Reform UK v Restore Britain, which is best?

Over several decades Britain has lacked a credible right-wing party. The only show in town has been the Conservative Party, whose main focus has been furthering the interests of global capital. Since the banking crisis of 2008 this has resulted in a stagnant economy leading to prolonged cost of living problems for those on average incomes and below. Most Conservative policies have been indistinguishable from those pursued by the Blairite Labour Party.

The problems created have been not just economic, but more seriously have impacted our cultural values and national identity. The Conservatives have allowed huge levels of immigration from around the globe that facilitates the undermining of social cohesion, the deterioration of public services and renders housing unaffordable for those of average means. They have pursued net zero policies which have resulted in the highest energy costs in the world. They have retained DEI policies whose only purpose is to favour minorities at the expense of the majority, particularly white males. They have undermined traditional values by introducing same sex marriage, allowed LGBT and black ‘history’ indoctrination in schools, and facilitated exaggerated one-sided attacks on our cultural history particularly on the issues of slavery and colonialism.

As a consequence of repeated betrayal by the Conservatives, Reform UK was created by Nigel Farage and others with the aim of pursuing more robust right-wing policies untainted by surrender to liberal orthodoxies. In the 2024 general election Reform achieved more votes than the Liberal Democrats but won only a handful of seats as their support was spread out fairly evenly across the country. Due to the collapse in support for the Labour government under Kier Starmer they have topped the opinion polls for over a year, although that has dipped slightly in recent months. Reform have attracted a number of high-profile defectors from the Conservatives, not all of whom have been greeted with unalloyed enthusiasm by activists. In the other direction the outspoken MP Rupert Lowe was expelled from the party after falling out with the leadership. He has now set up his own political party Restore Britain. So, it is worth examining which of these two parties would most effectively implement a genuinely right-wing policy agenda.

The main concern of both parties, and also of right leaning voters, is immigration. Reform appear to focus mainly on the problem of illegal immigration. They pledge ‘to stop the boats by immediately leaving the ECHR, restoring full control of our borders, intercepting and detaining all illegal arrivals, and deporting them’. They would also end free housing, financial benefits and any incentives that facilitate illegal immigration. They would commence a five-year programme to identify, detain and deport illegal immigrants, and introduce ‘mass deportation of illegal immigration’ legislation to end the right of asylum for all illegals. So, their policy on illegal immigration is very tough, one that should have been introduced by the Conservatives years ago.

With regard to legal immigration Reform are committed to end ‘the era of cheap low-skilled foreign labour’. They will achieve this by ‘introducing a 5-year renewable visa for migrants with higher salary thresholds, mandatory fluency in English, and stricter good character requirements’. There will be no recourse to benefits for foreign nationals. Shortage visas will be issued in limited and capped numbers only when there are clear and acute shortages in national-critical roles’. They will scrap indefinite leave to remain and rescind existing awards. This is clearly an improvement on recent years but there is no indication of the likely numbers that will still be permitted to enter Britain, nor are there any proposals to encourage the outflow of those from immigrant communities who are unable or unwilling to assimilate into traditional British culture and values.

Restore’s policy on illegal immigration is similar to that of Reform and includes a commitment to remove all illegal migrants from Britain, claiming that ‘this is necessary for public safety and national security’. On legal immigration they will introduce a ‘red list’ of countries where nationals will face stricter and higher barriers to entry. They promise to abolish the asylum system in its entirety regarding it as no longer fit for purpose, and to introduce various further measures including deporting foreign criminals and revoking dual citizenship where it is in the British interest. They recognise that ‘mass migration has been a disaster for Britain and promise to ‘reverse this process and deport them’. However, no explanation is provided how the latter will be achieved. Despite this Restore’s policy on legal immigrants appears to be more restrictive and detailed than that of Reform.

Another subject where Reform have taken a tougher approach than Conservative governments is climate change. They promise to scrap net zero targets which are described as a ‘bad ideological policy’ that has resulted in Britain having ‘among the highest energy costs in the world’. This is a most welcome commitment which is long overdue. Restore have also promised to repeal net zero goals and to abolish the Climate Change Act 1998. They rightly point out that ‘luxury beliefs around net zero’ have for too long been prioritized over the country’s ‘critical energy needs’. In conclusion both parties have made a welcome commitment to addressing climate change alarmism and the exorbitant energy costs caused by net zero targets.

