims to the High Court, including that I am “a weirdo and freak racist”? 2. Are you going to apologise to the High Court and me on behalf of your firm and Lewis? 3. Are you going to confirm that Lewis is suspended until the outcome of the SRA investigation? @MLewisLawyer @LawPatron @sra_solicitors @MillsandReeve]

They are all, or almost all, Jews in that firm, of course.

The Metropolitan Police should also investigate Lewis in relation to his links with certain police officers in the past, and possibly also now.

Late tweets

[“This is a long one so buckle up, Patriots

For those that don’t know There’s a BBC Documentary getting made about the protests in Scotland I’ve just finished watching through the nearly 90minute sit down interview I had with them on Tuesday at the Aberdeen Music Hall

Here’s my biggest takeaways from it: It still throws me when people are shocked by my reply when I’m asked, “can a black person born in Britain be British” – my reply was “no” What makes somebody Scottish – ancestral ties No I do not believe we should take even a single asylum seeker from anywhere across the world while our people are struggling or while 1 in 5 of Aberdeen’s children live in poverty Muslims are 2% of Scotland’s population yet they’ve held some of the most powerful positions in Scotland eg Humza, Anas.

Being asked if I would vote for a Fascist Dictator if they could give Remigration is like asking if I’d vote for a trans communist if they could give us Remigration…why would I not YES, I truly believe Remigrating millions is possible

THE BIGGEST TAKEAWAY THOUGH… Has to be the final question, “what do you think about the holocaust” I paused to think and then my answer seemed to be horrifying, “Up until not that long ago I would have gone along with the status quo of what we are told at school but now I’ve done my own research and been on my own journey I don’t agree with the 6million, there’s only proof of 271k, there’s no proof that gas chambers existed – stating that no expert in gas chambers has ever found any proof they ever existed. They were Work Camps not Death Camps. Followed with it wasn’t just Jews in the camps and we also had Camps. Finished off with me asking why we should care about “6million” when 60million were killed by the Bolsheviks.” – to summarise the points I made

We can question anything from history apart from this one subject. You question anything to do with the holocaust and “can’t you see how this could ruin your credibility” Look at the Nazi Book Burning… We are told that Hitler was evil for ordering this but really he was burning all the subversive and degenerate books like those of the Jewish Marxist Doctors from the Frankfurt School. The sort of books we don’t want them poisoning kids minds with today Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs are all the same – NOT OUR PEOPLE Call me a White Supremacist Call me racist and fascist Call me antisemitic and a holocaust denier Call me islamophobic and xenophobic I honestly couldn’t care, I love my people and my nation far too much to care Be willing to question everything that we have been taught from history, have the courage to make up your own mind Remigration is inevitable“]

Now look at other fake news, from the “Covid” scamdemic to the old “German gas chambers” farrago.

Was turkey on the menu, or chicken?…

Our animal friends.

Late music

Diary Blog, 24 April 2024, with thoughts about the vandalism of Wikipedia, and about Rwanda, mass immigration and migration-invasion

Morning music

Wikipedia

Well worth reading. For me, Wikipedia is an invaluable resource, but there is no doubt that parts have been rendered both less accurate and (therefore) less useful because of tendentious “editing” by, especially, the Jew-Zionist element. Knowledge areas such as Second World War and 1930s political history, social-national groups’ histories, certain “theories”, or phenomena, such as the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan etc.

A couple of years ago, the malicious UK-based Jewish/Zionist lobby and/or Israel-lobby group, “Campaign Against Antisemitism” [“CAA”] advertized online for any of its supporters with personal Wikipedia accounts to join in a programme of vandalistic “editing” of Wikipedia pages.

Look at the biased language in this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalergi_Plan. “Debunked“; “concocted“; “hoax“; “fabricated“; “racist” etc.

The “editing” is rather obvious; unsubtle. All the same, many readers probably do not realize that a form of vandalism has taken place.

Ultimately, truth overcomes untruth, but sometimes not for a very long time.

Yesterday was St. George’s Day. The image of the warrior saint overcoming the dragon and killing it is powerful in human history.

[Durer, woodcut, c.1501, Saint George Killing the Dragon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_George_and_the_Dragon]

Tweets seen

Another reason for Blair to be put on trial one day.

