Real Change for Britain and Protecting Free Speech Will Take Courage to Vote For Something Different

Have you had enough of this government? Have you had enough of all talk and no action? Have you had enough of an opposition which changes its mind every two seconds?

 Now if you really have had enough of the way we're governed, if you really want change, more and more people are going to have to be thinking about changing outdated voting patterns. Some comments I hear a lot: surely Reform UK is a wasted vote because it will let Labour (or insert Conservative) in? Surely our first past the post voting system doesn’t help the small parties to get a voice. Well together the Conservatives and Labour have governed disastrously for over 20 years, so surely they are the wasted vote? A vote for real change is never a wasted vote. Reform UK stands for real positive change for our country, and regardless of the electoral mathematics in your own constituency, we are not going away until we have achieved it.

There is only one way of going about that change our country needs, to send a message to the old Lib-Lab-Con, effectively destroying the once-mighty Conservative Party. We have to reject comprehensively what we have now. At the Reform UK Conference 2023, Ann Widdecome put it like this: “Ben Habib has said that his simple goal is to obliterate the Tories. Well, I want to add to that, we have to obliterate Labour as well. We have to obliterate the threat they represent and what they want to take us back into….Of course Labour don’t say that they don’t want to directly rejoin the EU, but it’s what can happen. They want to do it, one institution and one cooperation agreement after another.”

We’ve seen Sir Keir Starmer say that we will simply begin to realign with the EU. David Lammie, shadow foreign secretary has said how he plans to start ‘dating’ or courting the European Commission again. Laws to control our borders to be dictated to by them. Gradually, in the name of working closely together, under Labour we will find that we are still tied to the EU, even more than today.
 

It is a situation of servitude to committees, commissioners and civil servants sitting in Belgium that our country comprehensively rejected. So let's not forget the danger posed by Labour. If we are to effect change, if we are to truly take back our democracy in the way the people voted for, we have to understand that both of the main parties are the enemies.

The message we have to take out to the people is a really very simple one, that if you want change if you want things done differently if you want to get our country back again, if you want Britain to be run by Britain, you simply have to vote Reform UK and leverage the power of the political ‘middle’.

Still questions for Brexit and our democratic institutions
 

If those are the things that you want. If you want to get rid of the scourge of political correctness, if you want to control immigration, if you want our children to be given opportunities, a strong education, the ‘three Rs’, a path to great jobs and careers, without Critical Race Theory, without transgender ideology, we are going to have to fundamentally change the way we vote.
 

If you want the NHS to actually do the job that it was designed to do, if you want all those things, then there is no earthly point in voting for more of the same. As Einstein said, the very definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. This is the whole raison d’etre of the Reform Party, it’s about real compassionate that change, and that is the message we want our country to understand. It is about change. It is to stop the direction that we're going in at the moment and create an entirely new direction. 
 

At the centre of all of this is freedom for the individual and freedom of speech, freedom of thought. It might take a lot of individual courage, on the part of all us, to vote differently or to put ourselves forward for public office. It takes courage to vote for something different, even if you are a bit afraid that they may just let the other side in, it’s about the courage to vote for something different. Vote for what you want, not what you are afraid of.
 

We have virtually lost free speech in this country because people are afraid to exercise free speech, and that’s wrong. Well, we need to encourage all of us individually and morally to have the courage, to defy what is going on. And we should put parents in charge of what their children are taught. We should not in any circumstances allow four year olds to be told that they can become man or woman, depending on what they feel like. And that they can change their mind on Wednesday afternoon. That is not what we send our children to school for. We need good teaching and we need to support good teachers. We need to make it easier for our schools to plan and deliver for our children, without dithering and political correctness coming down from government. The same goes for opening up freedom of speech and eradicating bias in the university sector. You can read separately more about Reform UK plans for higher education and giving a new deal for young people with lower debt and a more efficient university sector. We mustn’t keep diluting the core elements of the curriculum, the parts that young people really need.

Judicial reforms

As spokesperson for justice, Anne Widdecombe talked a lot in the Reform UK Conference about reform of the justice system, getting back the essential principles of British justice, reform of the Legal Aid service, reform of the Child Maintenance Service, deportation of foreign criminals, getting back to more visible policing and more effect policing on the streets. We have to get back to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, It shouldn’t take up to four years for some criminal cases to go to trial, as is the case at the moment. Where has that gone? We should all be equal under the law, black and white, male and female. It is is quite wrong that somebody can be accused of something and have their name across the press. The accuser is protected these days, even when he or she is later shown to be a liar and convicted of perjury.
 

