This morning, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves delivered her pre-budget statement ahead of the Autumn Budget, scheduled for 26th November.
Despite mounting welfare costs, Reeves offered no meaningful solutions — only strong hints that taxes will rise, paired with blame deflected onto everything and everyone except the government itself.
It’s no surprise, then, that Nigel Farage rushed out a bold announcement promising welfare cuts if Reform wins the next general election yesterday, while Tory leader Kemi Badenoch quickly followed Reeves with an online broadcast that, in substance, amounted to much the same.
As the government flounders, it seems poised to announce little of substance of savings on benefits or public services — yet millions already trapped in a financial vice not of their own making will see the cost of living rise again, working harder for ever-diminishing returns.
The Tories — who helped engineer the current crisis over their 14-year tenure up to summer 2024 — and Reform — now visibly undergoing their own establishmentisation makeover — aren’t offering help to people either. They’re offering help to the economy.
And that’s precisely where the problems began for those whose lives revolve around the benefits system today.
There are hard truths here. Truths that many untouched by poverty still find just a little too uncomfortable to believe.
There will always be people who are:
• Out of work for valid reasons
• Unable to work due to illness, disability, or caring responsibilities
But there are also many people who want to work and are able to work — yet still can’t. Why? Because:
• They can’t find jobs that match their experience
• They can’t find roles that fit their qualifications
• They simply don’t “fit” the mould employers are looking for
It’s easy to assume that anyone who wants a job can get one — any job, at any time. And it’s just as easy to judge those who don’t take “any job” as lazy, entitled, or abusing the benefits system.
But those who make these judgments often haven’t experienced what it’s like to be unemployed and dependent on state support.
The Reality of Benefits
Let’s be clear: basic benefits are not enough to live on.
We’re surrounded by comforting myths — stories we rarely question unless we’re forced to confront the truth. One of the most dangerous myths is that the National Minimum Wage is enough to live on independently.
• Minimum Wage: £12.21/hour. For a 40-hour week, that’s about £2,116.40/month
• Actual cost of living: To live independently, a single person likely needs £16–£17/hour — around £2,773.33/month
That’s a shortfall of over £600/month, even for someone working full-time on minimum wage.
The Impossible Choice
Now imagine you’re unemployed, with no savings or support, and your only option is to claim £628.10/month. What do you do?
• Take a job that still doesn’t cover your basic needs?
• Or claim every benefit you can, just to survive?
For many, working full-time in a low-paid job — often under poor conditions and public judgment — while still needing benefits just doesn’t make sense.
The Myth of the “Benefits Culture”
The idea that claiming benefits is an easy ride is a myth. Genuine claimants are treated the same as those gaming the system. The rules are rigid, often making it harder — not easier — to find meaningful work.
Pushing people into low-paid jobs that still leave them reliant on benefits, food banks, or debt might reduce one type of welfare cost. But it could as easily increase the others — through the problems that an ill-considered attempt to push everyone into ‘work’ will create, like mental health issues, workplace burnout, and long-term poverty.
The AI Displacement Problem
A growing wave of joblessness is being driven not by lack of talent, but by the unnecessary and unchecked takeover of roles by artificial intelligence.
Skilled, experienced professionals — once vital to their industries — are being sidelined by automation that prioritizes cost-cutting over human value.
As more capable workers are pushed into the job queue, many will find themselves forced to claim benefits, not because they lack ability, but because the system no longer has space for them.
The Bigger Problem
Most people on benefits aren’t lazy — they’re surviving.
When life becomes a daily struggle, the benefits system can feel like the only option.
But simply cutting benefits without creating real alternatives — like jobs that pay enough to live on — risks pushing thousands into homelessness and crisis.
The Psychology of Work and Pay
Most people don’t need prestige — they need security.
If lower-paid or less challenging jobs guaranteed that workers could meet all their financial obligations and live with dignity, many would take them without hesitation.
The problem isn’t the work itself — it’s that the pay doesn’t match the cost of living.
When people know they can cover rent, bills, food, and essentials every month, they’re far more willing to contribute, even in roles that society undervalues.
What Needs to Change
We can’t fix the benefits system without fixing the economic system that creates the need for it.
If we want fewer people on benefits, we must:
• Build an economy where full-time work pays enough to live on — without top-ups
• Stop supporting a system that enriches a few by impoverishing the many.
Until the government legislates for a fairer system — one where the lowest-paid can live independently on a full day’s work — poverty will persist.
But it will take something very special to clear up the mess they’ve created
I recently heard it said that politicians are all psychopaths. It may have been in the script of some comedy-based show or drama I was watching. But the sentiment and what it reminded me of from my own experience of being in politics and working with many different politicians really struck home.
