The Great ‘British’ Reset | Chris Davies
I have spent some time of late contemplating the direction of travel of the United Kingdom in the run up to the forthcoming local elections, which will be a timely assessment of the government’s popularity, coming as they do broadly half way through a 5 year term.
I summarise below 6 key issues that I believe will affect voting intentions in the forthcoming local elections.
Despite the “Ukraine bounce” and HM opposition’s ongoing vacillations around identity politics, my belief is the government is likely to lose 750 to 1,000 councillors, assuming Boris Johnson remains in office on polling day.
If he is forced to resign for misleading parliament, that figure will swell appreciably.
Illegal cross channel immigration
Amnesty international’s definition of an asylum seeker is:
a person who has left their country and is seeking protection from persecution and serious human rights violations in another country, but who hasn’t yet been legally recognized as a refugee and is waiting to receive a decision on their asylum claim.
As we have seen with the general public’s generosity in relation to women and children fleeing Ukraine, the United Kingdom does not lack empathy in times of humanitarian crisis. Illegal economic immigrants however, are not asylum seekers.
3 months into 2022 (theoretically 3 of the worst months of the year due to sea temperature) and over 4,500 illegal undocumented immigrants have arrived on the South Coast. 90% are fighting age men, miraculously all presenting as minors. This is almost a fivefold increase on the same period in 2021.
We have no idea who these people are, their country of origin, their affiliations or reasons for wishing to come to the United Kingdom. The people traffickers are winning this war, enriching themselves whilst leaving the UK insecure against potential terrorist attack.
2021 saw almost 30,000 illegal immigrants arrive via the English Channel. None were deported. Last year’s 30,000 could easily will be this year’s 90,000. The Home Office have stopped publishing daily figures. I wonder why. This is most definitely not “Take Back Control”.
This tweet from @right_side1 captures the feelings of many:
Illegal immigration affects all public services, not least education. The UK birth rate (1.61 children per family) is well below the sustainable level to maintain the indigenous population yet the population continues to grow. 84% of newborns have at least one parent born outside of the UK.
This is demographic shift on an unprecedented scale and whilst the British remain a tolerant nation as the “Homes for Ukraine” appeal has exemplified, without a change of tack around illegal immigration, (the Channel crossings being just one method of entering the country), the notion of traditional British values becoming ever more diluted will not play well with the 17.4M who voted Brexit.
The cost of living crisis
It is difficult to overstate the severity of the squeeze on income facing the electorate:
The energy price cap increased on 1st April 2022 from £1,280 to £1,970 for a typical household;
The Office for Budget Responsibility (“OBR”) estimates the energy price cap will rise to £2,800 in October 2022. Based on current wholesale energy prices, this may be a conservative estimate;
National Insurance increases by 1.25% from 6th April 2022. The Chancellor has gone ahead with the 1.25% rise in National Insurance. Despite the harmonisation of the threshold before contributions begin brought in line with income tax, millions of people face a real terms reduction in net pay, when the freezing of personal allowances is factored in;
Average Council Tax bills are now just under £2,000 per household;
Inflation is roaring, with the Consumer Price Index (“CPI”) at 6.2% and the Retail Price Index (“RPI”) (which is commonly used to determine price rises for broadband and mobile phone standing charges) at 8.2%. I believe “real inflation” is running at around 12.4% (double the CPI rate) and that is before rising domestic energy costs are factored in;
The government broke a 2019 election manifesto pledge to maintain the pensions “triple lock”. For those pensioners on fixed incomes, they face a year of sharply reducing net income with food and fuel costs both soaring;
Average wages, along with economic growth, are being outpaced by inflation (both are currently rising at 3.8%).
Dissatisfaction with the NHS
This week’s report on the catastrophic failings in the maternity unit of the Shrewsbury & Telford NHS Trust is disturbing for its unspeakable clinical incompetence.
A survey of a cross section of the British public revealed a steep underlying decline in support for the NHS, which despite over £3Bn a week of public money (and an eye watering 44% of all government spending by 2024), is failing on most metrics.
With waiting lists increasing by over 20,000 a week and face to face GP appointments now as rare as hen’s teeth, there is a growing sense that the NHS is not fit for purpose for the 21st century.
Successive governments have ramped up spending in the hope that money will compensate for the gross inefficiencies in the NHS. If a government with an 80 seat majority does not feel able to think about radical reform, expect things to get much worse across all public services, including education and transport.
The NHS is a microcosm of the malaise that is in danger of taking hold in Britain at a time when self belief and pride are in acutely short supply.
Toxic identity politics
Wokeism has metastasised throughout our institutions to such an extent that no politician appears willing to answer the question “What is a woman”? with the dictionary definition “adult human female”.
