So Reform party PLC are doing pretty well in the polls, with it possible they may overtake the Tories in terms of votes, although they’ll likely be way behind when it comes to seats. Its likely one of two things will happen to the Tories post-election. They take a look at the drumming they get and shift back towards the centre right. Or, and I suspect this is the more likely one, they’ll move further to the right to the point where they are essentially on par with Reform. Whom they may eventually merge with (although, as I discussed in a prior post, this might not make either party any more electable).
So that means it might be worth looking at the reform manifesto. And oh boy is it bonkers. Its hard to fathom how dumb it is. Firstly, Farage proposes to stop the boats by turning them around and sailing them back to France….or to put that more accurately he proposes to invade France. As that’s essentially what sailing warships into French territorial waters amounts too. After all if the UK can do that, what’s to stop the French simply loading the migrants onto a French warship, sailing into Dover and offloading them?
Well the fact that the French don’t need too. They hold all the cards. There’s currently a number of arrangements with the French, meaning they’ll accept people back in certain situations, but also that UK border posts are on the continent while the French ones are in the UK. All the French would need to do is withdraw from these arrangements, refuse to take back anyone and move the UK border posts back across the channel. Now any migrants looking to get to the UK don’t need the services of people smugglers, or to come over in small boats. They just get on a ferry, train or plane and travel to the UK and become the UK’s problem. But I suppose Farage is technically right in that it would stop the boats.
They also go for the usual trans bashing, seemingly unaware that some people are just born that way (so what are they supposed to do? Flip a coin?). And that teachers in schools shouldn’t respond to gender questions….so kids will be left under impression that babies are delivered by a stork. Meaning they find out about all this from the other kids behind the bike sheds, or on Tik-Tok. Ya, that’s sounds better! And we’ll only teach them stuff that’s pro-British…so you’ll be skipping about 300 years of history and claiming we were all on holiday tea was served, check with India. And no the UK broke up with the USA, not the other way around. And the Irish potato famine, never happened, it was an extreme dieting trend that got out of control.
They also want to bring back Christmas (and when did it go away?) and make St George’s day a national holiday. Well firstly, they are forgetting about Scotland, Wales and NI. Secondly, you are proposing to make a national holiday celebrating a migrant from Turkey…wasn’t it Farage who was saying a hundred million Turks were coming to the UK? Now he wants to have a national holiday celebrating them. Well he’s changed his tune!
Of course this is all window dressing to keep the gammon’s happy. The real policy that the dark money funding Reform want are a series of massive unfunded tax cuts and spending commitments, which would mostly benefits the better off. Its estimated that all of these pledges would amount to £140 billion in unfunded spending and tax cuts. Making Liz Truss and Kwasikaze look like Ebeneezer Scrooge.
So how are they going to pay for them? Well Ben hollowing mad Habib has the answers. Firstly, he said that net zero is going to cost the UK $1.7 trillion. Which is a misreading of a government report, relating to GLOBAL investments in net zero (i.e. government & private money, but mostly the latter, for the whole planet). The figure for the UK is closer to £10 billion of investments at present potentially rising to £50 billion by end of this decade.
So Reform’s master plan is to scrap net zero and we get £10-50 billion. Well aside from the obvious (where does the remaining £130-90 billion come from?), that’s mostly private money being spent by company’s and individuals on wind farms, solar panels, upgrades to the grid, installing heat pumps, etc. You think everyone’s going to be so overjoyed with scrapping net zero they are voluntarily going to give the government £50 billion a year? No they’ll spent it on something else, or spent it on renenwables anyway (as there is a business case for that in certain situations).
What are they going to do, ban renewables? Have thugs go around and start charging people protection for driving a Tesla? Which just means nobody will invest in the UK energy grid and it will collapse. So rolling black outs like in South Africa and the UK hugely dependant on France and Norway for its energy (hence why we won’t be sending any migrants back to France for fear they’ll turn off the power).
And its worth remembering the whole point of acting on climate change is that its going to be cheaper to do something about it now than deal with the consequences later (heat waves, floods, sea level rise, climate zones moving, etc.). Plus, the best way of mitigating climate change is energy efficiency which saves money, by reducing energy consumption. So, far from giving the UK £50 billion a year, it will cost the country vastly more in the long term.