Whilst we can be certain that not all politicians are psychopaths, the evidence of our own eyes certainly suggests that the Government is under the control of either psychopaths, people with psychopathic tendencies or people who certainly behave like them; for the simple reason that no matter what the messaging from government and the establishment may say, the impact and delivery of both governance and policy is not focused upon what’s good for the electorate and our communities in any kind of good or human way.
However, before running away with the conclusion that every well known name we hear on the news is a psycho, it might be a better idea to consider the reality that things are more likely to have turned to complete shit, because of the way that the politicians we have behave so badly, selfishly and inconsiderately, and because of the character flaws and traits they typically have in common between them, that are impacting what they do and therefore us, in so many different ways.
Who really wants to be a politician and why?
This is a question that we should all be asking ourselves, a lot more frequently than we do.
The answer – when we really think about this and consider the real mechanics of how the political system puts its people onto the list of candidates on our ballot papers at election time – will soon begin to reveal many of the answers, not only to this, but to many other pressing questions about the way the U.K. is being run, that we all need to know.
Before going further, I will insert the caveat, that in my own experience, many people put themselves forward to become political party candidates with what we might all agree as being the best of intentions.
But that’s as far as any default allowance should ever go.
As even the best intentions can only really be considered for what they are, once we look at each candidate and ask the question ‘The best of intentions for who?’
Who politicians really serve is also an important and very timely question. Because if the current polls and polling are to be believed, the benches of our parliament and councils up and down the UK will soon be filled with people who’ve never been politicians before.
People who have nonetheless stepped up and become candidates for some political party like Reform, armed only with what for many of them will be the sincere belief that they will be the person to break the downward trend of everything we know and once elected will get things done.
But what things will they get done? And the things they aim to achieve will be good for who?
Beliefs built without foundation quickly get blown away then replaced
Few of those who are newbies to politics realise that there is a whole new set of rules at work for anyone and everyone to follow and work with in frontline or elected politics, just as soon as they have walked through the electoral door to an electoral ‘seat’.
By newbies I mean anyone who hasn’t personally held an elected office of any kind, at any level – whether they’ve never been politically active before, been on a pathway, been a lobby journalist or even an activist or commentator of some kind who has racked up millions of likes and followers on YouTube, because their words connect with people in some way.
If any candidate ‘won’ a ‘seat’ by being on a party ticket – no matter which party ticket they aligned their name with to get there, they will be on their own, rejected and probably on their way straight back out of the door, if they don’t do whatever they are told and say yes to whoever seems to be running things, whether they agree with it or not, from the moment the euphoria of ‘their’ election has died down.
Yes, finding common ground with other newbies and giving themselves a group voice can and will give them influence over some things.
But those things won’t be anything that will really change the things that really need to be changed in the way most entrants to politics sincerely intended, before they walked through the ‘elected’ door.
Most newbies, if not all, will find themselves facing a rather stark and deflating reality. That they have the choice of becoming part of the machine. Or at best to annoy their so-called political colleagues by attempting to do what is actually the right thing for the people who elected them and use their own voice – as they were elected to do so. Leaving them with very little they can do, when as a public representative, they should have been able to do so much.
The choice is rarely one that’s thought through consciously by those who have ‘arrived’. And that’s where many of the real problems with this mess of a political system begin.
Politics today is addictive for those foolish enough to believe the spin
Do ask yourself how many elected politicians you see, at any level, who resign the party whip at any point in a council or parliamentary term, and don’t immediately ‘walk the floor’ to join another party.
The reality is that very few do. And of those that do, most will have themselves been pushed out or in all likelihood found themselves questioning the whole purpose of politics; the electoral system and what being there or being part of it is really for – once they have seen the truth of how things really work.
The people who stay or try to move to another party, aren’t people who are there to represent you or I.
Being ‘in it to win it’, ‘staying in the tent’, or anything along those lines is a self serving myth that gives unscrupulous and ambitious politicians the excuse that they are ‘keeping their powder dry’ until it’s the right time – or rather when they get to the top. By which time they will of course no longer recognise any such need.
We have a party political and electoral system that guarantees the top-down functionality that minimises our influence
Politics in the UK isn’t the place for people who have the skills, experience and ability to change the things that need to be changed in this Country, today.
The party and electoral system that we have currently combine to ensure we either don’t get the right people in the majority of elected roles. Or that they are rejected by the party that put them there when there is even the smallest hint that we do.
The reality that any politician joining parliament, a council or entering any elected government role faces, is that the only politicians who are making meaningful decisions – or getting in the way of those that could stop people being harmed in some way, are those who are right at the very top of the top-down hierarchy that keeps them insulated from what people like you and me need.
Some truths about U.K. politics and our Electoral system, today
We say we have a democracy in the UK. Many believe that we do.
But we don’t choose the candidates on a ballot paper that we choose from.
We don’t choose the politicians who take key jobs in councils, in parliament or those who become mayors.
When we’ve voted and the votes have been counted, that’s the last moment that anything we have to say about anything will count or have meaning for anyone. Right up until the moment that the next election is called.