Despite repeated failures at the ballot box, the attempt by the hard left through the extremes of the LGBTQIA+ community (Stonewall for example) to assert that gender trumps immutable biological sex began as laughable.
From cancel culture on university campuses (where lecturers (including those who support trans rights who are now routinely cancelled) are 9:1 “left leaning”) to biological men competing in women’s sport, no one is laughing now.
Whilst as many as 400,000 UK citizens people now purport to be transsexual, less than 3,000 people from a population of 70M, are post operative.
If the sight of Lia Thomas smashing women’s college swimming records or Emily Bridges (supported by British Cycling) only excluded from competing as a woman cyclist by the global governing body’s intervention does not make conservatives sit up and take notice, this dangerous ideology will cancel half the population from competitive sport. Is this really what feminists fought for? I posit not.
Race baiting is also on the rise with terms such as “white privilege” being taught (illegally), notably in Brighton and at the International School of London as part of the US imported doctrine of Critical Race Theory.
Quite how Brexit voters in the red wall who switched to the Tories in 2019 will vote in May is a conundrum as difficult to predict as a politician answering “Can a woman have a penis”?
Brexit dividend is being squandered through inertia
Is “Take Back Control” capable of becoming a reality rather than a sound bite?
Despite most of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union transition arrangements over a year ago, aside from minor divergence in some trade agreements (many rolled over unchanged), many of our laws are still intertwined with those we inherited from our membership of the globalist establishment and are simply not for purpose for Brexit Britain.
Below is a salient example of the type of action the government should have taken on 1st February 2021 to mitigate the open sore of unchecked illegal immigration and the strain it is putting on crumbling public services. it is appropriate, yet again, to point out what needs to happen for
Leave the European Convention on Human Rights;
Legislate for a new Human Rights Act appropriate to the citizens of the United Kingdom;
Set up an offshore processing centre for all arrivals;
Automatic deportation within 7 days, without appeal, for all immigrants who have not pre-applied, arrive undocumented and who are rejected for leave to remain in the UK;
A go forward policy for legal immigration based on economic need, including points based entry system to be enforced rather than any form of virtue signalling to appease those who would prefer a return to unrestricted immigration. All legal immigrants must apply and have been accepted before entering the country;
British values must be embraced by all asylum seekers and legal immigrants and there must be community integration to facilitate harmony. Whilst the UK has a proud tradition of tolerance for diversity of colour, creed and faith, this must work both ways. Not only can there be no “no go” areas for any part of the British population, whilst we are increasingly secular, the largest religious groups in the population remain part of Christianity, including the largest element, the Church of England. Notwithstanding the teachings of other religions, we must not, will not adopt any other law than the law of this land, whether in statute or common law. Those immigrants whose beliefs cannot overcome this imperative must exercise their option to leave the country for another that aligns with their beliefs.
Jacob Rees-Mogg’s role as Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency must evidence that it is more than just a tokenistic sop to Tory Brexiteers. If the role has real teeth, it is time they were bared.
Removing VAT on domestic fuel was a key Brexit commitment. That has also not been honoured. In the midst an energy cost crisis that is lowering living standards to 1950s levels.
There are countless examples where deregulation and tax cuts combined would have helped to power the British economy through the challenges ahead. Rather like the tortuous process of leaving the European Union or unravelling “Partygate”, to date, Brexit has been the flattest of flat champagne.
Northern Ireland Hokey Cokey
The Conservative & Unionist Party is fundamentally misnomered.
It is anything but socially or fiscally conservative and with devolution failing Wales and Scotland, it is no surprise that it has left the Unionist community of Northern Ireland to their own fate.
The Northern Ireland Protocol is deader than a Dodo. The European Union has annexed a sovereign United Kingdom territory, under the false premise of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland, making trade with the mainland, by far its biggest import and export market, sclerotic, bureaucratic and politically incendiary.
The consequences are almost certain to be that Sinn Féin will become the largest party at Stormont, in advance of becoming powerful enough to form a government in Dáil Éireann in 2024.
A border poll on uniting Ireland edges ever closer as the United Kingdom faces the prospect of losing not just more Commonwealth countries to the Chinese Communist Party’s debt traps but one of the four pillars of our great Union.
It is time to trigger Article 16. No ifs no buts.
This government has already broken multiple manifesto commitments and the Tories’ reputation for sound economic management is withering on the vine with a “tax cutting” Chancellor who is raising taxes to an 80 year high in the lifetime of this parliament.
It all seems a very long time since the 2019 General Election delivered an 80 seat majority for the Tories, their largest for 32 years. The local elections will be a bellwether of the country’s judgement on their half time performance. How they react will shape British politics for generations to come.
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