Tag Archives: Reform

Diary Blog, 22 November 2021, including thoughts about Welsh independence

Morning music

[Moscow river, with Great Kremlin Palace and Kremlin churches]

“Covid” biosecurity police state

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10228145/THIRD-night-violence-streets-Europe-Covid-clampdowns.html

The Germans have a Health Minister who’s only qualification is a Certificate in Business Studies and a so called Covid expert working at the Robert Koch Institute who’s only qualification is having one in Veterinary science.” [the published comment of a Daily Mail reader]. (reader’s spelling, not mine).

People across Europe are starting to fight for freedom. A small minority, yes, but backed by many millions of others. There is always a vanguard ahead of the mob.

In the Netherlands, the Dutch police fired at random into the crowd, killing two protesters. So much for the superficially “caring sharing” Dutch state…oh, and incidentally…the Daily Mail chose not to report that fact.

More music

[VDNKh, Moscow; photograph by Gennady Grachev]

Destruction of freedom of expression in the UK

https://www.onelittlewarrior.life/post/pensioner-imprisoned-for-thoughtcrimes

Is the above any different or any better than what happens in Belarus, or even China?

Tweets seen

That is where we are in the UK: suppression of real news, endless (and endlessly dull) recounting of the official versions of “fake news” (mainly “Covid” nonsense, with some “climate change” stuff tacked on, and there is little or no real difference among the main System news outlets: BBC, Sky, ITN etc. Britain is now largely (((occupied))) territory. ZOG.

I was going to add something about Brenton Tarrant, but the repression of free speech in the UK is now such that a degree of self-censorship afflicts even me…

Anyone who has visited an NHS hospital in the past 18 months (as I have, several times, as a specially-permitted visitor) must have noticed that hospitals have been largely empty, the few staff almost unoccupied. There are, probably, exceptions to my impression(s), perhaps in a few large cities, but I have seen what I have seen.

The pseudo-socialists on Twitter are just me-too idiots, whose only aim is to “deplatform” those with whose views and ideas they disapprove. No ideas about society, except that everything would, they imagine, be much better if advanced white societies were flooded even more by the backward and unpleasant from the black/brown areas of the Earth. They are basically “useful idiots” for those pushing the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Coudenhove-Kalergi

More tweets

In fact, there is a need to depopulate, but the devil is in the detail. What is needed now is for the European populations to stay pretty much at their present levels, but for there to be a large-scale diminution of the non-European populations.

Since 1945, the populations of Asia (particularly China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) have rocketed, as have some others. Ideally, the European and European-origined part of the world should comprise the vast majority of the whole world population. See https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/26/the-tide-is-coming-in-reflections-on-the-possible-end-of-our-present-civilization-and-what-might-follow/.

Wales and Welsh independence

Ecce, the complete unreality of the pseudo-socialist Twitterati. Wales as an independent country? It never has been, unless you count its prehistoric origins: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales#History.

Wales is small (the same size as New Jersey, at about 8,000 square miles), and has three million people. Its resources traditionally lay in sub-surface minerals and rocks: coal, slate etc, now not hugely valuable or competitive internationally.

The agricultural sector relies on subsidy, much of Welsh agriculture consisting of uneconomic hill farms.

Tourism exists, mainly in some coastal towns but also elsewhere.

An independent Wales would be a very poor little state.

As for the advantages of independence for Wales, they are hard to see. The devolved Welsh Government already decides upon 20 devolved areas of administration: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales#Areas_of_responsibility.

Aaron Bastani’s tweet, above, seems to envisage an independent socialist Wales. It seems to me that Wales is better off as part of the UK. After all, without UK (English) subsidy, Wales would have little money to subsidize its farming sector, the coal mines are merely historical now (and part of the “heritage tourism” trade), the slate mines still exist here and there but are hardly the basis for statehood’s necessary income, and tourism could not bear the financial load of true “statehood”. What else is there? Not much, I think.

Labour has a plurality, and near-majority, of seats in the Welsh Parliament— 30 out of 60: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senedd.

In my view, a truly independent and socialist Wales would be as poor as North Korea after a while. An extreme view? Not really. How would the Welsh Government fund hospitals, schools, and so on?