The system works and is controlled by the political parties who are all running in very similar ways to each other, by people with the same motives and same wishes to make it big in politics and be seen to be ‘the one’ who is in charge.
The only people who become political candidates, get elected, then stay, acquiesce, take part and contribute to what is a supposedly democratic form of government today by doing exactly whatever they are told, are yes men and yes women.
People who do and can only do well because they are on message and turn a blind eye to the needs of the people who put them there.
These people aren’t leaders or capable of leadership.
They are fools who live in fear of losing the roles that once elected they quickly perceive as being rightfully theirs.
All the time they are blind and deaf to the true responsibilities of what being a public representative demands them to be.
A downward system that takes everything downward as it keeps going down
The so-called leaders that we believe we currently have are just the latest incumbents on an intergenerational chain of weak, yes-men/yes-women politicians who have continuously said yes until they have found themselves right at the top.
Yet they can only maintain the pretence of leadership by saying yes to any advisor or specialist who tells them what to do, because they are not used to saying, meaning and being prepared to risk everything for themselves by putting those they represent first by saying no.
These people should never possess the power and responsibility they have, as they continually harm others by obsessively running from anything they believe will cause harm to themselves and the roles they now have.
This is not how leadership works. This is not how real change gets done.
These people are out of their depth. They have little or no view of real life or how the world works beyond their own perspective.
The politicians we have today have typically been corrupted by the power and influence that comes from having a role where they confuse having a microphone or camera rammed in their face, from the moment they are elected, as being only because they have been elected. Rather than it being because they are just the latest person to have been elected by voters or appointed by their political piers to carry out a particular role which commands public and media interest, no matter who they are.
Control, feeling in control, being seen to be in control, demonstrating that they are in control. These are the only things that are important to the would-be leaders we have in politics who cannot lead even themselves in any way.
Everyone and everything are a risk or threat to their position, once they reach the top.
So, they surround themselves with politicians who are even weaker and more inept or incompetent than they are.
The even weaker versions of themselves take over from them when their moment in the sun is done.
Then the process of replacing the weak with the even weaker begins all over again.
Fear and Power are a very dangerous mix
These politicians are people just like you and me.
But instead of being different in the ways that their position would make many of us expect, they are fearful in ways that everyday people fail to understand.
The level of fear of loss today’s political class have for themselves also makes them vulnerable to the whims and influence of those they look up to.
Much like an orphan meeting the parent that they never believed it possible to have, being certain that they will be protected in ways that will make them invulnerable against anything bad that they feel might otherwise lay in store.
The reality of our ‘leaders’
Some of those who have stepped into politics and made it to the political equivalent of the C suite without being rejected, spat out, sidelined or becoming victim to the many temptations that befall so many who have found themselves in these positions, and fallen into the trap of believing it was something special about themselves, began the process by being genuine in their desire to do something good.
However, this certainly wasn’t the case with them all.
There are many who have ended up on this gravy train, that has made life so intolerably bad for people who we all pass by in the streets each and every day, for no better reason than they wanted the job and the glory they believed it would give them. Probably from an early age.
But they also had no concept of what political influence can and should enable good public representatives to do.
They therefore have no passion for the responsibility they have and they lack the talent, skill and ability that responsibility to others also requires; that politics done for all the right reason inevitably always involves.
People who could be good politicians and have the selflessness and sense of public service that change requires, are either put off by what they discern as being no better than a circus of egos. Or they soon find out once they have stepped inside the system, that politics in the UK is no better than a fun house at a run-down traveling fair creating irreparable damage to every bit of ground it stands on.
The people who enter and stay in politics today and the people who really think they and only they can make the difference that none of the people they have watched on TV have managed so far, are the fools that have made the UK political system a fool’s paradise where those within believe that they really do know better than anyone else, and that their actions have no real life consequences for us all, beyond the immediate focus of whatever they have been led to believe they are doing.
The truth is that anyone who can say yes, look and sound the part, and not think twice to do whatever is demanded of them, to gain whatever they have been promised as the reward, will fit right into the political machine that exists in the UK today.
The political party or apparent political leaning of whatever the group or movement out in front of everyone else might be called doesn’t matter in any way.
The people who thrive in this system, at the cost of everyone they are supposed to represent, are fundamentally the same.
Uk Politics today is a game for fools, run by fools, that benefits only fools, and treats everyone outside of politics as if they are the fools.
And we need a completely new Establishment to run and deliver everything too
Your politics, religion, ideas, background, age, education or anything else that has, can or will be used to divide us, does not matter when it comes to recognising that for every one of us, there are parts of life that simply don’t work in the UK, anymore.
Whether we are being affected and impacted directly, or the problems we recognise are just something happening to other people or different communities that we can somehow see, we all know that things aren’t working as they should. And the horrible truth is that for some of us, nothing is working at all.