Can’t argue with that…

[Emily Thornberry, member of Labour Friends of Israel, at a Zionist banquet in London, sitting with the then Israeli Ambassador, Mark Regev (at centre)]

Mass immigration, migration-invasion, and the Rwanda plan

https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/why-we-need-rwanda

The problem is that, mainly as a down-the-line consequence of the disastrous, catastrophic Second World War and the way it ended (with the European empires unable or unwilling to continue to rule vast tracts of Africa —both sub-Saharan and North Africa—, Asia and elsewhere), the world fell, after 1945, into a downward spiral consisting of overpopulation, wars, civil wars, shambolic and corrupt native rule, environmental degradation etc.

This became Europe’s problem when the instability of much of the Middle East and South Asia, as well as Afghanistan and much of black Africa, sent millions and tens of millions of both “bogus” and “genuine” refugees westward and northward to Europe. Africa’s northern barriers— Libya, Tunisia and Morocco— were penetrated, the fall of Gaddafi being key.

At the same time, Africa and parts of South Asia (notably, Pakistan) and the Middle East were experiencing a population explosion (by births) not mirrored anywhere else.

The UK, for example, has suffered a huge population increase in the past 20-30 years, but almost all of that has been via immigration, and births to recent immigrants, not births to native white British people or even to those non-whites who entered the country decades ago.

It is largely a waste of time, effort and money trying to separate “genuine” from “bogus” refugees (economic migrants etc). The two groups are very similar in type or in most respects, and pose similar problems.

The fact is that the world is in such a state, and now has so many possibilities of long-distance travel, that in principle, on the basis of the post-WW2 legal framework, literally hundreds of millions (800M is a figure often quoted) could make their way to Europe, including the UK (for many a preferred destination).

Those vast hordes could all, or almost all, make a legally-arguable case to be considered as “genuine refugees”, a fact confirmed by the proportion presently allowed to stay in the UK once having set foot on British shores and after assessment— 80%.

Of course, few of the remaining 20% are deported either.

Most immigrants to the UK are not “asylum-seekers” and/or purported “refugees” anyway, but are “lawful migrants”, i.e. “students”, “family members”, supposed spouses or “fiancees”, “highly skilled workers” (Indians who can work a computer) and so on.

Let us take that 800 million figure as correct (it may even be an underestimate). Even if only 10% were to come to the UK (and it could be 90%), that would mean a doubling and more of the population; moreover, an influx of “refugees” most of whom would be unable even to speak basic English, few of whom have any marketable skills, and many of whom are actively hostile to white European culture and civilization, despite wanting to live in Europe.

UK society is under stress and strain already from mass immigration. It could not take 80M more immigrants, or even 8M more, without descending into either chaos or socio-political upheaval. At present, the overall immigrant influx (not just supposed “refugees”) numbers about a million a year; supposedly “only” about 700,000-800,000 “net” because there are a couple of hundred thousand leavers every year, but most of those leaving are real white Brits emigrating to what they think might be a better life, or a better retirement, in Australasia, Canada, or European countries such as France and Spain.

Very few of the ~1M immigrants each year are of any use to the UK. A few are, true, though mostly in unskilled or partly-skilled occupations that could be done either by Brits or, soon, by AI, robots etc.

The best that can be hoped for is that the bulk of those entering the UK every year are merely neutral or parasitic, rather than actively hostile and/or criminal.

The whole question of immigration is not some side-issue. It affects the income, life-chances, living standards, food, water, shelter and safety of every single person in the UK.

10 years from now, there might be as many as 10M more people in the UK by reason of immigration. A population of the size of a city such as London, albeit spread over the UK, and populated by alien hordes the majority of which will be, at best, parasitic. Is that possible, or sustainable? No.

As to the present UK government policy of deportation to Rwanda, I have several problems with it, the first of which is around numbers.

It seems that, if it becomes operational, the Rwanda flights will carry, at most, a few hundred failed “asylum-seekers” per week. In a situation where even the “small boat” invasion across the Channel amounts to several thousand per week, the Rwanda flights will only deal with about 10% of the “small boats” invasion problem. The Rwanda policy does not even touch the larger migration-invasion, the “legal” (lawful) sort. The “small boats” are, at most 20%, probably 10%, of the entire problem.

That is on the basis that the Rwanda flights will start, that they will continue, and that they will carry more than a handful of deportees.