On the question of sovereignty Reform ‘will ensure that no foreign court, treaty or institution overrides the will of the Brish people or authority of parliament’. Again. a long overdue policy, on a matter that previous Conservative governments were very remiss in addressing. Restore correctly point out that the British political establishment have been more interested in ‘serving the world, international institutions, or foreign states than pursuing our own national interest’. They will ensure that ‘the interests of the British people would forever be our solemn priority’. So, it is encouraging that both parties are serious about preserving national sovereignty.

With regard to criminal behaviour both parties propose numerous tough measures to address this problem which has blighted the lives of many citizens. One policy that both are agreed on is to introduce the widespread use of stop and search to reduce knife crime. It is to be hoped that this action targets those who most fit the profile of offenders most likely to carry knives, rather than stopping the wider public at random.

Under the Conservatives the welfare bill increased enormously with millions of people of working age trapped in a life of benefits. Both Reform and Restore are committed to ensuring that work should be rewarded and that benefits should be limited to the most vulnerable and needy.

Conservative governments have remained largely silent when faced with the destructive campaign of supposedly ‘progressive’ radicals, intent on attacking, denigrating and undermining British culture, traditions and history. Reform have stated that they will ‘defend free speech, uphold British traditions, ban DEI quotas and reject the policies of guilt’. They will end the shame inducing indoctrination of schoolchildren and promote pride in British culture and history. Restore would honour our religious historical and moral tradition and uphold Britain’s ‘literature, art, culture architecture and institutions’ to ensure a better understanding of our national story. It is reassuring that both parties are committed to restore national pride in our culture and history and to end the guilt-ridden self-abasement towards our past.

In conclusion both Reform and Restore are proposing a raft of much needed policies on critically important national issues which the Conservatives neglected to address when in government. The single apparent policy difference between Restore and Reform is that only the latter recognise the need to address the problem of unassimilated large scale ethnic ghettos that has resulted in British residents being supplanted from their neighbourhoods and communities in many towns and cities. Given the wide consensus on other issues, it makes no sense for the two parties to compete against one another. It would be in the best interests of both to merge and form a single party. If this is not possible an electoral pact should be made in which candidates agree not to stand against one another.

Jeffrey Epstein establishment disinformation conspiracy

This blog has been aware of the Jeffrey Epstein saga as background media noise which occasionally flares up such as when the BBC interview with former Prince Andrew was broadcast. Given that it is not possible to keep tabs on all stories considered newsworthy by the mainstream media, only passing interest was shown on this matter. It was considered that as the main action was taking place in the USA, and British interest was confined to the scrutiny of personal relationships of some prominent individuals, there were no wider issues of public concern that merited investigation.

This has all changed with the publication of millions of documents relating to Epstein released by the US authorities. The revelations they contained led in quick succession to the stripping of the royal titles from Andrew and the sacking of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador, leading to major crises for both the royal family and the Labour government. So, it is worth taking a look to discover whether the mainstream media revelations stack up to justify such drastic action being taken.

The mainstream media narrative can be briefly summarised. Jeffrey Epstein was a prolific paedophile who personally sexually abused hundreds of underage girls. Furthermore, he trafficked these girls for the sexual pleasure of prominent ‘rich and powerful men’ who were flown to his Caribbean island for this purpose. The ‘Epstein Files’, containing the names of these ‘rich & powerful men’, are being held by the US authorities who are refusing to release them to the public, thus allowing the protection enjoyed by these men to continue. Former Prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson have been justly condemned for maintaining contact with Epstein after his paedophile conviction was revealed. There is almost total unanimity by the public and media that all of the accusations against Epstein did most definitely occur and the opprobrium heaped on Andrew and Mandelson is entirely justified. Anyone questioning this account risks being accused of promoting an odious conspiracy theory with the intent of causing huge distress to Epstein’s many victims.

However, there appeared to be some unexplained discrepancies in the mainstream media account. Despite the release of millions of Epstein documents, and as Elon Musk observed, the number of ‘rich and powerful men’ identified as abusers through their visits to Epstein’s Caribbean island remains stubbornly stuck at zero. Moreover, the only person that Ghislaine Maxwell was accused of trafficking girls to was Epstein himself and nobody else was involved.

