Some People Should Get Out More

Ben Wildsmith 

Watching Katie Hopkins descend upon Cardiff to instruct us that voting Reform is in our best interests, I briefly wondered if I’d slipped into delirium.

This is a woman who was, last time I checked, so widely reviled for her self-publicising, performative bile that she was banished from every respectable media outlet in the UK.

Hatey Katie arrived from the dark imagination of England’s furthest flung ideological wastelands with a message that was predictable in its contemptuous tone, but startling in its assumptions.

She is worried that Welsh voters might be so disappointed that Rupert Lowe’s overtly racist Restore party isn’t on the ballot that we’ll fail to back Reform in an act of socialist-enabling petulance.

Boy, is my thumb not on the pulse of Cymru, or Cymroo as she pronounced it.

Bafflement will be what I remember from this election campaign. I’m used to being disappointed, angry, hopeful (we were all young once) at the antics of the ego-heavy irritants who come begging for our votes every few years.

Generally, though, we can at least recognise the nation they are describing in their sales pitches. Hopkins was armed with Reform’s schtick about speed limits, the M4 relief road, putting ‘Welsh nationals’ in front of ‘illegals’, the Nation of Sanctuary, and backing ‘British’ farming.

The 20 MPH policy was imposed by the ‘Labour council’, we were told, and this was her prime reason for intervening in the ‘local elections’ as she was filmed outside the ‘Welsh Sennid’.

Reform’s Dan Thomas was namechecked repeatedly in Hopkins’ piece to camera, as the reviled Apprentice rejectee suggested that the recently repatriated Barnet councillor would fix all these issues personally.

On the surface, the video is a bog-standard piece of freelance grifting.

Our election has generated unprecedented interest, and Hopkins has a monetised X account. It’s intriguing, though, that, whilst ignorant of the basic terms around the election, and of Wales generally, she was bang on Reform’s Wales-specific talking points and so keen to raise the profile of ‘proper Welsh dude’ Dan Thomas.

Surely, nobody within Reform thinks that her intervention is helpful to them here, do they?

Scrolling through my local Facebook groups, you’d forgive them if they do. The sheer volume of lurid fantasies about armies of rapists descending on the Rhondda if people don’t fall in behind Reform is alarming.

‘God help us’ if ‘Plaibour’ get in, these posters insist. Only Reform can save ‘our women and girls’ from the twin evils of Islam and the 0.4% of the population who identify as trans.

It is redolent of Donald Trump’s first inauguration speech in 2017. He painted a dark, terrifying picture of America that only he could fix. He’s still painting it.

Full fat fascism

For these people, perhaps Hopkins’ suggestion that Reform will smooth the path towards full fat fascism with Restore is enough motivation to go and vote a week on Thursday.

I don’t know, curiously none of them seem to say any of these things offline. I suppose risking a block on Facebook is preferable to earning a clip round the ear or a P45.

It was a beautiful day on Saturday, wasn’t it? I took a drive around both Rhondda valleys, smiling at the blossom on the trees, the way the mountains change colour under a blue sky, the smiles of families heading off to enjoy the warmth of a rare sunny weekend.

Placards

It seems that placards aren’t much of a feature in elections anymore. The physical manifestation of life is retreating as online alternatives replace ever more of our activities.

For the record, from Porth to Maerdy, and Treorchy to Trealaw, I saw twelve election signs attached to houses. All of them were for Plaid Cymru.

Some people should get out more.