Another question arising is the capacity of Rwanda, a small country (somewhat larger than Wales, but with 4x the population), to absorb deportees on a large scale, most of whom will not even be from Africa, or that part of Africa.

Rwanda was the scene of the Hutu-Tutsi genocide of 1994; it has a history of ethnic tension.

What happens, in such a country, one of 14M people, densely packed (the most densely-populated on mainland Africa, and the fifth most densely-packed in the world excepting city-states, small islands etc, at over 1,400 persons per square mile— the UK is about 722 per sq. mile, England about 1,100 p.s.m.) when thousands, tens of thousands of foreign deportees arrive? At some point, there may be a local backlash.

What happens if the Rwanda government changes, or changes policy? Are their words, or treaties, reliable? Have they ever been, in Africa or indeed anywhere?

In any case, the Rwanda plan will apply only to (some) deportees from the small percentage called “illegal” migrants; the vast majority of migrants to the UK are notionally “legal” or lawful, so will not be subject to deportation at all.

The Rwanda plan is little more than a public relations exercise in an election year. Cosmetic only. Even if “successful” (operational), it will deal with only, perhaps, 1% of the overall mass immigration problem.

Matt Goodwin (see tweet and blog article above) sees the Rwanda plan as at least being a statement of intent, but it is doubtful whether it can be scaled-up, expanded to other countries in Africa or elsewhere.

The main question remains: how to stop over a million non-Europeans entering the UK alone each year? How to reduce the proportion of non-Europeans in the UK (and in Europe as a whole), and how to, eventually, create an ethnostate with the idea of laying the ground for a much later “super-people”?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwanda

More tweets seen

https://twitter.com/Sprinterfactory/status/1783038525681574173

Not “dying“— being killed (by “them”).

That is somewhere around my own view of Penny Mordaunt. Her trump card, amid all the Jews and non-whites in the Conservative Party MP ranks, is that she is actually English. I cannot see much else to commend her as a potential Prime Minister, though there is nothing too damaging against her either.

In fact, though, if it turns out that the Conservative Party is reduced to about 50 MPs this year or by early 2025, it will not much matter whether she becomes leader of that little band or not.

In any case, her seat at Portsmouth North is a “bellwether”, i.e. usually votes the same way as the winning side in general elections (in the case of Portsmouth North, since 1966), so Ms. Mordaunt is quite likely to lose her seat in 2024/2025, though her high profile may enable her to avoid that fate. In 2019, her vote-share was 61.4%; the Labour vote a mere 27%. Labour has not exceeded 40% there since its win in 2005.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Mordaunt;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_North_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s

News from Ukraine

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13343997/Russia-breaks-Ukraine-line-captures-strategically-important-town-newly-arrived-brigade-fled-post-major-blow-Kyiv-just-finally-approves-huge-aid-package.html

Russian troops have reportedly pushed through Ukrainian lines to take the strategic town of Ocheretyne in Donetsk – the latest scoop for Vladimir Putin‘s forces amid a recent string of gains on the battlefield.

Videos shared on the Telegram messaging app by Russian military bloggers appeared to show the Russian tricolour flying atop a damaged building in the town that once was home to 30,000 Ukrainians. 

The town was lost after Ukrainian units fled their positions under heavy fire, Msocow’s defence ministry claimed, as a Ukrainian army spokesperson said the invaders were ‘using the entire arsenal of weapons available… including chemical poisons,’ in their assault.

The capture of Ocheretyne, a local rail hub, is a key milestone on the way to the city of Pokrovsk some 20 miles further west – an intersection of important roads and a railway junction that forms the linchpin of Ukraine’s military operations in the region. 

Elsewhere, Russian divisions are pummelling towns on the outskirts of Chasiv Yar, a strategically important hill town that would allow them to move toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, key cities Ukraine controls in the eastern region of Donetsk.

And missiles and drones continue to batter energy infrastructure and residential areas in Ukraine‘s second-largest city, Kharkiv, which is only about 20 miles from the Russian border.

Moscow‘s soldiers are pushing forward at several points along the 600-mile front – perhaps to maximise their gains over their depleted and war weary adversaries before new supplies of Western munitions arrive.