Not that it could not be done. Will is all. If the 3,000,000 people resident in Wales (many of them now English) were to vote for real independence, they could make it work, up to a point. Why not? However, they would have to accept living standards far below even the modest ones now existent.

More tweets

A good example of the political, or social, or ideological cover the “Covid” “panicdemic”/”scamdemic” gives to political apparatchiki. Had those “Abos” been detained for any other reason, or under any other excuse, the pseudo-socialists, “human rights” bods etc, even the msm talking heads, would have been outraged and up in arms against it. Not this time, because…”Covid”…the magic word that quells all opposition.

The UK Cabinet of clowns (sinister clowns) has condemned itself out of its own collective mouth, by its very silence in the face of Evil.

#Osterreich #Freiheit #Kristalltag!

“Adolf Hitler, please return to us!

Austria needs to reawaken from its consumerist sleep.

System mouthpiece James O’Brien expressing support for “more meaningful measures“, meaning forced “vaccination”, camps for dissidents etc.

O’Brien says that only a “tiny minority” oppose such measures. Not true, but, how strange, the vast majority in England want NO MORE MASS IMMIGRATION, yet when it comes to migration-invasion, msm/System mouthpiece O’Brien seems to prefer the views of the “tiny minority” (the “refugees welcome” dimwits, the Jewish lobby —mostly pro-immigration— etc)…

Note the ignorance of another LBC and System mouthpiece, Shelagh Fogarty, who pretends to knowledge, based on not very much.

If the System forces me to be “vaccinated” against the panicdemic, that will be a declaration of war against me, and against the entire population.

and look below:

Useless (at his job), irritating, ignorant (but paid a few hundred grand a year anyway…) Jeremy Vine, showing incredible (?) bias, with guests the hugely ignorant scribbler (poses as “journalist”) Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, and Daily Mail scribbler, something (?) Pierce. That is what the msm serve up to the watching populace as a “discussion”, with the presenter, Vine, advocating that the government use “snitches“, fines, prison, “spot checks” of documents etc to repress those who defy “vaccination” with useless fake vaccines.

At least the DDR [East Germany] did not seriously pretend to have “civil rights”…

When the Hungarian Uprising occurred in 1956, those most closely involved with the repression of the population (secret policemen etc) were caught, and some of them suffered the supreme penalty at the hands of the rebels.

Britain was once proud of its civil rights. Even during WW2, when rights were partly suspended, few openly called for the introduction of a complete police state…yet here now in the UK, we see mediocre System msm mouthpieces openly calling for a system of secret informers, denunciation of neighbours and family members, authoritarian police presence on the streets and checking “papers”, and “volunteer co-workers” helping the State to keep the population repressed.

[Soviet “neighbourhood watch” civilian militia badge]

All that, notionally, for suppression of a virus which has (supposedly) killed about ONE in every FOUR THOUSAND people in the world (1 in 1,000 in the UK)…

A little Ostalgie?

Afternoon music

[Mill Colonnade, Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad), Czech Republic, Europe]

Late tweets

I caught a few minutes of Diane Abbott on Newsnight, still defending the migration-invasion. That stupid bitch must have been worth a million votes to the Conservative Party in 2019!

Laurence Fox evidently does not know his political **** from his geopolitical elbow. Controlled opposition, and pretty pathetic it is.

Late music

Deadhead MPs, An Occasional Series: The Karen Bradley Story

Karen Bradley is the Conservative Party MP for Staffordshire Moorlands, and has been since the constituency boundaries were changed for the 2010 General Election, making the seat a safe seat for the Conservatives. Her share of the vote increased from 45.2% in 2010 to 58.1% in 2017.

Unlike most MPs, Karen Bradley represents an area not far from where she was born. She went to a comprehensive school and then to Imperial College, where she graduated in Mathematics (B.Sc.).

There is little information about Karen Bradley’s family or parents. Her origins seem modest, at any rate.

Karen Bradley worked in tax for Deloitte and KPMG, for a total of 16 years; she also worked for 3 years as a consultant in the same field, but gave up and rejoined KPMG. I think that we can be sure that Karen Bradley does know about how to calculate tax.

Karen Bradley is married (husband’s occupation unknown to me); they have two children.

Upon election as MP in 2010, Karen Bradley joined the House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee (MPs on such committees get more pay). At least she would understand the tax questions.

