WHAT exactly do you hope to get if you vote for Reform UK at the General Election?
Your income tax slashed? Immigration levels magically reduced to acceptable levels?
You might hope for everything that Reform UK is promising — but to use the words of leader Richard Tice, they’ll only ‘smash’ the Tories by helping Labour winStefan Rousseau / PA Wire
The bright, sunlit uplands of post-Brexit Britain gloriously delivered?
A dialling down of the net zero green crap?
Fingers crossed, eh?
Because to me it looks like a vote for Reform is a vote for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. Nothing more, nothing less.
Currently polling around nine per cent, the right wing insurgents of Reform — a Ukip tribute band — have no hope of winning a single seat at a General Election, let alone achieving power.
But Reform can cost the Tories dozens of seats, and create a path for a Labour landslide.
After 13 years of Conservative Government and five Tory Prime Ministers of every shape, size and ideology, it is understandable many of us feel pangs of regret, disappointment and anger.
Taxes at a historic high. Public services at an all-time low.
Strikes that last longer than winter in Narnia.
I understand the grim satisfaction that a protest vote brings.
My father loathed the Tories and Labour with equal passion.
Dad saw the Tories as the craven lackeys of big business and Labour as the useful idiots of the big trade unions.
And so at every General Election, my dad and I would go out leafleting for the old Liberal Party. But my father’s protest vote changed nothing.
There is a place in this life for a protest vote but it is not when you are standing in a polling booth at a General Election.
Reform’s leader Richard Tice gleefully proclaims that his party will stand in every constituency and “smash” the Tories. Who will this help?
It will not be the working-class man and woman who voted in their millions for Brexit and a restoration to national sovereignty.
It will not be the ordinary Brit who loves this country.
Vote for Reform and you get Keir Starmer, David Lammy and all those Labour politicians who now really, really want you to forget they all tried to get Jeremy Corbyn elected . . . twice!
Mr Tice likes to talk about “Starmageddon” — the horror of the comrades back in power.
But it is impossible to see Reform as anything more than covert cheerleaders for Labour.
Reform doesn’t seem very bothered by the heirs of Corbyn in 10 Downing Street.
It is only when Tice says his aim is to “smash” the Tories that his soundbites ring true.
The Tories have been in power long enough to render all the big promises about taking back control seem hollow.
But a vote for Reform UK is not a vote for anything more than giving Labour the chance to make everything worse.
Perhaps in the great scheme of things, Reform will make no real difference to our destiny.
Labour are so far ahead in the polls that time is running out for the PM unless he starts fighting back right nowAFP / Getty
Labour are so far ahead in the polls that time is already running out for Rishi Sunak unless he starts fighting back NOW.
So Keir Starmer does not need Richard Tice to hold his coat.
And I totally understand that people feel betrayed.
By Brexit fizzling out, by Bojo getting dumped, by the Liz Truss debacle, by the lethargy and lawlessness that we see everywhere.
All these Tory years have built a country where nothing seems to work, and millions don’t want to work.
But what future do we want?
Even higher taxes, even more genuflecting to the new green religion, even less of a clue on crime, immigration and the economy?
Then vote Reform — and get Labour. It is not even a protest vote.
It is an act of national self-harm.
DART OF THE MATTER
LUKE LITTLER looks like the average bloke, but that is an illusion.
The teenage darts sensation is an elite sportsman who has dedicated his life to his craft.
He might look like the average guy, but there’s nothing remotely average about 16-year-old darts prodigy Luke LittlerZac Goodwin / PA Wire
He is the Emma Raducanu of the Dog and Duck, the Lewis Hamilton of the Rat and Trumpet.
Luke might look like the average guy. But there is nothing remotely average about him.
Keir Starmer, never slow to climb on a bandwagon, says Luke’s success shows 16-year-olds should be given the vote.
But surely it shows 16-year-olds should be given a set of darts.