We could go down the rabbit hole of trying to identify, apportion blame and then demand that politicians and government change whatever we identify as needing to be changed. Or, that they step aside so that they can be replaced by whoever we believe will do whatever it is that they either cannot or are choosing not to do.
Indeed, many are doing just that, and already expect that all it will take is just a change in government. So that we have ‘the right people’ in charge.
It’s a nice idea and it’s appealing to many of us. Because this pathway also leaves the real work, commitment and doing whatever it will take to enact change, to someone else.
Unfortunately, we’ve been here before. And very recently too.
In fact, many of us genuinely believed that the downward chaos of all the Conservative governments between 2010 and 2014, which was aided and abetted by the Liberal Democrats between 2010 and 2015, would unquestionably be stopped by the election of Keir Starmer and The Labour Party in July 2024. Because Labour was supposedly offering something new and would know what to do, or in any case could never possibly be as bad as what we already had, could they…
It took just a few months to prove the point that the power of our vote can have consequences that are completely out of our control.
Whilst some seem prepared to make the very same mistakes all over again, the reality is that as things stand today, we can no longer trust anything that politicians promise or offer us as part of an election manifesto. Because they are without fail behaving the same as all the politicians we have ever known and will inevitably go on and do whatever they want to do once they hold the power, we trusted them with.
And once they are elected, they will do whatever they want to whilst telling us that it’s in our best interests, knowing there is nothing that we can do about it democratically until the time of the next election comes around, when we will hopefully by then have forgotten whatever they have done which might then be years before.
Whether we voted or not, millions of us made the mistake of electing yet another group of politicians who are out of touch with real life; are motivated by all the wrong things and above all, have no real control over the apparatus of government and the legislative devices that should be at their disposal. Either because they are too frightened; are being very badly advised or misled; are out of their depth and really have no idea what they are doing and what they could do; or a mixture of them all.
This page is not here to make excuses for this government, the Sunak government or indeed any one of many governments before them both that have harboured and given favour to the wrong politicians and what decades of poor, absent and self-serving non-leadership has given us, whilst we are somehow always the ones who are getting everything wrong.
This page is here to make clear that politicians and the political class that we have today, right across the tiers of government in the UK, are just a part of a much bigger problem. And they are the only part of problem that we cannot otherwise see.
If we need a divorce, we go to a lawyer. If we need our car fixed, we go to a mechanic. If we want and extension built, we go to a builder. If we want a load of bread, we go to a baker. If we want a beer we go to a brewer. But for decades, we have gone to the Polling Stations on election day and chosen who we vote for from a list of candidates that only Political Parties have offered up.
Specialist professionals and tradespeople like these that provide goods and services that we genuinely need, learn a very specific craft. And they get better at what they do, because they spend all their working time doing just that.
Yet when it comes to everything to do with government, governance and how every kind of public service and are systems of rules and regulations are managed and designed across the UK, we currently leave strategy, planning and everything important in the hands of a few people who are always there to represent what they Political Party wants first. So-called politicians who cannot possibly know or understand every part of life they are making decisions upon, and certainly don’t have the leadership skills, experience or awareness to listen, consider and then act appropriately on our behalf, only after referencing all the people that they really should be, whilst being sure that they are being impartial and working in the best interests of everyone at all times, too.
Anyone with a platform, the words and a great speaking voice can sound like a leader. But leadership is about the actions that genuine leaders take and in the case of politics, the actions they take when none of us are either looking or able to see what they are doing; where they are doing it and who they are doing it (for or) with.
In other words, to lead any Country properly, it takes integrity, purpose and a commitment to public service before Party or anything else.
The evidence from what we can see today, tells us that no politician or would be leader in the public eye has this purpose, spirit or a level of integrity that we can put our trust in that in power, they will always do the right thing – even when it might require that they step up and do some very difficult and perhaps unpopular things.
We can all see that genuine leadership and integrity don’t exist within UK politics today.
Unfortunately, both have been absent for so long that the whole system has been so corrupted and become self-serving that it must be completely replaced.
The system is so established with the way it works and operates that it continues appearing to function. Whilst the reality is that in whichever direction we turn and begin to look, every part of it is either dysfunctional or going completely wrong.
The illusion of effectiveness is only held in place by the reality that like everyone else, our politicians have fallen into the trap of believing that every problem can be solved with money. And that if politicians have enough public money available to spend, every problem for them can be addressed. No matter the problems their inability to lead and acts of avoidance using that money will and have meant that we and people in every UK community subsequently face as a direct result of their ineptitude and what they have(n’t) done.
This isn’t a problem that can be fixed with politics or politicians who are just about the politics.
Because politics has become all about the politics and who’s in charge of the political process. Rather than being anything to do with results, outcomes or whatever gets done.