Reform also wants to abolish the home office. You know the people who issue passports and driving licenses….and stop migrants sneaking into the country. While I’ll admit they are doing kind of a crap job right now (to be blunt, the home office doesn’t know its ar$e from its elbow). But I’m confused, are Reform pro-migration or anti-migration? What are they going to do, build a wall around the UK, not let anyone enter or leave and expect the EU to pay for it? I mean at this rate they’ll saying we can fill the funding gap by robbing banks…..
…funnily enough, that’s the next proposal. The major banks have deposited many hundreds of billions with the bank of England as a stabilisation mechanism in case of liquidity problems. The BoE pays them interest on these deposits each year and yes that amounts to tens of billions outgoing (on the other hand, the BoE uses those deposits as collateral against its own borrowing, so its getting something back in return). So reform’s plan is to basically steal this money. Because I’m sure the banks won’t mind. Banks are famously well known to be okay with being robbed.
At the risk of sounding like George Bailey from its a wonderful life, that’s not the bank’s money. Its OUR money, by which I mean anyone who has an account with a UK bank. The likely response of the banks is to have their lawyers find a way to get their money back and withdraw these deposits from the BoE accounts (risking the stability of the whole financial system). Or pass those extra costs on to bank customers (so high mortgage rates, lower deposit interest rates, higher banking fees, etc.).
So basically, Habib is proposing a bank tax on every UK citizen. How popular do you think that’s going to be? And it seems strange that they are happy to try and pinch money off deposit holders, but they ignore the more obvious ways of getting money off the banks, a financial transaction tax on hedge funds, a windfall tax on bankers bonuses or cracking down on non-dom tax dodgers. I wonder why? Possibly because those are the sort of people who are funding Reform!
I could go on, but I think you get the message. And I’ve not even got onto the bit where Farage praises Putin and say’s the Ukraine invasion was justified. Nor how many of his candidates have said some rather racist things, or are good pals with known fascists. What reform shows is three things. Firstly, if you thought the Tories were a bit bonkers, Reform are much worse.
Secondly, It shows that the right are out of ideas. The only card they have left to play is to fight endless culture wars and bash some convenient scapegoat. And in many cases this is being done for the sole reason of keeping the public distracted, while their dark money sponsors milk the country dry.
And the third point is that there is no such thing as a far right libertarian, or a conservative libertarian. Its just fascism, or someone transitioning from libertarian to fascist. If you are a libertarian and you believe in as little government as possible, then you must also believe in no migration controls (agov’mint agent asking to see your papers and making sure they are in order), people should be able to come and go as they please, employers should be able to hire whoever they like (without the gov’mint looking over their shoulder). You must also believe that if a woman wants an abortion, that’s nobody’s business but her’s. And trans people can do whatever they like. Its nobody’s business where they go to the bathroom (if you are offended or uncomfortable with that, that’s your problem).
And you must also believe that government’s shouldn’t be giving handouts, such as publicly funded pensions, free TV licences, winter heating allowance and free medical care to old people. Sure, cut that and a some pensioners will literally starve and/or freeze to death (much as happened to millions of Irish during the famine), but that’s not the business of government.
Meanwhile as a conservative you want a government that is so massively authoritarian its allowed to not only come into your home, but go up the stairs and tell consenting adults want they can do in private. A government that is centrally planned by a despotic leader. A government that considers the womb of every woman government property, along with women’s medical data (oh, and ironically, infant mortality is now up in some states with abortion bans, so much for protecting the unborn!). And conservatives want government which practices discrimination against people for their religious views, or skin colour or gender. These are incompatible beliefs.
Yes there was a time when these two factions seemed to co-exist. But only because both sides ignored their principles. Reagan spent like a sailor on shore leave, expanded the government, put up taxes, racked up a massive deficit, gave weapons to the Taliban, Iran and Saddam, oh and he helped get assault weapons banned. While Thatcher took advantage of an oil boom to give lots of money to yuppies (at the expense of blue collar workers), while building ties with Europe and largely ignored the social conservative side of the equation. But that was then, this is now.
Any politician trying to sell you on this far right libertarianism concept is either A) a fascist pretending to be a libertarian, because they know the whole nazi thing is a bit of a turn off. Or B) a libertarian who know’s he’s ideas aren’t particularly popular, but also knows bigots aren’t that bright and can be easily conned. And for the record, 9 times out of 10 its usually A). I’ll let you decide which category Reform and Farage fit into.
daryanenergyblog 