So, after further research it has been discovered that very little of the mainstream media narrative appears to be based on actual facts. Instead, a false picture has built up due to the failure of the media to question whether the claims made about Epstein have any foundation in reality. Fortunately. one American Substack blogger, Michael Tracey, has carried out a thorough investigation and his findings are summarised below, which are mainly confined to their impact in Britain.

The first thing that the public associate with Epstein is that he was a ‘paedophile’. In a recent BBC television interview with Peter Mandelson, Laura Kuenssberg referred to him as a ‘convicted paedophile’ and the BBC has repeated this description many times when reporting on Epstein. So, it may come as a surprise to many people that the sexual offence for which Epstein was convicted, the ‘victim’ was very close to her 18th birthday. The sexual activity was consensual, and she was unwilling to testify against him but was compelled to do so by the prosecutor. No other person was involved in this sole conviction which took place in Florida where the age of consent is 18. So, Epstein would not have been charged with this offence in the UK for sexual activity with a female of this age where the age of consent is 16.

Andrew and Mandelson have been widely condemned for not ending their contact with ‘the sex offender and paedophile’ Epstein after his conviction. But nobody asks why they should be compelled to cancel a friend with whom they have a good relationship for an activity that is perfectly legal in Britain? This point is never considered let alone addressed. As a recent Guardian article has revealed many prominent individuals continued to maintain their association with Epstein for up to a decade after his conviction. For context, it should be remembered that the sanctimonious BBC for many years employed a convicted murderer in one of their trashy soap operas. Also, the high-minded Prince of Wales has recently cosied up to the Saudi crown prince who ordered the murder and dismemberment of one of his opponents who was lured into a Saudi embassy.

If this is all that Epstein has been found guilty of many people might reasonably ask why the mainstream media continues to refer to the hundreds of victims of Epstein. It is now becoming evident that the so called ‘Epstein Files’ are nothing more than a mirage. Although there are vast quantities of emails, documents and photographs relating to Epstein none have revealed any trafficking of under-age girls to ‘rich & powerful men’. So, it can reasonably be concluded that the mainstream media has been sucked into a conspiracy theory about ‘rich & powerful men’ for which there is no basis in reality, given the total lack of evidence for this widely trumpeted belief.

So, it could be asked, what about the testimony of those claiming that they were victims of underage sexual relations with Epstein? The evidence shows that many of the accusers were either over 18 when they met Epstein or have had their claims dismissed by US investigatory authorities as unreliable. A sinister new development is that some of these women are now claiming that they were ‘groomed’ by Epstein when they were in their 20s, thus attempting to extend the boundaries of potential male heterosexual criminality. These women were of an age when it could reasonably be assumed that they would take responsibility for themselves in their personal relationships.

The reality is that they were recruited solely to provide massage services to Epstein, for which Epstein appears to have had an almost daily fetish. Many were employed in local massage parlours and were asked to confirm that they were over 18 before being engaged by Epstein. They were paid $200 for a massage session, so many lied about their age to take advantage of this very lucrative casual work, to which many of them repeatedly returned. It should be remembered that Epstein was never allowed to mount a defence in open court against the sexual allegations made against him, as he was pressurised into accepting a plea bargain to avoid more serious charges involving widespread collusion by his accusers. Also, many of the claimed ‘victims’ have received huge financial payouts from the Epstein estate with only cursory investigation.

The most notorious Epstein accuser was the late Virginia Giuffre who for several years was employed as a travelling masseuse by Epstein. It was during one of these overseas visits that she was photographed with Andrew at Ghislaine Maxwell’s London home aged 17. There is no doubt that this photograph is genuine and Andrew’s attempt in the BBC interview to obfuscate the matter resulted in his credibility being seriously undermined. Giuffre alleges she was trafficked to Andrew on three occasions. However, the two alleged to have taken place in the USA have now been disproved, meaning that she was lying. Andrew denies having any sexual relations with her, so it is one person’s word against another. Giuffre has never claimed that she was raped by Andrew just trafficked to him. So even if what she claimed is true during her London visit, she was over the age of consent in the UK.