Politics is now the biggest distraction of them all when it comes to the change and scale of change that we need. Because the way that elections and the electoral cycle work mean that we really are just going around in circles, whilst everything gets worse, and we keep waiting for the merry go round to come full circle so that the whole problematic rotation can begin all over again.
“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”, is a very wise and famous quote from Albert Einstein – who as the world and historically renowned Scientist that he was, had plenty of experience and empirical data to back it up.
Not that we should even question the truth anyway. Given that it really is common sense that doing the same things result in the same experiences – like driving the same route to work at the same time; ordering the same food at the same takeaway, or indeed taking exactly the same approach that we do for the things we don’t do every day, but where repeated patterns of behaviour (doing and NOT doing things) all add up to the same, over and over again.
Our approach to politics is insane; so, it’s hardly surprising that what we are experiencing today is also insane
What few really think about, and some would not willingly agree with is the reality that we are now doing the same things in our relationship with politics, elections and government, repeatedly.
Although the people we elect, the political parties we put in power and what they say and appear to do may appear to be different; when it comes to the results and outcomes we are experiencing, it all – no matter who or what we elect – is adding up to the very same thing.
The illusion of change
Getting our heads around the reality that Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and yes, even Reform are all working for the same outcomes isn’t an easy equation to wrestle with.
We do, after all, have a rather contradictory relationship with the truth, that when it suits our purposes, a different person, company, organisation or party will always be different. Whereas when it comes to everything that benefits us personally, we fall into the equally massive elephant trap of believing everyone else thinks and behaves the same.
Yet it is the case that we have politicians with different faces, different attitudes, different ‘politics’, different affiliations and different backgrounds, all delivering the same things. Because no matter what information or observation we use to make our next election choices, every Party that holds power or gets candidates elected to Parliament or our Councils are recruiting and selecting the same kinds of people who will do, say and ultimately be whatever the parties decide they want those politicians to be.
The system has a system for electing politicians
Unfortunately for us, the concept of democracy in the U.K. – no matter how celebrated and championed it may be, really is one of the biggest whoppers we fool ourselves with – especially as we are all taking part in and contributing to the lie.
Yes, if there was a General Election tomorrow, most of us would have a Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat or Reform candidate to choose from on the ballot paper and perhaps an SNP, Green or Plaid Cymru candidate (or other) too.
But these candidates are all people who have been assessed, considered, qualified and then put forward as the choice of their Party, then and only then to then be placed before us as an option when we make our choice, whenever the next election comes.
We don’t choose our politicians. Someone else does and that means those politicians will always (be expected to) put their loyalty to who put them on that list, first, before anyone or anything else – including the people who vote for them who they are supposedly there to represent.
The people who want to be politicians
It’s not helpful to believe that everyone in politics is there or that they got there because they are all in it for themselves.
There are certainly some very good and just as many well-intended people who put themselves forward to become candidates, for all the Political Parties, who really did step forward with every intention of doing the right thing for everyone.
However, in a political system that works and operates for the system itself, rather than the people that the political system is supposed to represent, it is inevitable that genuine public representatives will either quickly become disillusioned, once the penny drops about how politics really works once they are on the inside. Or they will be controlled with threats or punishments meted out by their party apparatus, or they will be removed (and sometimes thrown to the media wolves), if they will not agree to toe the accepted line.
To succeed in politics as it is today really does mean doing whatever you are told. Because the affiliation to the Political Parties and whoever is running them today is more important than anything – If the politicians themselves, want to stay in the limelight, keep getting rejected and therefore keep the ‘job’.
Where do the voters register in all this in so far as the party politician’s hierarchy of needs is concerned?
Well not very high – if indeed it registers in any way at all, and that’s why we only feel we matter to politicians during the run up to the election from the day whenever it has been called.
Our feelings and intuition really don’t lie. But because the election is then over, we quickly forget how we felt.
By the time the next election comes around we just go and do the same things all over again!
What happens when the wrong people get elected
You may have heard of something called the 10,000 hour rule that is the suggested time it takes anyone to achieve mastery in anything.
Whilst understanding and fluency may be achieved in somewhat less, depending on approach, natural ability and things like motivation or dedication, the point is that it takes time and effort, being immersed within whatever it is you may be trying to learn, before you have even the remotest chance of making a good job look like its natural or normal to everyone.
Where a mastery rule might more easily be applied to driving or learning the guitar, the rule also applies to becoming a great public representative too.
Politicians will never get anywhere near to becoming the leaders and standard bearers that we need, if they are only learning within a system and from others that is corrupted and completely warped.
Slaves to the system
Unfortunately, when the system and everything that works within that system works and operates in ways that are wrong, the new entrants to that system – no matter who they are and what they can offer, will be expected and ultimately conditioned to treat and respect the way that the system works as being normal – irrespective of whether the system really could ever be considered to be normal or not.
