“If love is the song of the sweet bird of youth
Is it denied as melody to the ageing crow?
Do these old sayings approach something like truth
Will common sense or wishful thinking let us know?”
— From Aur Ro Raha Bhori Ali, by Bachchoo
For a number of months Robert Jenrick, MP and loser within the contest to steer the Conservative Party, was suspected of eager to defect to Reform. He vehemently denied any such ambition however final week a doc leaked from his workplace proved to the media and to his chief Kemi (Kazi?) Badenoch that he was whereas leaping ship about to announce the demise and loss of life of the Tories.
Kemi obtained maintain of this doc and Putinesquely, if solely metaphorically, defenestrated him earlier than he voluntarily jumped. His meant grenade exploded in his face.
Jenrick is wily. In 2020, as housing minister in Boris Johnson’s authorities, he helped his crony and Tory donor, millionaire Richard Desmond, dodge a cost of £30 million which the Tower Hamlets Council had resolved he would owe for constructing luxurious skyscrapers on the Isle of Dogs. A day earlier than this ruling got here into impact, Jenrick signed an enabling doc in order that Desmond may construct with out paying the cost.
Another junior minister, Andrew somebody-or-other, adopted Jenrick’s defection, giving Reform its seventh sitting MP. Nigel Farage, Reform’s chief, speculates that as much as 20 extra Tory MPs and even a senior Labourite might defect and be a part of Reform. One of these talked about as doable defectors is Tory Suella Braverman, whose husband Rael, seven months in the past, enrolled as a member in Reform. Strangely, he stop that celebration within the week that Jenrick joined it. The consequence of arguments in mattress?
The defections previous, current and future, to Reform are undoubtedly associated to the lead that Reform has within the public polls forward of Labour, Tory, Green and Lib-Dems — by appreciable margins.
This lead is actually a results of the truth that, other than some utterly nonsensical, economically unverifiable and unviable guarantees to nationalise sure industries and slash the price of dwelling, their central and far touted profitable coverage is virulent anti-immigration and the deportation and different strictures on Johnny Foreigner who’s already right here.
Farage got here to prominence as an anti-European Brexiteer as he ran the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) earlier than becoming a member of Reform, which had been arrange and led by businessman Richard Tice.
The reputation of Reform within the polls has actually acted as a magnet attracting the defectors from the Tories, together with figures corresponding to Nadine Doris, who wasn’t an MP when she went over.
To the extraordinary voter, contributing to these polls, the anti-immigrant scares and stance is actually the figuring out issue. To the defectors from the Tories it’s insurance coverage in opposition to dropping their seats and shameless opportunism, although a few of them attempt to save face by referring to some Tory coverage that they don’t agree with.
That being stated, if a democracy turns nasty or turns into undemocratic in a number of methods, legislators with any conscience and even sense can be proper and brave to cross the ground. Would anybody on the earth other than deranged maggots accuse Republican Senators and Congressman who cross the ground to affix the Democrats, and even simply vote with them, of opportunism?
Yes, the polls point out that KemiKazi’s Party could also be on the trail to suicide, however in addition they point out that Reform will appeal to substantial numbers of Labour voters as Sir Keir Starmer’s authorities has not been capable of considerably get better from the injury to the economic system and establishments that fourteen years of Tory rule earlier than Labour’s victory in 2024 had left them with.
But sufficient about politics, let me speak about me. I’ve by no means crossed the ground — or solely the million picket, stone or carpeted ones one encounters via life. But I’ve contributed to the destruction of a political “movement” by leaving it on a matter of precept.
This was in 1973 after I was a “central core” (kind of politburo with out the Stalinism) of Britain’s Black Panther Movement, a bunch which actively fought in opposition to racism on all fronts for the development of, and customary justice for, the brand new British communities of West Indians, Africans and us sub-continentals.
Several of our members lived in a north London home the BPM owned and I used to be summoned there to an emergency assembly of the “central core” on a Sunday.
I imagined it was to work out technique for one of many very profitable campaigns we had initiated in opposition to police discrimination, racist insurance policies in employment, schooling, housing, wage-differentials, and many others.
It wasn’t. The assembly had been convened as a kangaroo court docket as a result of one of many younger tenants who lived in the home had introduced his “white” girlfriend to spend the evening.
He was being handled as if he had transgressed some unwritten rule of the BPM.
I protested. We weren’t an ethical cult, I stated. His friendships or intercourse had been his personal enterprise. I walked out of that kangaroo court docket. I referred to as different members who agreed that this process was a perversion of the aim of the motion and, at first, 4 of us stop. It led to the haemorrhaging of the membership and, lastly, the BPM’s loss of life.
Floor-crossers of the world Unite. Fat probability within the UK. The defectors to Reform are, to a person and lady, all out for themselves.
