Blowing in the wind

Why did I vote Reform? Well, I promise you it wasn’t to deliberately entice more ridiculousness from the left-leaning ‘maledicts’, who never fail to inspire juicy blog material, but it has turned out to be a fruitful unintended consequence. 

According to them, Reform, despite having no track record in local government, is incompetent and morally bankrupt at – er – local government. Other political parties, who have presided over material mayhem and maladministration for millennia are, we’re told, more deserving of our vote. Let’s examine that: Labour in Birmingham shovelled shedloads of rats (rodents, not the striking binmen) onto residential streets; Labour-led Liverpool put a third ‘r’ into the concept of ‘corrruption’; Labour’s Haringey, Lambeth and Newham accumulated complaints as keenly as uncollected waste attracts rats. And what do Rochdale, Oldham and Telford Councils have in common? Yup, they’re all Labour-controlled and sacrifice white working-class girls on the altar of multiculturalism. We just can’t get away from rats, can we (with apologies to Simplicidentata everywhere).

Then there’s the Greens who, in Brighton, banned weed killer to nurture Triffids and presided over one of the lowest recycling rates in England. Furthermore, it was the Greens who jumped into bed with the Lib Dems in Rutland to raise council tax to the highest level in the land. The Lib Dems, however, bear sole responsibility for bankrupting Woking – financially and aesthetically. Slam dunk.

The maledicts try again, this time with accusations of Farage being responsible for Brexit, which makes him and Reform the bad guys. Deary deary me. The people who are voting Reform in this election probably voted for Brexit in 2016 and 2019. They know that the failure to reap Brexit benefits lies squarely at the door of the would-be Brexit blockers who put ideology, cowardice and treason above the interests of Blighty and democracy. The voters vote for Nige because he’s Mr Brexit, not despite it. I rest my case.

Here comes the rearguard action with screams that Reform is far right and racist, and people who vote for them are far right and racist (and thick). If it’s far right and racist to be concerned about unknown numbers of unidentifiable, fighting-age, culturally alien males illegally entering our country, then count me in, thick ’n’ all. On a related dog-whistle topic – as the reprehensible Lucy Powell MP, Minister for Grooming, might say – the newly elected Reform Mayor, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, suggested that asylum seekers should be housed in tents, not hotels. The irony of this statement is that asylum seekers in France shelter in tents, and British bleedin’ hearts keep telling us we should be more like France, an anathema to Reform! Methinks Dame Andrea was ’avin’ a larff, God bless her. Open and shut case.

In desperation, lefties then bombard us with the gambit that Reform is run by rich people, and it’s rich people who are the problem, not illegal immigrants. Guess what? Most people don’t have an issue with ‘rich’ people, because they know (common sense, innit) that it’s rich people who create jobs, pay mega-taxes even if they avoid some, fund charities and, in the case of Reform, listen to voters, empathise with them and don’t insult them, ignore them or incarcerate them. Case closed.

I voted Reform on Thursday for kinda some of the above reasons and more besides. I didn’t do it lightly, but with hindsight I made the right decision for me, my community and the country. I had a choice of two candidates from a list of two Tories, two Labour, two Lib Dems, two Greens and two Reformers.

Bucks has been Tory-controlled for as long as I’ve lived here. They’re not perfect and I’ve had my run-ins, but on the whole they’re competently run. My local councillors have always been Tories and they’ve all been fine. There were some questions asked and accusations levied against the probity of one particular councillor, but she had one of those fun and feisty personalities I find appealing. More pertinently, her critic-in-chief turned out to have the intellect and integrity of a desiccating slug (with apologies to gastropod molluscs everywhere) so she never fell out of my good books. Back to the present, I would have voted for the current incumbent Tory, but a recent boundary change meant he was assigned to another ward, and the two Tory candidates here I didn’t know, so I didn’t commit to them at the outset.

The Labour guys didn’t get a look in. I didn’t read their literature or listen to their apologists. They are personae non grata. Why? Because Starmer and Rayner – Labour’s very own Mickey and Mallory Knox (Natural Born Killers) – delayed elections in many areas to try and slow the advance of Reform. A party that ditches democracy for diktat does not deserve to be indulged, so I obliged and crossed Labour off my list.