There is no record that I have seen of her criticizing or even questioning the cruel system of “welfare” (social security) put in place by Iain Dunce Duncan Smith, the Jew “lord” Freud etc after 2010. On the contrary, she has always voted to make the poor (if unemployed, sick or disabled, at least) poorer.

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24725/karen_bradley/staffordshire_moorlands/votes#welfare

What a bitch.

The Germans have a saying: “put a beggar on a horse and he rides it to death”.

Karen Bradley became a Government Whip in 2012, a traditional home for mediocre MPs.

Karen Bradley was appointed junior minister at the Home Office in 2014 and then, in the turmoil following the 2015 General Election and the subsequent election of Theresa May as Conservative Party leader, she was appointed Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

It may be that Theresa May wanted to appoint women to senior posts.

MPs, like generals, need luck in their careers. I doubt that many, in 2010, would have predicted that Karen Bradley would go from not even being an MP in early 2010 to being a member of the Cabinet only six years later. She certainly had luck; however, the luck ran out:

During the cabinet reshuffle in 2018, Bradley was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland after the resignation of James Brokenshire due to ill health. Matt Hancock replaced her as Culture Secretary. In July 2018 she came under criticism in the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee for failing to take action on British government discrimination against former soldiers and police. Andrew Murrison challenged her on her account of what she had done, and she said she would write to him. Sylvia Hermon commented: “I wait and wait for letters.”[12]

[Wikipedia]

In September 2018 she was criticised for admitting in an interview for House magazine, a weekly publication for the Houses of Parliament, that she had not understood Northern Irish politics before being appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. “I didn’t understand things like when elections are fought, for example, in Northern Ireland – people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa,” she said.

[Wikipedia]

The newspapers were soon full of views about Karen Bradley, the vast majority very critical, using words such as “shamefully ignorant,”, “a slow learner”, “should resign”, “should not be in job” etc.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/12/karen-bradleys-shameful-ignorance-about-northern-ireland

Karen Bradley did not even understand that Northern Irish voters mostly vote on sectarian lines! Hopeless…

Attracting widespread and sustained criticism, Karen Bradley united the political classes in their belief that she was inept, ineffectual, gaffe-prone and completely out of her depth,” said Deirdre Heenan, professor of Social Policy at Ulster University.” [BBC]

Media appearances by Mrs Bradley became infrequent and brief.” [BBC]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-49085076

In the end, though, Karen Bradley’s loyalty to Theresa May and the Conservative Party (she has almost always voted with her party) saved her until Theresa May was replaced by Boris Johnson, who sacked her at once:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-49103711

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/karen-bradley-sacked-as-northern-ireland-secretary-by-boris-johnson-38343488.html

It is not hard to be Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Lazy half-Jew chancer Ed Vaizey blagged it for years. Karen Bradley did the same. It became clear, though, when she was appointed to Northern Ireland, that she had received at least one promotion too many. She was out of her depth in Cabinet. She had to go.

What now for Karen Bradley?

I was unsure as to whether Karen Bradley was enough of a deadhead to make it into the hallowed halls of my Deadhead MPs series. She might have been assessed as merely mediocre. However, her performance at the Northern Ireland Office has sealed her fate and provided her entry ticket to this blog series.

I imagine that we have seen the end of Karen Bradley as a member of the Government, whether under Boris Johnson or anyone else. However, she has a safe seat in the Staffordshire Moorlands, seems to be popular there and so will no doubt continue to be, as a constituency MP, merely mediocre most of the time, rather than a deadhead.

Notes

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

https://www.karenbradley.co.uk/

Update, 10 January 2025

Karen Bradley became almost invisible after she was sacked from Cabinet in 2019. A wise tactic, because it saved her from having her evident unsuitability for office being again underlined.

Having said that, Karen Bradley actually increased her vote share in 2019, to 64.5% (Labour 26.9%).

At the 2024 General Election, Karen Bradley’s vote share fell to 35.4% (Labour 32.6%, Reform 23.2%).

Next time? Hard to say. The Conservative Party is now in the trough of despair, but so is the Labour Party. Reform, though, is booming, and it may well be that, next time around, Reform will take votes from both Lab and Con, and thus put Mrs. Bradley out of a job. Open question.