[Daily Mail]

As I have predicted on the blog, there will probably be a stunning Russian advance across all of Eastern Ukraine in 2024-2025. It might even end the war, either by collapse of the Zelensky dictatorship or by a Russian victory (defined as quasi-permanent occupation of all of Eastern Ukraine and the coasts of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov).

Western arms and ammunition may delay that Russian victory, but the Kiev regime is running out of soldiers.

Late tweets

Were National Socialism not banned in Germany, its chosen party would be the most popular by far amongst the voters and especially younger voters.

Late music

[river Dnieper and southern residential areas of Kiev]

Crowdfunder

Should anyone wish to support my crowdfunder, or share the link, it is here: https://www.givesendgo.com/GC14J

Diary Blog, 24 February 2024, including some thoughts about Ashfield constituency and Lee Anderson MP

Morning music

[river Moskva, upstream of Moscow]

Saturday quiz

This week brings a narrow victory over political journalist John Rentoul. He scored 5/10, but I trumped that with 6/10. I did not know the answers to questions 1, 2, 3, and 8.

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13118755/Fertility-rate-plunges-time-low.html

Women are having fewer children than ever before, official figures revealed today. 

Office for National Statistics data shows the fertility rate — the average number of children a woman has — in England and Wales slumped to 1.49 in 2022. 

It marks the lowest figure since records began in 1938, laying bare the reality of the ongoing baby bust that threatens to cripple the economy. 

Not a single one of the 330-plus authorities in both countries has a fertility rate that is above ‘replacement level’, according to MailOnline analysis.

[Daily Mail]

When one considers that (overall) the blacks and browns etc are having children, the birthrate among white people (“the people formerly known as British”) is seen more clearly as being at a rock-bottom level.

See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/26/the-tide-is-coming-in-reflections-on-the-possible-end-of-our-present-civilization-and-what-might-follow/.

More from the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13119039/MP-Bob-Stewart-conviction-racially-aggravated-offence-quashed.html

An MP has had his conviction for racially aggravated offense quashed after he told an activist to ‘go back to Bahrain.’

Bob Stewart, MP for Beckenham in south-east London, made the remark towards activist Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei during a row outside the Foreign Office’s Lancaster House on December 14 2022. 

Last November, Mr Stewart was convicted for a racially aggravated public order offence and was fined £600. Following the conviction, Mr Stewart lost the Tory whip and has since sat in the House of Commons as an independent. 

Now, following an appeal, his conviction has been overturned today at Southwark Crown Court.”

[Daily Mail]

One has to wonder how absolutely stupid are the police and Crown Prosecution Service that this was ever brought to a trial. Mad.

Incidentally, note that the Daily Mail wannabee “journalist” scribbler spells “offence” as “offense“, American-style, in the first line. Newspapers have declined in every way since the 1970s.

As for my own conviction under the very stupid Communications Act 2003, s.127 (trial was on 17 November 2023), I am due to be sentenced in a few weeks’ time. After that, I shall have 3 weeks in which to decide whether to appeal to the Crown Court.

Tweets seen

Britain Occupied territory

For me, what is most alarming is that dim people like Hoyle can get to some of the highest-status positions in our country and society.

At least he is an animal-lover in his private life. I can approve of that.

Paul Golding/Britain First is only partly correct. While Islamism is a threat to the UK, so is Jew-Zionism, which is far more embedded in the power structure. Paul Golding always attacks the one but not the other, which may be one reason why Britain First has a poor electoral record; most recently, 1.6% at the Wellingborough by-election, only 8th out of 11 candidates.

At Wellingborough, Britain First’s 8th-placed position came after Labour, Conservative, Reform, LibDems, an Independent, Greens, and another Independent, only beating the Monster Raving Loony and two more Independents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellingborough_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s.

Only one caveat: I do not know whether those numbers are inflation-adjusted.

By sending long-range “Taurus” cruise missiles to Ukraine, they will make Germany part of the Ukrainian conflict, German politician Sara Wagenknecht told the German media.

“You really think that if we deliver more weapons, the Ukrainians will be able to drive the Russians out of Crimea? Do you think Russia, a nuclear power, will allow that? If we bring war to Russia with German weapons, then we will also bring war to Germany,” she said.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahra_Wagenknecht. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahra_Wagenknecht#Refugee_policy. Interesting.