As our system of government has been corrupted by ideologies and agendas that don’t work for the people of the U.K. in any real or meaningful way, we really are in deep shit when it comes to changing anything.
Because everyone and everything has been corrupted and redirected so that it points in the same way.
Change means changing everything
The problem of solving all problems (and there are many of them) therefore, is that changing one thing or changing a few of them won’t make any difference. Because the size, interconnectivity and reach of everything in the public sector and government will just absorb any form of isolated change and basically change it back, meaning that we are straight back to experiencing the same things.
To change anything means changing the system itself. And for anyone who can begin to fathom what that really means, there is a dawning realisation that without an incredible form of leadership at the helm of this ship as we know and see it today, the only way that this kind of change will be possible, will be if the right kind of people are in place to pick everything up and run with it, when everything as we currently know it collapses. (which in real terms could happen at any time)
Until then, unless politicians and those who want to be in power take a very different approach and one that could lead to the kind of leadership that we now need, things will just keep getting progressively worse.
The only discernible difference will be the speed of more problems arising, as the wrong people in politics are going to keep getting everything wrong for everyone else, because the process of replacing them is also completely wrong.
Is there still any hope for Reform and a ‘coalition of the right’?
Disappointing as Reform and the opportunity they are squandering is turning out to be, there must remain at least a little hope that Farage may yet have a lucid moment and realise his controlling approach and stranglehold on the Party isn’t the stuff of what memorable legacies are made of. No form of leadership will succeed in this fight that obsessively works top-down.
Whilst the Birmingham Conference and the policy snippets that have been shared are as alarming for what they hint at, as is the over reliance Reform clearly has in Conservative politicians crossing the political floor who have track records aligned to everything that’s already wrong, it is interesting to observe that there may be some recognition that nothing in politics is going to be as easy as it seems.
Indeed, posts on social media over the weekend appear to have suggested Richard Tice has acknowledged that Reform may not be ready if an election were to be called in the immediate future. And with the genuine and growing risk that the next General Election will come much sooner than the 2027 timetable Reform have themselves talked about over the weekend, we can only hope that they are taking this all a lot more seriously than what the glitter bombing indicates.
Changing things for the better
Change of the kind we need should really be viewed in the context of being a two-stage or two environment things.
Within the context of how everything works now
Within the context of the coming collapse where people will accept the changes that will help everyone most, because they don’t feel they will be losing anything
Meaningful change, NOW
Like many of the highly intoxicating suggestions that any politician that doesn’t have power can make to an audience desperate for everything to change in ways that suit them at the flick of a switch, what we are being told can be delivered today, by whoever takes power at the next election, versus what can actually be delivered when we get there, are two VERY different things.
It is important to recognise that many of the things that are happening in politics today aren’t just as a direct result of having had Labour in power for the past 14 months – as everyone else in politics is heavily invested in convincing us all that we should believe.
Indeed, everything that is happening today is the direct result of decades of faulty government, run and brought into being by politicians from all sides working to agendas which may not even be theirs, but are certainly not ours.
The Contemporary Politicians Dilemma
In a previous post I wrote about The Contemporary Politicians Dilemma, where the issue of expectation meeting reality for an incoming government on the day after the election really hits home. Only then will the breadth, depth and full scope of the challenge that awaits any government and leader who really wants to deliver for the people be fully exposed to light.
Even with a working majority of keen and eager new MPs, determined to do everything that they have promised to the people who elected them; the morning after the election night before will offer them little more than a brick wall when it comes to understanding the real task that awaits in changing even the smallest things. When the wheels of government and all the people who work within it are anything but aligned.
Preparedness for leading through and beyond the coming collapse is an issue of our time
The mastery of politics and government, its systems, relationships and how things genuinely work at every level will be essential for anyone who is tasked with delivering and guiding any new agenda – IF there is a genuine desire to change things for the better within the system that we currently have, without very quickly precipitating a complete collapse.
Whereas the coming collapse may arguably prove to be the best thing for everyone all-round, the reality we face is that if what remains of the governance structures that we do know should fail and collapse before we have the kind of leaders in place who have what it will take to navigate what will by then surely have become the most horrific mess, there is a risk – and a real risk too – that the void that will be created will be filled by anyone and anything that can step into it and seem credible. And this could prove to be a very dark day indeed, when it comes to delivering on the most pressing questions that people have like the supply of safety, security and the basic essentials like water and food.
Enthusiastic and perhaps even knowledgeable in other areas of life as they may be, the people who are keen to step into the breach that we can all see opening around us today, are unlikely to be able to answer the most essential questions that circumstances are quickly going to demand, when we reach the stage where everyone knows there is a clear and definable leadership need.
Yes, whilst the wheels keep turning and things hold together, they may be able to tinker around the edges and tell us that they are winning victories and delivering success, much as Reform are doing in respect of their recent local authority takeovers, right now.