The LibDems Elect A Leader

Introduction

I suppose that I should write a brief piece about the LibDems, now that they have elected a new leader. Somehow an underwhelming topic. First of all, the new leader.

Background

Jo Swinson MP was born in Scotland in 1980, went to a local state school and then to the LSE, graduating, it seems, aged only 20, and with a degree in management. She then worked briefly for a small enterprise in Yorkshire before becoming marketing manager with public relations duties for a local radio station in Hull, called Viking Radio.

Elected as MP in 2005 [LibDem, East Dunbartonshire], she was PPS to Nick Clegg, then a PUS, then a junior minister, all during the time of the “Con Coalition” of 2010-2015.

Jo Swinson voted for all or almost all of the Con Coalition policies, and has endorsed both zero hours contracts and “flexible working”. I am not a LibDem, but I have to say that Jo Swinson is really rather far from the LibDem traditional stance on such matters. She comes across as almost “libertarian” as far as worker rights are concerned.

The other candidate, Ed Davey, is not far from Jo Swinson, ideologically, though I should say that Davey was the more intelligent candidate of the two, so it makes sense for the LibDems to go for the less-intelligent and less-educated Jo Swinson…Davey was also the more experienced candidate, being about 15 years older and having been in Parliament for longer (since 1997, compared to Swinson’s 2005); Davey was also the only one to have served in the Cabinet.

Both Swinson and Davey lost their seats in 2015 (Davey to a Conservative, Swinson to the SNP), but were re-elected in the same constituencies in 2017. Both are “doing rather well” financially outside politics too: Davey is director or consultant to a number of companies, while Jo Swinson’s husband, Duncan Hames, an accountant (and also a LibDem MP from 2010 until 2015), now works for Transparency International, a well-funded NGO.

The LibDems’ situation and chances

2010 was surely the high point of LibDemmery. 57 MPs (out of 650) and a share in government: the Con Coalition. In 2005, under the egregious Charles Kennedy, the LibDems had won 62 seats out of 646, but were not in government.

The LibDems got 23% of the popular vote in 2010, but only about 9% of the MPs.

I believe that the LibDems could have demanded electoral reform from the Conservatives. They did not. They sold their chance for a few ministerial places, for official cars, red boxes, rank and flummery. In return they (Ed Davey and Jo Swinson among them) voted for every misconceived “Conservative” measure: the appalling regime of hounding of and cruelty to the poor disabled, sick and unemployed; the whole nonsense of “austerity”, which left the UK economy almost alone in advanced states in being mired in recession and/or low growth for years; the near-destruction of the armed services as an active and effective global force. For all that and more, for being doormats for the Conservatives, the LibDems were punished by the electorate.

In 2015, the LibDem vote slumped to 7.9% (8 MPs), then slumped again in 2017, to 7.4% (but, by the vagaries of the British electoral system, the LibDems ended up with 12 MPs).

In the 2019 UK European elections, the LibDems came second. I blogged about them then:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/05/29/eu-elections-2019-in-review-the-libdems/

but they failed fairly miserably at the Peterborough by-election a week or so later:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/06/07/peterborough-by-election-post-poll-analysis-and-thoughts/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/06/08/a-few-peterborough-afterthoughts-about-the-libdems/

I do not think that I have a lot to add to what I then wrote. My view is that there is and will be no “LibDem surge”, but what there might be is a LibDem gain from the decline of both of the other main System parties, as well as an electoral benefit arising from the Brexit Party surge —if it happens— in the South of England, mainly, where the LibDems are not infrequently in 2nd or close 3rd place.

If the Conservative Party is hit badly in the South, its voters split between Con and BP, the main beneficiary is likely to be not the Brexit Party, and not Labour (in most cases) but the LibDems. In those circumstances (and “Change UK” having died shortly after birth), it is not now impossible to imagine the LibDems again having a bloc of 50 MPs, something that I admit I thought, until very recently, would be impossible. The LibDems may not deserve it, but might in any event get it. In fact, thinking of —inter alia— Boris Johnson, that might just be the epitaph of our present age.

