Stopping Power

A not-to-do-list for a better Britain.

Here’s a snap shot of the polls from this week.

Voting Intentions from YouGov

As you can see Reform is on 28% with Labour languishing behind on 20%.

(I had to get rid of the Tories (irony alert) or you couldn’t see the numbers properly, but they are bumbling along at 18%. You can see it all for yourself here.)

This is no one off, no outlier poll. Farage’s party is currently and consistently 7 to 10 points ahead of the governing party.

So it seems that if we just hang on long enough, we’ll finally be shot of Two Tier Keir, Rachel Thieves, Yvette (asylum seekers rights trump your rights) Cooper and this entire stumbling, fumbling, Addams Family, freak show of a calamity cabinet.

Because the numbers speak for themselves, and according to the polls Labour is doomed right?

Right???

Well maybe.

The next election is probably still a long way off. And many things could change between now and then. But let’s dare to dream.

Regular readers will know I’m the eternal optimist. Always looking on the bright side. Very much a half glass full type of guy. (Quiet at the back)

So let’s imagine an insurgent centre right party, or even loose coalition, overcomes the odds to lead a working majority in the Commons. What next?

(Yes pearl clutchers, centre right. For the most part Reform, and even the increasingly irrelevant Tory Party, are only promising to actually do the things that Starmer’s Labour government keeps saying it wants to do, but never will.)

It seems to me that the first step of a truly reforming government, one which actually prioritises the interests of Britain and the British people, (Just imagine that Yvette!!), must be to dump the orthodoxy of the last thirty years.

Turn its back on the established, establishment dogma of the uniparty, and stop doing all the things that got us into this mess in the first place.

And when it comes to stopping doing things I’ve had some thoughts.

What follows is my own not-to-do list. A grab bag of serious ideas, moans, gripes, and personal bugbears. A back-of-an-envelope, populist manifesto of sorts.

Which is worrying, because online manifestos have a bit of a bad rep. Just ask Ted Kaczynski.

Maybe you’ll agree with some of the things on this list. Maybe all of them. Perhaps you have a list of your own. I’d love to hear some of yours in the comments.

But here’s mine.

So let’s start stopping.

Stop saying ‘broadest shoulders’ when what you really mean is ‘anyone stupid enough to work for a living’.

Stop changing the names of the awful ideologies you are forcing on the rest of us to make them sound somehow ‘nicer’.

It’s not ‘irregular’ immigration. It’s ‘illegal’ immigration. It’s not ‘diversity and inclusion’ it’s discrimination and bullying. It’s not ‘gender affirming care.’ It’s lopping bits off healthy, but vulnerable children.

Stop exporting rich people and importing poor people. A nation full of only the poor does not, as you imagine resemble Switzerland Wakanda. It resembles Sudan.

Or worse. Wales.

Stop using our wages to fund a lifetime of benefits, free healthcare, and legal aid for any chancer asylum seeker who turns up in a dinghy.

Stop HS2. It’s an eighteenth century solution to a twentieth century problem, which you are failing to build in the twenty first century.

HS2 is a bit like Naga Munchetty. We don’t want it. We don’t need it. We don’t like it. And it’s a total waste of our money. We have Zoom now, and everyone works from home. Or in the case of the public sector, pretends to.

Stop squandering our nation’s wealth on nonsense like Net Zero, DEI, GB Energy (even its £350k a year boss admits he has no idea what it’s for) £100m bat sheds, and whatever other stupid money burning idiocy Ed Miliband has dreamt up this week.

Stop dillydallying on Heathrow’s Third Runway, first approved in 2009, and start building it today.

And if Boris Johnson and Swampy’s blue haired Nana want to lie down in front of the bulldozers then so be it. Pilots will just have to work around a bumpy runway.

Stop wasting all your time coming up with ever more creative and innovative ways to tax wealth. While spending literally none of your time thinking up ways to create it in the first place.

Stop blaming all your stupid decisions on stupid Tory decisions.

Stop pretending your silly, made up, ‘fiscal rules’ are anything but self serving confections. As ridiculously bogus as Rachel Reeve’s own fake CV.

Stop pretending that the OBR can make evenly vaguely accurate predictions about the state of public finances in five, ten, or even twenty years time. The OBR was created fifteen years ago in 2010. Since then it has never made even a twelve month forecast which proved to be correct. Not one. Ever.