Sara Wagenknecht only finished her secondary education in 1988, a year before the collapse of the DDR (and, incidentally, the same year in which I myself saw the country, though only briefly), so she could not have been a member of the Aufklärung (the foreign intelligence component of the State Security apparat or “Stasi“). Had she been older, one might wonder.

Lee Anderson, and Ashfield (Derbyshire)

The maverick MP has been suspended from being under the Conservative Party whip.

Naturally, I do not agree with his statement that London is “run by Muslims”. Sadiq Khan is from a Muslim background, but has been pretty much in the Jew-Zionist pocket for many years.

It would be more accurate to characterize Sadiq Khan as “anti-white”.

As to Anderson himself, I suggest that he is trying to bolster his position vis a vis the General Election expected later this year.

Until 2019, Ashfield had always been won by Labour since its inception in 1955, with one closely-run by-electoral exception in 1977. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashfield_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s. “New Labour” and Gloria de Piero changed all that.

David Marquand, a former MP for Ashfield (1966-1977; he is still alive, at 89): “Originally a tentative supporter of Blair’s New Labour, he has since become a trenchant critic, arguing that “New Labour has ‘modernised’ the social-democratic tradition out of all recognition”, even while retaining the over-centralisation and disdain for the radical intelligentsia of the old “Labourite” tradition.” [Wikipedia]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Marquand.

Marquand defected to the SDP and then was honourable enough to step down as MP, not contesting the by-election.

In fact, Marquand was himself rather intellectual:

Marquand addressed Britain’s relative economic decline in The Unprincipled Society (1988) and The New Reckoning (1997). He argued that this decline was caused by Britain’s failure to become a developmental state like France, Germany and Japan. In those countries state intervention had encouraged industrial development and had facilitated the necessary adjustments to competition. Britain, however, was wedded to an economic liberalism which prevented the state from undertaking the necessary measures to meet the country’s developmental needs.[7] In The New Reckoning Marquand claimed: “The economies that have succeeded more spectacularly have been those fostered by developmental states, where public power, acting in concert with private interest, has induced market forces to flow in the desired direction”.[8]” [Wikipedia].

In fact, Ashfield is not quite as “safe Labour” as the history might suggest superficially. Gloria de Piero won in 2010 by a majority of under half a point (0.4%, 192 votes) from a LibDem.

While de Piero’s majority increased in 2015 (as the LibDems imploded), in 2017 she beat the Conservative candidate by less than one point (0.9%, 441 votes). An Ashfield Independent came third with over 9% of the vote.

In 2019, Lee Anderson won convincingly: 39.3% of the vote, followed in second (27.6%) by another “Ashfield Independent”, Jason Zadrozny [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Zadrozny], who has had a chequered political and personal history. In third place came Labour, with only 24.4%.

Zadrozny is going to contest the seat at GE 2024.

So far, apart from Anderson (who may or may not be standing as Conservative Party candidate, depending on whether he gets back the Conservative whip), only the Ashfield Independent and Reform UK are presently known to be likely to stand at GE 2024, but a full field is almost guaranteed. There may be a dozen or more candidates.

At first, I thought that Anderson could probably be written off as post-GE 2024 MP, but now am not so sure. He has now (whether by design or not) distanced himself from the unpopular Conservative leadership —and possibly from the equally-unpopular Conservative Party— is anti-EU, anti-migration invasion etc, and is now known nationwide. He must have at least a chance of retaining his seat. If he does, and if he also retains it as a “Conservative” MP, he might be one of 100 or even as few as 50 such MPs. Who knows what might then happen?

[Update, 13 October 2024: In the end, what happened at GE 2024 was that Lee Anderson stood as Reform UK candidate, and won handsomely with 42.8% of the vote. He is thus now one of 5 Reform UK MPs. The Labour candidate came a poor second with 29%; third place, with 15.7%, went to that Independent, Zadrozny, who faces yet another Crown Court trial soon, in February 2025: numerous charges of fraud and income tax evasion, as well as possession of cocaine): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashfield_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s].

More tweets seen

(April 2023)

(February 2024)

Bye...”

Richard Tice

Mr Tice said there is “anger amongst ordinary folk about the state of the country”.

He said: “There’s no love for Keir Starmer, there’s just a deep rejection and utter fury with the toxic Tories.

[Daily Express]

To that limited extent, I agree with Tice.

Late music

[painting by Victor Ostrovsky]