It should be noted that Guiffre was the subject of several claims against her for defamation, she grossly exaggerated her injuries in a car crash and allegations contained in her published memoirs were based on a much earlier fictional account. In summary, Virginia Giuffre was a seriously unreliable witness whose fabricated accounts have been credulously accepted by the mainstream media, political establishment and general public. There needs to be an investigation as to what happened to the £12 million pounds allegedly paid by the royal family into Giuffre’s charity, and an explanation as to why such an astronomical sum of money was ever paid in the first place.

The only conclusion that can be reached, on the evidence that has been uncovered, is that the baying media, politicians and populace on both sides of the Atlantic have been duped by an out-of-control fantastical epidemic of groupthink and mass hysteria that created the fictional paedophile monster Jeffrey Epstein.

Speak for England, Amelia

The Home Office Prevent programme is a strategy designed to stop individuals from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism, focussing on early intervention and tackling ideological causes. During the present century virtually all terrorist incidents in Britain have been inspired by Islamic jihadism. But instead of concentrating on the threat from this source, Prevent has instead focussed principally on the almost non-existent danger from what is termed ‘right-wing extremism’.

As part of the Prevent strategy Hull City Council and East Riding of Yorkshire Council have sponsored an interactive game called Pathways aimed at secondary school pupils. Players identify as either a white teenage boy or girl called Charlie who are helped to avoid being reported for ‘extreme right-wing ideology’. They risk extremism referrals if they decide to contact groups that encourage ‘harmful ideological messages’ or are against the ‘erosion of British values’.

In short, Pathways is a pernicious device to indoctrinate white school children against any display of patriotism and to create a guilt complex around their own race, people and nation. Fortunately, this Marxist inspired propaganda initiative has severely backfired. One of the characters Charlie encounters is a ‘goth girl’ called Amelia who, from a woke perspective, holds some seriously unreconstructed political views. Many Youtube videos have adopted Amelia as a mascot and sympathetically spread her patriotic right-wing views whilst simultaneously ridiculing and spoofing the Pathways agenda. Naturally the Guardian disapproves of this trend decrying that those encouraging the Amelia character ‘created to deter young people from extremism’, has instead ‘been subverted to disseminate far right messaging’.

It is to be hoped that Amelia becomes a permanent political symbol behind which the majority opposed to woke brainwashing can unite in deriding and undermining this subversive and insidious agenda that is targeting white school children.

Ian Dunt, apostle of woke virtue

At a recent public event this blog engaged in a brief political discussion with the mainstream media journalist Ian Dunt, an individual of whom we were previously unaware. Further investigation revealed that in addition to his main platform he also has a regular weekly Substack blog through which his unfiltered political views and opinions can be voiced, thus avoiding the constraints of his principal media outlet. His blog provides an interesting open window into the mindset and outlook of the woke establishment class who have hijacked many of our institutions. So, it is worth examining the contents of his blog to gain an insight into the thinking underpinning this now dominant ideology.

What needs to be explored is the motivation behind woke activism. Is it a genuine high-minded concern for racial and other minorities who are considered to have been oppressed, persecuted or discriminated against in the past? Or is it a desire for activists to signal their own virtue with their woke peer group by presenting themselves as ‘holier than thou’ adherents of the great noble cause that they have all embraced? Alternatively, is it an attempt to destroy the established order of the white western capitalist society for which they seem to have a loathing, and to replace it with one more debased that fulfils their extremist ideology fuelled by a racial guilt conscience, coupled with an unrealistic and idealised egalitarianism?

So, what does Ian have to say about the level of immigration into Britain considered by many on the right to be totally out of control. He claims correctly that ‘many immigrants come to work… and want a better life’ an outlook and objective that is uncontroversial. However, although it would be wrong to blame all the evils of society on immigration, he wilfully ignores whether there might be any downside to huge third world immigration. Such as, for example, the creation of ethnic ghettos, divided communities, increased competition for housing, greater pressure on public services and transport, increase in crime and greater risk of religiously inspired terrorism. These are all matters of deep concern to ordinary members of the public who are most affected by such changes to their communities. But to the woke activist such views are instead evidence of entrenched bigotry and irrational prejudice. For those like Ian, mass immigration must always be presented as a positive benefit, and thus they remain blind to the undermining of societal cohesion and national identity that invariably follows.