Justice must be done and it must be seen to be done, not just at the whim of politicians worried about statistics. And certainly we should not allow politicians to interfere in the justice system just because they are courting popularity. Courts must operate at arm's length from government. There are many anomalies and very complex rules, opaque rules at the moment in how our justice system works, for example in the processing of Legal Aid cases, and Child Maintenance cases. These areas need to be opened up more to the scrutiny of our underlying common law system. There are ill informed or sloppy decisions going on. The fundamental rights of the individual in our nation must be protected.

We can’t have our courts making rulings that are incompatible with the laws of natural justice. Another example are the rights of grandparents. When there is familial breakup, they have virtually no rights at all. But they should have rights unless there is a very good reason to exclude a grandparent from a child's life. Then when there is break up, we can reinfoce the ability of the grandparents to see their grandchildren. 
 

Rights of all individuals should be respected. And if court access orders are deliberately flouted in the family courts, then action should be taken against the person floating those access orders. And it shouldn't be the case that the non-resident parent has to go back to court time and time again, usually at his own expense, just in order to get a reiteration of an access order, which is then again flouted.

Labour Party represents dangers for our democracy

There’s a great deal of work to be done in our public services, in education and the courts. In Reform UK we say that we want to act. We want to give more choices and more rights back to individuals and individual family units. There is a very great deal to be done. At the next General Election people have a choice: vote for more of the same, get more of the same. You have a choice to see more of your freedom being whittled even further away. Being corrupted by ever more political correctness, with our country’s principles and freedoms being trashed. Watch its history being trashed, watch the EU becoming dominant in our law making again.

If you read carefully into Sir Keir Starmer’s policy statements, however vague, he wants to further weaken the powers of our parliament and he wants to give more power to international quangos such as the UN, the WEF and the WHO, rather than to British judges and British institutions. Then on the other hand he wants to give more powers to low-qualified, tinpot dictators and climate fanatics in local council authorities.
 

You have a choice. You either have all of that or you vote Reform. It’s not enough to talk about holding the balance of power, or talking about what a Conservative-Reform coalition government might look like. In Reform UK, we’re not just firing a warning, we’re talking about becoming the government. And yes, that is ambitious. But without ambition nothing will get achieved.

If you’re reading this, the chances are that you’re interested in what Reform Party has to say and our agenda for change. Please try not to let a day go by without telling a few people about Reform, or about the policies we’ve been talking about. The polls clearly show that people are fed up. The level of trust and engagement in politics and politicians is at an all time low, which is such a warning call for our entire system, and in particular for young people who may be voting for the first time.
 
A lot of people remember the Brexit Party, the movement that gave birth to Reform UK, and the way voters registered their massive support for Brexit in the European Parliament Elections in 2019. So we know that big, tidal changes in our voting patterns can happen.
 

Labour and Conservative leaders are both cozying up to the EU, for example with Rishi Sunak making Brussels his the first state visit. What's the matter with reinforcing our relationships with the Commonwealth? We’re paying France millions to shepherd the migrant boats towards our waters. 
 

And now Rishi Sunak is talking about cooperation with Spain over Gibraltar and other matters like the R&D fund Horizon Europe and signing us back up to the EU defence organisation and annual levies. Let’s give him his due, when he sets on a daft course of action, he never gives up

He just never gives up! So we need change badly. The only way to get change is to vote for it. Let’s reflect over what the Conservatives have achieved, the near tripling of the national debt, high inflation, energy insecurity, the highest taxes for a generation and about to jump even higher in the fiscal year 2024-2025. Take immigration and the recent speech by Suella Braverman in New York. There was hardly a word anyone could disagree with, about the need to reform and modernise international institutions and the ECHR for the modern era. It's just that she never does anything. We at Reform UK are the party that is going to take action. The only way we’re going to do it, is to offer an alternative that speaks to what the people want. 
 

We do that at the Reform Party. We must do. We must do it more frequently we must do it more. We must do it day in and day out. But if we manage to do it, we will save our country.