The most fiscally responsible thing the OBR could do is abolish itself. At least then it would have finally managed to find a way to save the country some money.

And while you are at it abolish OFCOM. The Department of Culture Media and Sport. And the Arts Council.

After all, why should a bus driver in Croydon subsidise a Lord and Lady’s night out at the opera?

Yes OK. I’m a Philistine. But if you are such a better person than me your Lordship, you can cash in some of that extra virtue, and use it to pay for your own theatre tickets.

Stop going on about Britain’s ‘International Reputation’. We literally could not give a monkeys. We’re Britain. We don’t care what other countries think.

Stop pretending ‘disagreement’ is a synonym for ‘hate’. Stop pretending free speech is hate speech.

Stop using the term ‘hate speech’. And stop using ‘misinformation’ to describe facts you don’t want to hear, and opinions of which you haughtily disapprove.

Stop putting people in prison for Facebook posts. Stop employing ‘elite’ squads of police officers to read people’s Facebook posts. In fact officers, before you read someone’s Facebook post ask yourself this one simple question.

‘Am I this person’s Mum?’

If the answer is ‘No’. Then step away from the keyboard. Go and catch a shoplifter instead.

Also, stop trying to make Britain’s national sport, shoplifting.

Stop letting the BBC pretend it is the national broadcaster of a country almost exclusively populated by sad but kindly Palestinians, greedy landlords, women in hijabs, overworked doctors, ‘trans allies’, and drag queens.

Stop telling us that wearing a sombrero is an unforgivable act of cultural appropriation but hanging a keffiyeh round the neck of every pink haired undergraduate with a nose ring and daddy issues is a courageous, righteous act of solidarity.

Stop telling people that holding 99% of the same views as the literal King of England makes them some kind of anti-establishment rebel. You’re not fighting The Man. You are The Man.

Stop wasting Parliamentary time and tax payers’ money desperately trying to bring in special laws to make it illegal to criticise Islam. Because frankly, there is an awful lot to criticise.

Stop the police from trying to ‘contextualise’ phrases like ‘From the river to the sea’ and ‘Allahu Akbar’. Oh. And swastikas. Actual swastikas.

Stop calling mums protesting outside hotels full of illegal migrants ‘far right’.

Stop trying to make ‘the far right’ happen. Because the way you are going, you might just manage to make the far right happen.

Stop the police bussing in masked Antifa thugs to take on mums at migrant hotel protests.

Stop making official police vehicles look like actual clown cars.

And talking of clowns. Stop Ed Davey from ever getting on even one more waterslide.

Stop stomping around the world like Billy Big Boots. Calling out Vladimir Putin like you’re Vladimir Zelensky’s embarrassing drunk girlfriend in a Swansea kebab queue.

Despite our borrowed nukes, Britain is not a military power. Not really. We have more people in prison than we have men in the British Army. And three times as many asylum seekers as soldiers. So stop preening about like it’s 1945. We all want Putin to fail, but you are just embarrassing yourself. And us. So please stop it.

Stop paying the French, and the EU, hundreds of millions of pounds each year to take all our fish, and send us all their migrants.

Stop paying our enemies to take our islands away.

Stop printing money.

Stop pretending that it’s not in the public interest to investigate why our prime minister’s home was firebombed by three Ukrainian rent boys. Trust me. The public are very interested indeed.

Stop pretending a normal summer day is clear evidence of climate apocalypse. While a normal winter’s day is irrefutable proof of a climate catastrophe.

Stop traumatising children by telling them the World is about to end.

Stop telling people on minimum wage they need to hand over their hard won earnings to subsidise their rich neighbour’s £37k electric car, or all the polar bears will die.

Stop making us drive everywhere at 20 miles an hour. It’s literally retarded. And don’t give me the ‘if it saves just one life’ nonsense. That’s also an argument for banning stairs. And grapes.

Stop telling us we need Digital ID. Next you’ll be telling us we need a barcode tattooed on our forehead, and a webcam in our bathroom ‘to keep you safe.’ No thanks.

Stop pretending to be on the side of British industry. When you have adopted an energy policy, employment policy, and tax policy, which could not conceivably result in anything but the evisceration of British industry.

Stop pretending you care about children’s safety while enthusiastically pursuing asylum and gender policies which have wrought genuine catastrophe on the nation’s children.

Stop treating the Pride flag as if it is more important than the British flag.

Stop flying the Pride flag.