Ian takes a strong line on transgender rights, denouncing a recent ruling of the Equality & Human Rights Commission (ECHR) ‘as one of the most disreputable and irresponsible documents’ from a public body; expressing a position which he considers to be ‘on the very furthest fringes of anti-trans activism’. And what is this outrageously extremist view? Merely that ‘trans women should use men’s toilets, and trans men should use women’s toilets’. In other words that biological males should keep out of women’s private spaces, a view held by the overwhelming majority of the public for as long as anyone can remember. He hysterically concludes that this decision would lead to ‘the eradication of trans people from the country’s social fabric’. Sensibly, the conclusion of the ECHR is the only logical response to the ruling of the Supreme Court on this subject. Ian’s angry and unhinged response clearly illustrates how far removed from reality woke activists have become in pursuing their delusional obsessions about gender.

Predictably Ian is an enthusiastic supporter of the BBC describing it as ‘the most trusted news source’. He denounces attacks on the BBC by the political right on the grounds that ‘the entire notion of objective, impartial public service broadcasting is an anathema to them’. Despite this he claims that the BBC has the audacity at times to ‘accept right wing narrative frames’, so his own notion of impartiality has a clear political bias. He overlooks the reality that overwhelmingly the BBC is a bastion of woke ideology, promoting issues such as climate change alarmism, multiculturalism and favoured minority concerns at every opportunity, whilst simultaneously deriding or ignoring traditional and conservative perspectives.

During the 1960s and 1970s the political left in British politics was vocal in its support of ordinary working people. It was during this time that young middle-class left-wing activists would try and ape the manners and appearance of the working-class, whilst denouncing the ‘bourgeois’ society into which they were born. For example, they would remove books by Enid Blyton from school libraries for being too middle class and idealise vocal working-class heroes in ‘kitchen sink’ dramas. This sentimentalised outlook and patronising posturing was clearly inauthentic and was looked at with bemusement by genuine working-class people. But at least it was well intentioned, seeking to materially help those living less comfortable lives than themselves.

Today the working class that was once feted is now demonised. Ian made the mistake of arriving at Waterloo station on the day that Tommy Robinson held his massive rally against uncontrolled immigration, attended by countless thousands of ordinary working people from all over the country. He was horrified for having inadvertently joined this gathering of ‘fascists’, as he termed them, complaining that these people ‘were everywhere, surrounding Waterloo like an army and there was no way to avoid them’. He accused them of doing something ‘which can never be forgiven, they had introduced a notion of racial awareness that made brown people feel unsafe’. In reality ‘brown people’ had nothing to fear from these supporters as all the evidence suggests they were well behaved, a contrast to the alarm faced by white residents living in culturally diverse areas who have to contend with unacceptable levels of street crime, harassment and intimidation.

This summary attempts to provide a flavour of Ian’s political outlook. Although there is a veneer of good intentions underpinning his agenda he lives in a fantasy world divorced from reality. It is not clear whether his intentions are malign or his thinking just plain naïve. However, by always taking the side of minorities, and denouncing the reasoned attitude of ordinary fellow citizens, he comes across as an angry fifth columnist who appears intent on subverting and destroying the well-ordered, cohesive and harmonious society that was once widely taken for granted, and which is now in danger of being lost due to woke extremism.

Black overrepresentation in advertising

The Reform MP Sarah Pochin, who was elected in a by election earlier in the year, has put the cat among the pigeons with her comments about the overrepresentation of black people in British advertisements. This is a subject which for some time has been discussed in private by millions of ordinary citizens but which until now has been deliberately ignored by the mainstream media.

The comments occurred in a radio phone-in programme in response to a listener asking whether Reform would do anything about the disproportionate number of ethnic minorities in advertising. The MP replied that the listener was ‘absolutely right’ and that it ‘drives her mad when she sees advertisements full of black people’. She added that these do not reflect our society, and that the average white family is no longer represented, with many advertisements featuring no white people. This is a rare example of plain speaking by an MP committed to voicing the concerns of the majority of her constituents.