Turning to the Greens, again I didn’t know either of the candidates. I do know several other Greens around here and they’re intelligent, genuine, likeable chaps, even if I don’t agree with everything they say. I have voted Green in the past and even campaigned for one of them. Call me gullible! I soon learned that Greens being kind to animals doesn’t preclude them from being viciously unkind to humans. As far as my voting’s concerned, once bitten by a venomous snake (with apologies to ectothermic amniote vertebrates everywhere) twice shy, and this time I didn’t vote for the Triffid lovers.

I’ve voted for local Lib Dems in the past and seriously considered voting for one this time, a sound, capable, engaging gentleman. The problem was, every time I thought about voting for him, I recalled Ed Davey falling off his paddleboard into Lake Windermere during last year’s General Election campaign, when I fervently prayed for a sudden and prolonged sewage spill right then, right there. I just can’t risk encouraging this lunatic to take over the ruins of the asylum, so off the list went the local Lib Dem.

Which left me with a choice between Tory and Reform. What a dilemma! Do I endorse and reward an acceptable local track record or send a message to the Tory hierarchy that they should decide on their future national direction before I trust them ever again. Given the voting history and demographics of this particular part of Bucks, I was convinced that either the Tories or the Lib Dems would be victorious, perhaps one of each, and a vote for Reform wouldn’t make a jot of difference to the result, but the more of us who protested by voting for Reform, the more likely Kemi would find some fire for her belly. On the other hand, if I vote Reform, I’m tacitly endorsing the exiling from the party of Rupert Lowe MP and former co-deputy leader Ben Habib about which I’m very uncomfortable. And if I vote Reform, I might disgust some people, but that doesn’t worry me. If JK Rowling can handle her high-profile assassins, I can certainly rise above my dung-beetle detractors (with apologies to Scarabaeidae everywhere). Reform it is then. Cross here. Cross there. Job done.

As it happens, the two Tories were elected and the two Reformers came third and fourth, not too far behind. My voting strategy has worked thus far. Yeehaw. However, in the neighbouring ward, one of the seats went to a Tory, the other to a Reformer who was only a paper candidate to give Reform a presence and as a vehicle for the disenchanted and disenfranchised to express their frustration. She never intended or wanted to win. But she has. Will she give it her best shot, resign immediately, or do the job half-cock? I think this uncertainty is replicated throughout the country – Reform never expected to win so many seats. Still, if they don’t represent the people adequately, they’ll pay for it at the next ballot box, as the Tories did last July and both Labour and Tory have done this time. It’s how democracy works.

Just as Starmer promises to go further and faster with his measures that the electorate just told him they detest, and Lucy Powell continues to downplay the failed aspects of multiculturalism that the electorate have just told her are of tantamount importance, the Labour candidate for my neighbouring ward spent his (poorly written) Facebook post lambasting the successful Reform candidate for not knocking on doors or attending the count. He didn’t mention the irony of someone who didn’t care and hadn’t tried attracting a helluva lot more votes than someone (him) who’s apparently hard-working, conscientious and possibly kind to animals (yeah, right, I’ve been there before). Someone please send these brainless jellyfish (with apologies to subphylum Medusozoa everywhere) to the Emerald City for some grey matter. Hearts and courage wouldn’t go amiss either.

While assessing my options for how best to vote, I was reminded of several idiosyncrasies that periodically put their heads above the parapet to entice me into pursuing them down their respective but interconnected rabbit holes. First, life is not a quadratic equation; there is always more than one unknown. Second, in the case of two interdependent variables, there is a limit to the precision with which each can be simultaneously known, because the act of evaluating one can impact the value of the other (Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle). Third, an object can exist contemporaneously in two incongruous states, providing it is not observed (Schrödinger's cat). What connects all three is the fundamental principle of physics, and indeed metaphysics, that matter is not ‘exact’ but a fluctuation of probability in space and time.

So why did I vote Reform? As illustrated (or at least that was my intent) by the preceding paragraph, I’m not 100% sure. The best answer I can proffer is a deep-seated moral compass, women’s intuition and bloody mindedness. Add them together, and you get 42.