The Reform Party and the UK’s lurch towards fascism

Not sure the recent Trump shooting incident is quite the clincher it's being played as  - like what new supporters does it bring? Sure, if you're already frothing this will play into your narrative. 

Another grim prospect for the world and not least isolated Brexit Britain is Trump 2025 - 4 years of the US at best flakey and inconsistent on foreign policy (e.g. western Europe/ NATO, Ukraine/ Taiwan) and wracked by internal conflict.  

The US government's job, so far as big business is concerned, is to provide them a suitable trading environment - what he appears to stand for doesn't sound conducive to that. 

Ginger beer's lurch towards fascism 

Somerset drinks firm under fire for Donald Trump Republican Convention links

They have said it is a misunderstanding and they do not endorse any political party

no, you just thought it was a good idea to send them some free product

https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/somerset-drinks-firm-u...

https://eu.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/07/17/rnc-hos...

I guess all the things fomenting away for years under the Tories didn’t all just drop away on 5 July.  It’s quite the inheritance for Labour now. That’s all the rhetoric against for example “the boats” and migrants in general that have seeped into a few people’s minds with the help of a few agitators - “you’d better do what we say, or things will only get worse”.  I thought Newsthump covered it very well - “I’m so disillusioned with multi-culturalism I needed to steal some new trainers from Shoezone.”

White Van Man looks like a significant demographic when you look at the pictures.  Although they initially act as a crowd, when you look, for the most part individuals don’t help each other, in fact it’s often more about capturing the action on your ‘phone. 

I find myself bothered more by the individual acts of bullying of black and brown people than I do the larger confrontations with the police. White thugs been given permission to do this by certain political leaders. Bravo to the places big enough to mount a sizeable counter-protest. 

The cost of living crisis, the cutting back of the public services that help ease the passage in all our lives in recent years is really starting to tell. We went into the election with all the privations (and increasingly vague memories of promises of better things) from Brexit, and they are with us still. That said, I tend away from ideas that actual poverty (as opposed to perceived) is a significant factor here. 

Brexit didn’t solve anything, stopping the boats won’t do a lot, leaving the ECHR won’t solve anything: a cycle of worsening and more extreme ideas that don’t satisfy then follows, one after the other - see 1930s Germany.  There's some nasty stuff on X that have all this charted. The position is  "everything that's happened since the 1950s is universally bad - let's go back 70 years. Here's how." 

A minor point - yeah, thanks for all the car-free pictures of ye olde Britain and the sly (and not so sly) references to it being a better world, etc. 

If you’ve just tuned in and are wondering what any of this has to do with cycling, go back to the Reform plc’s “draft contract” and look up what it says about transport.  Being a cyclist is the nearest (and my nationality and skin colour make this pretty distant) I get to being one of their target / out groups - worst case, they simply want you not to exist.

As I write, it feels like it’s gone pretty quiet from the political classes on most sides in recent days - perhaps they hope that the onset of cooler weather and the start of the football season will ease things.  After all, it’s only a few hundred people - young guys who are by no means full-time criminals or all that interested in politics, but are the opportunists, bored with their lives, who perpetrate if they believe no-one is looking, the pal who will look the other way in support of another fella.  As someone said on X/Twitter today, for every one of them there’s family who are glad that at least the little shit is out the house for a while. 

Behind the scenes, the govt need to severely disrupt the means by which the agitating is given legs, which I hope is happening.  More publicly, Labour seriously need to stay on top of this issue.  I’m not in possession of all the facts by any means but if this nonsense continues, Starmer and Co will need in my view to act decisively, comprehensively and robustly - which may explain the current quiet. 

A new Reform "contract" is out. I just thought it might be worth another visit as the Conservative Party seems to want to destroy itself. They're using pretty much the same Leader selection process that led them to Truss 2 years ago, then Sunak. Neither Labour nor the Conservative party seems particularly good at choosing the right leader. 

Anyway, the bar room discourse continues: 

Stop the War on Drivers

Legislate to ban ULEZ Clean Air Zones and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. Scrapping Net Zero means no more bans on petrol and diesel cars and no legal requirements for manufacturers to sell electric cars.

We will keep the speed limit low where safety is critical. Otherwise, 20 MPH zones will be scrapped.

The above is in keeping with the Net Zero chapter, where at least there is no attempt to deny the science:  we're straight in to extracting as much carbon as we possibly can.

Education. Can't see "ban critical race theory" any more and we seem to have adopted a position that says "well, other countries practised imperialism". Nothing about oh I dunno mundane stuff like investment in school buildings, securing the supply of teachers, SEN, improving support for pupils who are struggling with say having had breakfast. 

A Patriotic Curriculum in Primary and Secondary Schools

Any teaching about a period or example of British or European imperialism or slavery must be paired with the teaching of a non-European occurrence of the same to ensure balance. History and social science curriculum to be reviewed and audited regularly to ensure balance. Our children must be taught about their heritage.

Because of the news fog around this, I’ve only got a few scraps to offer out at moment.  That and the sheer unpredictability of the man at the centre of it all. So here we go, jump in any time. 

The team he’s assembled looks like some sensible picks from in his world with some notable exceptions, of course. I guess running the WWF as an example is at least experience of running a sizeable enterprise, and having to stick at it to deliver the product.  Doing that over time can be pretty boring and a lot of nut-jobs and fanatics don’t have much skill in that area, usually want instant gratification/ results and often get tired of it.

They’re also not very good at building effective relationships either, so that brings another layer of unpredictability as the infighting worsens.  I wonder how long the current love affair with Musk will last. It can’t be easy for Trump to operate at full throttle with his advancing age / state of health. But he wouldn’t be the first POTUS, or the first tyrant of that's what this is turning into, to experience that.

Trump doesn’t seem to be a war-monger (wars and peacekeeping are expensive) or bloodthirsty, so there’s that.  But his weakness on foreign matters could allow wars to break out.  My sense, based on no evidence, is that his apparent alliance with nut job “Christian” extremists is a marriage of convenience, so I wonder how far all that horror will get on the ground. 

The US will be a dead loss on climate change during this period - that seems like a certainty. I do wonder where we’ll get to in 3.5 years in terms with holding a free and fair election.  Great to know, by the way, that the 2024 election was in no way stolen after all. 

Two X/twitter takes I’ve seen:

Won’t it be interesting to see where we get to when the right are able to put all their ideas into effect over 4 years 

An intent to dismantle 80% of the federal government (a la Musk X/ Twitter takeover.)

I guess the latter rules out any system of domestic tyranny? Tariffs, as an example, need a fair bit of admin. So does interstate border control for women of child-bearing ago who might be pregnant.

A lot of what’s being said at the moment really doesn’t sound all that good for business and industry. I guess there’s so-called Disaster Capitalism, but in the ordinary course, business’s requirements from government are about security - in practical terms, that’s defense and policing.  An unstable or insecure environment causes loss and puts up costs as the business has to provide basic security itself and pay more for staff.

It also helps business if there is a criminal and civil justice system for disputes and felonies.  Fuel and energy supplies.  It’s good if there is a local workforce (so maybe don’t deport them all) and that needs I dunno education, housing, maybe healthcare.  It’s bad if there are bums on every street corner of your downtown.  

Big business runs the US and I find myself pinning my hope there.