Needless to say, there has been a huge backlash from the liberal elite, furious that this previously clandestine agenda has now invaded the public discourse, and outraged that an MP would be willing to use such ‘racist’ language. The fact that everything she said was factually correct is totally ignored, and that the advertising industry has been gaslighting the public for years with this manipulative ideology.

Keir Starmer denounced her views for expressing ‘shocking racism, the kind of thing that will tear our country apart, and that Nigel Farage will need to root it out of his party’. The prime minister appears to be living in a fantasy world since the overwhelming number of comments on Youtube and newspaper articles fully agree with the MP, and are disappointed with the semi apology she issued. Far from rooting such views out of his party, Nigel Farage should instead fully support his MP, since the electoral dividends should be huge as he will be able to demonstrate to the British public that he is on their side, and against the woke agitators intent on undermining the cohesion of our society through continually appeasing favoured vocal minorities.

No white faces in Birmingham

The shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick gave a talk at a Conservative party dinner earlier in the year which was secretly recorded. Released by the Guardian newspaper to coincide with the Conservative party conference, the recording revealed Jenrick observing that in a ninety-minute visit to the Handsworth district of Birmingham he had not seen ‘another white face’.

Handsworth is described as a ‘melting pot of different ethnicities’, an accurate description as over a third of residents are Muslim, about a quarter are Indian, another quarter are black leaving less than 10% who are white. Predictably Jenrick has received quite a lot of flak for his observation, with the usual accusations of ‘racism’. He was denounced for fuelling a ‘fire of toxic nationalism’. Unusually, in the face of this kind of intimidatory criticism, Jenrick has stood his ground, stating that it would be wrong to ‘shut down an important debate that we need to have about integration’.

However, it is not clear what such a debate would achieve. It has been glaringly obvious for a long time that neither the indigenous population, nor the various ethnicities, have any desire to integrate whenever they can exercise any freedom of choice on this matter. Ethnic minorities prefer to congregate in their own communities, and when this displacement reaches a tipping point ‘white flight’ occurs. No amount of hand wringing by politicians of either the right or left is going to have any impact on this phenomenon, given that it is human nature for people of whatever culture or race to prefer to live with their own kind, and it is folly to pretend otherwise.

So, politicians and pundits should stop living in a fantasy world, in which exhortations are made that if only people would put aside their differences, then we could all live harmoniously together in an enriching integrated yet multicultural society where diversity is our strength. This liberal utopia will never be achieved, but instead we risk societal breakdown by playing with fire through continuing large scale open ended third world immigration. Instead of talking about integration Jenrick would be better advised to start promoting well-funded schemes of repatriation of those unable to assimilate into our country.

Soft totalitarianism

Many are asking whether the British people are finally waking up to the realisation that they have been treated with contempt for decades by successive governments on the issue of open-ended immigration from around the world. The evidence for this possible awakening is the continuing protests outside hotels holding illegal immigrants, the sudden appearance all over the country of the flag of St George under the campaign slogan ‘raise the colours’, and the huge patriotic rally in London organised by Tommy Robinson.

The liberal elite are claiming that these protests are being orchestrated by the ‘far right’ with the intention of establishing their own territories from which immigrants and ethnic minorities are excluded. But the reality is that they are almost wholly initiatives of ordinary local residents who have finally started to notice that the authorities are largely indifferent to their concerns. The problem is that we have been living under a regime of increasing soft totalitarianism, in which the priorities and agenda of the elite have become far removed from the interests of ordinary citizens.

The issue of immigration is only the most visible manifestation of a wider problem. The liberal elite that has been ruling us for decades is not particularly interested in the concerns of ordinary citizens but instead prioritizes a quite separate agenda. This has two main strands: the surrender of national powers to external international bodies, and the promotion of the interests of favoured minorities and of fashionable causes.

So, it does not much matter which political party is in government since the same top-down agenda will continue to be implemented. This agenda is driven by the left through a largely behind the scenes network of activists in universities, broadcasters spearheaded by the BBC, public sector bureaucrats, teachers, liberal media outlets, creative industries and trade unionists. These policies are then given shape by the political parties, principally Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens, Scottish and Welsh nationalists that (with the exception of the nationalist issue) share the same objectives and compete only on which party can best deliver the same agreed outcome.