Notes

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democrats_(UK)#General_elections

Update, 12 December 2022

We now know that there was the 2019 General Election only 5 months after I wrote the above assessment. At that election, my initial judgment, rather than my later speculation, was vindicated: the LibDem vote increased from 7.4% to 11.55%, but the FPTP system resulted in the LibDems losing 1 MP. That MP was Jo Swinson, who exited political life, having led her party for less than 5 months (144 days).

After the departure of Jo Swinson, Ed Davey was elected leader.

The LibDems had 12 MPs after the 2017 General Election, which reduced to 11 after the 2019 General Election. However, since then the LibDems have had three by-election successes, taking their number to 14.

Update, 3 February 2026

Having seen the blog post get quite a few hits in the past days and weeks, time for an update.

Jo Swinson has disappeared in into well-deserved obscurity, and is now described on Wikipedia as a Scottish former politician: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Swinson#Later_career.

As for the LibDems, under Ed Davey they achieved their best results, in terms of seats, at GE 2024— 72 MPs. That despite the fact that their result in terms of vote-share was historically low, only 12.2%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democrats_(UK)#General_elections.

Ed Davey has become notorious for clowning around at fetes, rallies, conferences etc.

Having said that, and despite the LibDems having become near-irrelevant in policy terms, present opinion polling has them on or around 11%-15%, and surviving the coming likely massive cull of System party MPs. The polls seem to indicate that the slide of the Conservative Party (mainly) means that, as “dustbin” alternative, the LibDems might keep about 50-70 MPs, mostly in the southern half of the UK, at the likely GE 2029 or GE 2028, whichever. That might put them into the unaccustomed position of being the third or even second-largest bloc of MPs in the Commons, if Reform UK sweeps the board.

The Sliding Labour Party– What Next?

Some months ago I blogged about what I saw as the emerging political vacuum in England and Wales. My overall view now is the same but more so.

The 2015 General Election would have broken the mould of British politics had it been carried out under conditions other than the absurd First Past The Post system, more suited to the UK of the 1920s than that of the early 21st Century. The distribution of votes in Southern England illustrates this well enough, where the Conservative Party got about half the votes but won about 95% of the Westminster seats (a similar ration to that of the SNP in Scotland).

The UKIP insurgents famously won nearly 4 million votes UK-wide (mostly in England), some 12% of the vote, yet won no seat except that of Douglas Carswell, who is really a Conservative and was previously elected as one.

It can be asserted as simple fact that, in almost any given English seat, most of the voters do not get the MP or party that they want and for which they voted. Moreover, even the typical 30%-50% received by the winning candidate often reflects more the candidates that most voters did not want: voters vote tactically in the absence of a true choice being available.

FPTP has distorted British politics, giving the incumbent party in any given seat a great advantage and –far more– giving the main System parties as a whole a like electoral advantage and an anchor against sliding into ruination. All the same, when the forces become unstoppable, that slide does happen. It happened to the Liberal Party during and after the 1920s (replaced by Labour) and it happened to Scottish Labour after 2010. This illustrates it well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_National_Party#UK_General_Elections

Founded in 1934, the SNP often scored less than 1% of the vote in Scotland and had to wait until 1970 to get a single MP elected. Even in 2010, the SNP only got 19.9% of the Scottish vote and 6 MPs (out of 59). Then the tipping-point was reached and in 2015, its vote swelled to 50% and suddenly the SNP had (a typically-disproportionate FPTP result) 56 MPs (out of 59). Labour in Scotland was ruined and now (2017) is only the third party in the polls there (after the Conservatives!) and has only about 15% voter support.

Moving to Labour overall, we see that this is a party that has been living “off its hump” for a long time. It even managed to jettison almost every remnant of “socialism” in its policies and yet win elections under Tony Blair (via appealing to otherwise Conservative or Liberal Democrat voters in the South and Midlands). Labour, in effect, “sold its patrimony for a mess of pottage”. When one asks oneself “what does Labour stand for?”, nothing coherent comes to mind: a confusion of old history, trade unions, strike banners, post-1945 nationalization, 1960s-1970s managerial technocracy, that old humbug Michael Foot in his donkey jacket at the Cenotaph, then, from the mid-1990s, the mirage of Blairism (New World Order pro-Americanism meets the Israel Lobby meets managerial “socialism” meets Common Purpose careerism).