However, the very best that any genuine UK and public-serving government could do for us after the next election, to begin the process of change that we need, is treat the whole situation as the emergency that it arguably already has become.
They must begin taking steps to help people whilst holding off the inevitable collapse, whilst people are put in place to lead across what is left of the system as we know it, who are not there to follow any agenda for them or the people who put them there, other than the one that actually works for us all.
Real Change: Post-Collapse
A little bit of change isn’t going to cut anything in real terms and the only circumstances under which enough people will accept that there is nothing left that benefits them that they could therefore lose, will be when the system as we know it has actually collapsed and nothing works in the way that we understand it to do so now.
It sounds bleak. But it will be much better for all of us if we have politicians today who are thinking ahead and getting ready to do the things necessary to ensure that everything works for us tomorrow.
Whilst many find it hard to believe, the agenda that has been driving politics for so long has always intended there be a societal collapse that would come after a careful and coordinated process of transferring wealth, personal power and independence from the masses to the few. So that when the collapse comes, we would all very quickly accept help on whatever terms it is offered by those who appear to be positioned best to meet our basic and essential needs.
The cost of accepting that help will be incredible for people like you and I. And the irony is that it is very unlikely that once things have actually collapsed, that any of the people who we recognise in politics and across the establishment today, will have the ability to do anything other than control us with whatever rules and governance devices they use to bribe us with – meaning that there will be very little coming other than restraint and a hard stick in return.
Opening to a different, better future
The real answer: solution and opportunity – even though it wont feel like any such thing in the immediate aftermath of the collapse – will come from decision making and leadership heading straight back to our local communities.
It is in our communities, where real people looking after the needs of the real people under their care and taking a very practical approach to governance in real time, whilst the systems and processes that we need and which will be completely localised are put in place to support everyone – that we can ensure that a new model of locally focused democracy can quickly be implemented, putting people and their communities back in control of their lives and environment – as should always have been the case.
Please take a look at Our Local Future to see the kind of governance model that might make this work.
We need to choose who we choose from at election time
In so far as future elections are concerned and electing people who can and will be the difference that we need, we can no longer accept it as being either correct or that there is any need for the process of choosing who our public representatives are to be franchised out to political parties. No matter who they are or what they have promised they will deliver and be.
It really is quite incredible that up until now, we have simply accepted that its perfectly normal for every decision that has real implications and consequences for us and for the people we care about to be made by people we don’t know, have probably never met and that we don’t have any genuine reason to trust.
Because we don’t already select, qualify and check the people we choose from at election time, we really have no reason to lose our shit over the consequences when they cause pain for us within our lives, and there doesn’t appear to be any way that we can stop or prevent the people who are in politics from doing whatever the hell they like.
We MUST select people to represent us all from within our own communities and ensure that they are always accountable to and responsible towards us all, first, as the priority and above all things – even to themselves and what they may want or believe in personally, themselves.
We need a very different kind of politician to be representing all of us. No matter where we currently believe our political allegiances lie.
It is because we are continuing to consider politics as being part of a tribe that falls in behind a specific set of ideas or agendas that we are in the mess that we are in right now.
Putting people first isn’t idealistic. It’s just being practical. And when it gets done the right way and with the right outcomes in mind, everything that is currently wrong with everything around us will get addressed and everything good for us will begin to fall into place.
Politically speaking, Friday (5th September) was quite the day in the U.K.
With what felt like a conveyor belt of macro and micro stories kicking off first with the anticipated and then confirmed resignation of Angela Rayner; Nigel Farage bringing his conference speech forward (to try and capitalise); The Format and flavour of the Reform Conference itself; and then Keir Starmer’s second (and far more substantial) reshuffle of the week certainly left the political pundits with a weekend to ponder which story will have really stuck most in people’s minds.
Perhaps the speed of both Farage’s and Starmer’s reactions are telling in the sense of just how important they both now feel it to be that they be seen to be out front on the news pages and airwaves. Even if Starmer and his Party almost certainly now know that the narrative is no longer theirs to control, and despite having proven himself to be quite canny politically, when real power was never at stake, Farage is now taking for granted that even a clown show will get taken seriously when he’s the obvious king in waiting.
What is striking to anyone looking at the theatrics of both Labour and Reform yesterday, as well as the attempts by what’s left of the quickly disintegrating Conservative Party to sound relevant and be heard, is there is a distinct vein of commonality that goes through all their actions just the same. That they all remain obsessed with how everything sounds and how everything looks – to the point, in Reforms case, of even being prepared to make it look and sound like they’ve already won.
As one who can recall the run up to the 1992 General Election, Reform’s approach to their Birmingham Conference this weekend sounds very reminiscent echos of Labour’s Rally held in Sheffield, about a week before, when it was very clear to all watching that Kinnock’s party took it as read that the election was already in the bag.