Politicians of these parties all brand the Conservative Party as ‘right wing’, demonising the Tories as uncaring, bigoted, racist, reactionary, etc. The reality is very different, since far from rejecting leftist subversion, they are happy to collude in its implementation, with the result that the election of a Conservative government provides minimal protection against the determined and vocal scheming of the hard left. However, despite this appeasement Conservative politicians gain no benefit, the vitriol against them continues unabated. To be fair, some Tory backbenchers do voice their opposition to the prevailing narrative, but they are largely marginalized.

So, what is the agenda that is driving this soft totalitarianism? Well, it is the furtherance of the ideology which has become known as ‘woke’ which promotes the interests of favoured minorities at the expense of the majority and denigrates nationalism whilst surrendering administrative control to international bodies.Favoured groups are ethnic minorities, particularly Afro-Caribbeans and Muslims, militant feminists, homosexuals, those claiming to be ‘transgender’ plus green alarmists. The mechanism through which woke liberals operate is a ratchet effect whereby a genuine grievance is raised and then rectified, which leads to a campaign to address additional less deserving complaints, which eventually results in an outcome where the minority calls the shots and the majority is openly discriminated against and/or denigrated.

Black people were once subject to a ‘colour bar’ preventing them from accessing places and services open to the white population. Legislation was introduced to put a stop to this practice, but the allegations of discrimination did not end there. So, we now have a situation where white people can be debarred from jobs which are only open to ethnic minorities, immigrants largely occupy social housing that was originally built for white residents, black people dominate advertisements and disproportionately fill positive roles in TV dramas as well as falsely appearing in historical dramas. White people are condemned for their ‘white privilege’ and for their colonialist past, particularly slavery which was abolished two centuries ago. Islam is likely to be given special protection when the government’s definition of ‘Islamophobia’ is revealed.

The private activity of homosexual men was for a long time criminalized and thus they were persecuted by the state. The repeal of this legislation was clearly the right thing do. Once the risk of criminality was lifted homosexuals soon started to proselytize for equal rights, and their cause became a cornerstone of the liberal elite. Despite the fact that they could never procreate same sex marriage was legalised, a patently meaningless innovation given that the purpose of marriage has always been to provide a stable background, recognised by wider society, for the upbringing of children. ‘Gay Pride’ marches started to appear although it was never explained why what many regard as a deviant and promiscuous lifestyle should be celebrated. So, we have now reached a situation where criticism of homosexual behaviour is deemed ‘homophobic’ and risks criminalisation, matters having turned full circle on this matter. At the same time heterosexual male behaviour has been branded by activist feminists as predatory, the result is a climate in which heterosexual men are increasingly imprisoned for uncorroborated sex crimes sometimes alleged to have occurred decades ago, and normal physical attraction is condemned for ‘objectifying’ women. White liberals, particularly male, are curiously addicted to guilt tripping and self-flagellation.

Various dubious causes have emerged to become the bedrock of the woke agenda, such as uncritical support for the climate change hoax, the belief that people can change their sex by self-declaration, and that outside bodies such as the European Union and European Court of Human Rights provide superior forms of government to parliamentary democracy. These are all top-down ideas embraced by the political elite and imposed on the rest of society in the face of much scepticism.

Nigel Farage has recently compared Britain to North Korea. On the face of it this appears nonsensical, but there is some truth to his claim. Farage cites the case of an Irish TV comedy script writer who was detained at Heathrow airport by five armed police officers for some allegedly ‘transphobic’ tweets, and a well-publicised case of a woman given a hefty prison sentence for threatening comments about illegal immigrants in hotels. The language and tone of both comments were disgraceful reflecting the degeneracy of our times. Nevertheless, the response of the authorities to both remarks was wholly disproportionate. In North Korea citizens can get into serious trouble for criticizing the regime, but this is far from the case in Britain where politicians can be lampooned and ridiculed with no consequences. However, it is a different matter when the ideology is undermined or challenged, particularly when favoured minorities are involved. So, under soft totalitarianism the modus operandi employed against dissidents is cancellation leading to possible loss of employment, and increasingly the threat of imprisonment under the guise of combatting ‘hate-crime’.