It is often said that Labour is now split into Corbynists and Blairites. Another fault line (closely following the first) might be said to be the pro-Israel lobby bloc and the generally anti-Zionist bloc (though most in both still feel the need to pay lip-service to the “holocaust” narrative and its faked history, non-existent “gas chambers”, the now-derided “six million” etc).

In fact, Labour is now not even two parties but three:

  • the remnant of the old trade union-oriented Labour Party, based around traditional and unthinkingly Labour communities, mostly in the North;
  • the Blairite-Brownite pro-Israel bloc, consisting largely of MPs and their staffs, together with careerists in other parts of the country. These are those who want “to win elections” by promising pie in the sky: socialism to socialists, aspiration to the voters of the suburbs, “diversity” to the ethnic minorities and the rainbow loonies, profits and low taxes to the Jewish Zionist potential donors;
  • the Corbyn  camp, which relates to a partly-imaginary Labour history from the 1930s through to the 1980s: “no pasaran!” Communist (and some syndicalist) propaganda from the Spanish Civil War; an airbrushed “anti-Nazi” and “anti-fascist” Second World War narrative; the conflicts of the 1970s such as that in Chile or those in parts of Central America; the Miners’ Strike of the 1980s (seen mainly through a London lens though). This is largely a bloc based around London, around the half-mad pseudo-socialist local council enclaves that became notorious in the 1980s: Islington, Camden, Haringey, Lambeth. It is the dominant bloc now and is supported by at least half of the ordinary Labour Party members and supporters.

Naturally, there is overlap here and there within that tripartite split. However, what has fallen away is not only consensus among the Labour members and activists, but more, the voters. Most Labour voters now are in that first group and are only voting Labour out of traditional allegiance. When you look at, say, Stoke Central, where the by-election is about to take place, you see that voting Labour, not in 1945 but in 1997, 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015 has not given the people anything. Unemployment high, immigration high, large numbers of ethnic minority voters (Labour’s most reliable pawns now); little hope. Why would people in Stoke Central vote Labour? The answer seems to be that they see little choice (those that will actually vote, being probably a minority of those eligible).

In Stoke Central, the only alternative to Labour is UKIP, which is not the sort of social-national party likely to rise to power. In fact, UKIP is not social-nationalist at all, though some of its supporters are. The fact that UKIP is even being entertained (and may yet win the Stoke Central seat) is mainly a sign of Labour’s decline and not UKIP’s strength.

The industrial proletariat has gone, almost entirely. The trade unions are just a feeble bureaucratic, rainbow-coalition, “anti-racist”, Common Purpose-contaminated joke. The people who are suffering under fake “austerity” (the effect of #NWO/#ZOG globalism) and who belong to the burgeoning “precariat” (unemployed, underemployed, disabled, 50+, zero-hours-exploited, minimum-wage-exploited) are not now Labour voters but non-voters, sometime UKIP voters, potential social-nationalist voters. The Labour MPs are now mainly careerists, pro-Israel drones and “what’s-in-it-for-me?” bastards. Stoke Central MP Tristram Hunt abandoned his seat and constituents because, as he said, “the offer [from the Victoria and Albert Museum] was too good to refuse.” £250,000 a year. That was his price.

When a social nationalist movement of the new type emerges, as it must, it will start to scoop up the poor, or poor and angry and frustrated, masses. Labour will then disappear. Already it seems likely that Labour will only get between 100-200 seats in the 2020 Parliament, whether numbers are reduced from 650 to 600 or not. Labour policies– pro mass immigration, “welcoming” “refugees” (not of course to the MPs’ homes and neighbourhoods but to those of the former Labour voters), pro the EU octopus etc, simply have no appeal to those left behind by a conspiratorial globalism and multiculturalism.

As yet, a suitable party does not exist. When it does exist, Labour, already weakened, will fall to dust.

Update, 24 August 2025

Well, scroll on 8.5 years and here we are. The 2017 Stoke Central by-election was won by Labour (from UKIP and Con), and the seat retained by Labour at the 2017 General Election, but lost to the Conservatives in 2019, only for Labour to win the seat back in 2024: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke-on-Trent_Central_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s.

In the bigger picture, of course, the Cons under Boris-idiot won in 2017, and won bigger in 2019, only to lose to Starmer-Labour in 2024, since which time Reform UK has arisen to prominence and, indeed, dominance. We now await events.