The culture of service and selflessness likely explains the survival of all 379 passengers amid a raging inferno on a Japan Airlines planeEPA
HOW on Earth did all 379 passengers and crew survive the raging inferno that engulfed a Japan Airlines plane after it collided with a coastguard aircraft at Tokyo’s Haneda airport?
A “miracle” doesn’t quite explain it.
I suspect the survival of everyone on board has something to do with the culture of service, selflessness and duty that permeates every corner of Japanese society.
ANDY’S SOLVED
AFTER Prince Andrew was named 69 times in the latest revelations on his late pal, billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, many are demanding that the King bans his brother from the royal fold.
But Charles has done that already.
The embarrassing relative was briefly glimpsed on Christmas Day when the Royal Family trudged to church at Sandringham.
But beyond that unnecessary and unwanted public appearance, I can’t recall seeing that jowly scowl since the funeral of the Queen.
It is difficult to know what more Charles could do to get Andrew out of the royal spotlight.
Short of locking him up in the Tower.
Now there’s a thought.
SOME royal pundits reckon that the abdication of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, 83, after 52 years on the throne will encourage thoughts of abdication in our King Charles III.
After waiting more than 70 years to do the job he was born for? No chance.
Wise words from plucky Parton
IN a gloriously frank interview, Dolly Parton tells Saga magazine how she keeps sparkling at 77 years old.
Never retire. Exercise just enough to get by. Easy on the Botox.
Dolly makes it sound so easy to stay sparkling at 77 years oldGetty
Dress up as a Bunny Girl for your husband’s 79th birthday (“He just about fell out of his chair”).
If you don’t feel good about yourself, then “Get off your fat ass and do something about it!”
And “If something is bagging, or sagging, or dragging,” Dolly reveals, “I’ll tuck it, suck it or pluck it.”
Dolly makes it sound so easy.
What a shame that nobody sends letters any more, as these Royal Mail stamps celebrate a true music phenomenonThe Mega Agency
SPORTY, Baby, Scary, Ginger and Posh – these new Royal Mail stamps remind us of the perfect symmetry of the Spice Girls.
It was a self-contained private universe where all the parts fit so perfectly, rather like The Beatles when they were all still being dressed in identical suits.
The stamps mark the 30th anniversary of the Spice Girls’ formation.
What a shame nobody sends letters any more.
GOING, GOING GONG?
FOR seven years, ex-Post Office boss Paula Vennells presided over the greatest travesty of justice in British legal history.
It was the pursuit, persecution and prosecution of more than 700 totally innocent Post Office branch owner-operators for theft, fraud and false accounting.
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey was Postal Affairs minister when the Horizon scandal started to come to lightGetty
And Post Office boss Paula Vennells has a CBE – if both lost their gongs, they’d be getting off lightlyPA
The scandal, now dramatised in ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office, shows how lives were wrecked, families torn apart and the innocent denounced, humiliated and sent to jail.
All because the Post Office was using a faulty computer system.
Many believe that Vennells should give up her CBE, awarded in the 2019 New Year Honours List for . . . services to the Post Office!
But she is not the only one to blame. Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey was Postal Affairs minister between 2010 and 2012 when the software issues that trashed so many innocent lives first came to light.
Unforgivably, Davey refused to even meet those campaigning for the victims.
Ed claims he was “deeply misled” by Post Office executives who “didn’t come clean”.
Perhaps Sir Ed should lose his knighthood when Paula gives up her CBE.
If all that Davey and Vennells lose are their gongs, then they will be getting off lightly.
PRIDE IN MIKE
Rest in peace to Mike Sadler, the last surviving member of the SAS OriginalsSupplied
REST in peace Mike Sadler, the last surviving member of the wartime SAS Originals, who has died at the age of 103.
From the desert war of North Africa to being parachuted into Nazi-occupied France, this softly spoken warrior, fought fascism with an almost suicidal courage.
Any time someone suggests that we should not be proud of this country’s history, tell them to educate themselves about Mike Sadler and the men and women just like him.
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