The Spitting Image Election Night Special nailed it completely. With one sketch focusing on the Rally being akin to something like the presidential campaigns coming out of the USA, and then a rather prescient sketch with Neil Kinnock sat on a tree branch with Roy Hattersley asking him what he was doing, only to be told that winning this election would be as easy as falling off a log – at which point Kinnock then fell and his legs tied, leaving him dangling.
That said however, the question this time isn’t about whether Reform can win.
Right now, and I mean as we look at all this today in early September 2025, it really does look like Reform can win and will win, when the next General Election is called.
But if Reform does win the next General Election, what can we really expect and what happens next?
It’s important to recognise that one key reason ALL of the political parties we have today are so obsessed with media time, being seen and being heard online, and running the narratives that are sticking in peoples minds, is because this vector that basically contains little more than the distraction of noise, does indeed reflect how they all expect people to behave and in turn to think – not looking beyond the messaging that will be obvious and therefore taken as read at immediate glance. With the overall impact of their efforts seeming to be more geared towards getting away with shallower consideration the whole time.
For all the glitter and spotlights pumping their way onto our phones from the midlands yesterday, the phrase ‘you can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter’ came very much to mind. Not because of anything or anything we could hear or see (no matter how many ex-conservative MPs and Councillors have no declared that our saviours from what they were part of causing will be their version of Reform). But because the substance of the policies we are hearing about and where it’s clear Farage’s objectives and approach lie, aren’t suggesting anything other than more problems ahead:
because the motives behind them and the other parties are pretty much the same and
because just like something out of the Trump playbook, where Trump appears to be trying to return the world to what he sees as US hero worship and subservience based on his reading of the dynamics of free-world politics having been around the time of Breton Woods 1944, Reform have this idea that the same fundamentals are ok for the UK and you just need to bully your way through removing everything that has been added in the past 80 years, that will then keep the public quiet or which simply doesn’t work for Farage and his vision.
In case you were wondering, these are also resets in both Trumps and Reforms case – with both resets not being about changing anything for the better, nor anything quite like the ‘Great Reset’ of the WEF; just turning back the clock (and thereby giving the corpse of a system that’s running only on latent momentum the chance to hurt even more normal people and keep them in the limelight until the whole thing finally runs out of time)
The biggest tragedy and with it the problem going forward for all of us, is that Reform could be getting everything right AND putting together a government in waiting that was prepared and able to deal with what really needs to be done. Rather than coming up with what are intended to sound like very clever ideas, such as the UKs very own DOGE and bringing in people from outside politics, just to move the chess pieces around the board so that ultimately it will all just resemble the same shit show with all the wrong things happening just as it is right now.
We should be under no illusion that where things stand today – even with all of the ministerial changes that have now taken place, Labour have created for Reform, what is pretty much an open goal, that this new home and hotbed of restless quasi-Tories will be only too willing to fill with new (and returning) MPs who will very quickly realise, post-election, that saying and doing are two very different things. And that no matter what talents Farage and Reform HQ try to buy in, the only way to change anything will be by changing it all.
We don’t have any politicians big enough to take on the job at hand
The quality of our politicians today is generally poor, right across the political spectrum. But with Reform still recruiting in pretty much the same way that UKIP and the Brexit Party did before, it would be fair to anticipate that there will be a lot of anger – and understandably so – from all those who have rushed to the Reform banner and put themselves forward as candidates, expecting everything they have been promised, to be delivered overnight, just as soon as they are through Westminster’s doors. Quickly finding that instead, their expectations could take decades to deliver – if indeed it will be possible with the intended approach, to ever deliver them at all.
Predictions about the timings of General Elections may be sensible to avoid. Not because it’s impossible to see where things are going at any moment in time; but because even the smallest factor can and probably will have the most profound implications and change the direction of everything at any stage. Meaning the longer the time between now and then, the chances are that what looks certain today could easily be left well and truly behind.
That said, with Labour having outed themselves for not being in any way representative of the people who elected them last year, and instead having all sorts of different agendas they are following, that probably just include their affiliation with the Fabians and WEF – but will never be about doing what’s right for me and you, there’s every chance that this government will collapse and a general election will be called much sooner than 2027 – which Reform have been talking about in the past 24 hours.
However, with Reform changing nothing they are doing now and continuing to approach the run-in towards government, either as a majority or lead partner, and as they openly intend right now, we should not be in any way surprised if their new government doesn’t then itself collapse within 12-18 months. When it will become resoundingly clear, even to them, that the Councils they have run since the Local Elections in May weren’t just a plaything or game.
Indeed, since May, Reform have given us all a very clear warning about what will happen under a Farage premiership. Where the strategy isn’t any more about the people than what we have now.
What awaits us, without change, will be the collapse of everything, as jobs for real leaders are filled to breaking point with people who may have taken them with good intentions, but don’t have the foggiest idea what they hell is expected of them or what they are going to do.
Adam Tugwell 