Stop trying to make ‘Mpox’ happen. It’s Monkey Pox. You picked a funny name for an awful virus. Tough luck. Now you’re stuck with it. And the funny name.

Stop trying to ‘raise awareness’ about things we’d rather not be aware of.

Stop pretending surgery can fix gay kids.

Stop pretending we need to fix gay kids.

Stop calling J. K. Rowling’s perfectly reasonable views ‘controversial’.

Stop telling us that the same identity groups whose only notable achievement is the ubiquity with which they have managed to insert themselves into our advertising, dramas, game shows, sit coms, news programmes, and the rest of the seal clapping, fawn eyed media, are somehow the most ‘marginalised in our society.’

Stop ignoring the genuinely most marginalised group in our society. White working class boys.

Stop treating men in women’s dresses as a vulnerable group which deserves special laws and sack fulls of public money. That’s like claiming special privileges for hot women in boob tubes. (Which, to be honest, I would not oppose.)

Stop pretending there is something insidious, toxic, or weird, about middle aged men who write Substack posts, fancying hot women in boob tubes.

Stop claiming that unless I ‘affirm’ the right of every skanky bloke in giant knickers to ogle my teenage daughter in a female changing room then I am somehow being ‘unkind’.

Stop claiming your generation invented the female action hero in 2019. You are not making a feminist point, you are ‘celebrating’ your own ignorance. I could reference Ellen Ripley (1979). But let’s keep it British. So instead I’ll go with Emma Peel (1965). And Boudica (The Olden Days).

Stop girl bossing us.

Stop pretending that every single exhibit in every museum, every painting in every art gallery, and every statue in every historic city, is somehow linked to slavery.

Stop telling me my country was built on slavery. Stop literally never shutting up about slavery.

Equally, stop telling me Britain is a nation built by immigrants. Which is about as historically accurate as claiming the pyramids were built by aliens.

Stop trying to make everything from Dr Who, to zebra crossings, gay.

Stop saying ‘queer’.

Stop trying to take us back into the EU.

Stop calling them ‘our European partners’. They hate us. Always have. Always will.

Stop telling us that flying the Palestinian flag is progressive. But flying the English flag is backward, divisive, and tribal.

Stop sending British children back home from school for wearing Union Jack dresses. But not sending Pakistani men back to Pakistan, for raping British children.

Stop pretending that somehow people being ill is a ‘cost’ to the NHS, that obesity is an unsustainable ‘burden‘ on the Health Service, but that health tourism, and cousin marriage aren’t.

Stop pretending the broken NHS can be fixed with more money, more immigration, and a phone app. It can’t. Let’s find a better system that works for patients not producers, (And no. Not the American system ‘where they take your credit card before they let you in the ambulance.’ ..*Yawn*..), and try that instead.

Stop demonising ‘ultra processed food’ as unhealthy. Sure. It is a bit unhealthy, but so as we have already established, are stairs. All you’re really doing is virtue signalling your disdain for the sort of poor-people-food you would never dream of the allowing the nanny to feed to Ollie or Jemima.

Stop pretending eating meat is bad for you. It clearly isn’t. Have you never seen a tiger?

Stop going on about your mental health all the time. I’m going to be brutally honest here. The rest of us find it incredibly boring.

Here’s an idea. Why not try bottling it up occasionally? That worked well enough for previous generations. Why not at least give it a go? And if you do, please make sure not to tell us how you get on. Because we’re not remotely interested.

Stop pretending Covid came from bat soup and stop pretending you genuinely ever believed Covid came from bat soup.

Stop teaching kids that they live in a shitty, racist country called The Yookay.

Stop telling me that a culture which invented parliamentary democracy, television, the internet, and the fun sized Mars Bar, which once boasted the most expansive empire the world has ever known, is inferior to one which buries women up to their necks in sand and throws stones at them until they die, for the crime of allowing themselves to be raped.

Stop never shutting up about individual rights, but angrily baulk when anyone suggests that individuals might also have responsibilities.

Stop telling us you want justice when what you are really demanding is privilege. Stop demanding equality when you actually want advantage. Stop insisting on your rights when what you really want, is to remove mine.

Stop lying to us about literally everything, literally all the time

Stop telling us that ‘your call is important to us’. When clearly, it isn’t.

Stop doing these things, and a million other things just like them, and maybe, just maybe, we can start building a better Britain.

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