You never leave the office if you are a farmer. And many feel the pressure of keeping their farms afloat in a way that normal people cannot comprehend. The farms have invariably been established by generations of toil and this is under threat like never before.
It was the BBC’s decision to desperately look for any opportunity to smear and discredit me, and other people who simply had a political perspective that they disagree with. Well now they’ve picked on Trump, and good luck with that!
Those 2024 promises were not made from an informed position and Reform is now struggling to face economic realities whilst maintaining the position that led to such a rapid rise in support and gave voters the sense that they were something different from the uniparty.
It doesn’t matter what you or anybody else might want, Nigel Farage will not share power with the Conservative Party, with any other party or with any other person within his own party. Anybody who does not bow down before him, he regards as an enemy to be destroyed.
The time has come to gently say to Jenrick, Rees-Mogg, Braverman, Patel, Francois and Duncan-Smith that their selfless efforts have been unsuccessful, the patient cannot be artificially kept alive, it is time to accept it with dignity and to let it go with grace.
Farage continues to boast that he will destroy the Conservative Party, yet continues to seek to subsume significant components of it. All of them are those careerists who abound throughout Parliament, who the electorate increasingly recognise and regard with contempt.
The Conservative Party has to decide if it is going to be a servant to voters and restore core conservative values or if it is going to opt to continue along the path of social democracy in search of a constantly shrinking political centre.
This is not a liberal party that stands for free thinking or expression. This is quite probably the most authoritarian party in recent British political history – despite what it might claim, it doesn’t even tolerate free speech among its own volunteers and candidates.
There are many Arab Muslims living in peace in Israel. There are also Arab jews living in peace in Bahrain and the UAE. This is not a war between Jews and Muslims.
To the voter the message is clear: the party has learnt nothing. It still cannot be trusted to deliver what voters, supporters and members expect it to deliver. It remains internally riven by an ideological divide.
Under pressure from many of his MPs, Starmer was forced into a humiliating U-turn on his welfare proposals, which will necessitate vast tax increases. Somehow this escaped anything like the level of media scrutiny that so significant a development deserved.
Ben Habib and Rupert Lowe, like me, are natural conservatives. They would be the first to say that there should be no need to UKIP, Reform, Advance UK or Restore Britain. If we had an effective Conservative Party that remained committed to its core values then there would be no need for any of this.
We didn’t gather to escape from Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner, Zia Yusuf, Nigel Farage, Sadiq Khan and Keir Starmer, we gathered to focus on them and to freely vent the true depths of our frustrations and anxieties at what is being foisted upon us. We met to talk about what we hoped for and yearned for.
He is destroying people with whom he should be working, because it is more important to him personally to win than it is to do what is right and save the nation.
We should remind ourselves that Reform’s policies are all dictated down from the top – there is no democratic process. None of this suggests illegality but it certainly demonstrates the conflict of interest Reform faces.