Thick as a Submarine’s Door

Ben Wildsmith

I’m writing this in the nanoseconds between Reform UK announcing their candidates list for the Senedd election and reporters uncovering the inevitable litany of bigoted online statements, dodgy personal finances, and shady connections that will horrify/entertain from here until polling day.

‘But you haven’t even bothered to read the list!’ complains Uncle Enoch in the comments section.

No, I haven’t; there’s no need. You be Debbie McGhee and I’ll be Paul Daniels. Put a blindfold on me and I’ll guess the shape of the beast.

‘I’m getting the word… ‘Tories’, am I right? The spirits are warning me of a man formed entirely by nominative determinism. Is it ‘Dave Dangerous’? No, hang on, the spirits are clearer now, ‘Mark Reckless!’

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, ‘Wales needs Reform!’ as everyone with a Facebook account knows, and who better to deliver the revolution than a politician so promiscuous in loyalties that his principles went on Jeremy Kyle to demand a paternity test?

Shockingly, the mouth-breathing vulgarians who have faithfully typed ‘Nation of Sanctuary’ and ’20 MPH’ every 30 seconds for the last two years seem not have been consulted over who will carry the Nigelian standard into the Senedd.

That so many have chosen to rat out their leaders’ rampant cronyism to our own esteemed organ is emblematic of the chaos that follows Reform around like cider-addled wasp.

Even Keir Starmer, the Mrs Brown’s Boys of world politics, can provoke Farage & Co into flouncing out of the Commons by bringing up their party’s desperate attempts at local government.

So, as the parachutes of their candidates lie strewn across our hills, valleys, and town centres, how are we to feel about the poor saps who seem genuinely to believe that this stockholders’ junta represents their interests?

There are those who urge compassion. I’m frequently told that reasoned education is the way to their hearts.

Deception

It isn’t. Farage’s primary deception is telling intellectually lazy, culturally bereft bores that anything inconvenient or difficult to think about can be explained away simply. – ‘Net Zero LOL’.

Trying to sell reason to these people is like offering spinach to a child clutching an ice cream. ‘Uncle Nigel says it’s ok to eat as many as I like!’

Agreeably, the Caerphilly by election revealed that plenty of those clogging up your feed with thinly veiled racism, parroted non-sequiturs, and pseudoscience aren’t registered to vote.

We haven’t yet reached the point at which typing, ‘Liebour and Plied are two cheeks of the same arse,’ during the ad-break before MAFS is accepted as an official submission of democratic will. You can knock a few points off Reform’s polling for that.

So, don’t be like me, lowering myself several times a day to remonstrate with under-evolved fuckwits whose sole pleasure in life derives from celebrating their oafish simplicity. Leave them to it.

Turnout

The election will hinge on turnout. We, and by ‘we’ I mean everyone who believes in Welsh democracy, evidence-based policy, and empathy for others, should focus our energies on persuading like-minded souls to get out and vote.

Labour’s attempts to woo Reformative cultists with union flags and faux nationalism have been an abject failure.

By sporting the baubles of Reform, they have succeeded only in alienating the quiet majority of decent, kindly people who prize fairness above tribalism and reasoning over hysteria.

In the process, they have contributed to normalising fringe opinions that have no tradition in Wales and would, in practice, lead to the erasure of our culture and distinctness as a nation.

The London media has connived in promoting a gang of opportunistic chancers to UK-wide prominence.

That’s taken decades to achieve, and it’s been supercharged by Conservative malevolence and Labour’s capture by careerist ghouls.

They offer only heat, however, not light and that runs contrary to the character of our nation.

Derision

Reform UK and those conned by them are outlying oddments on our political landscape. Derision is a perfectly valid response to people who are asking for your vote in an election they don’t respect and would abolish given a sniff of a chance.

As their poll numbers tumble and their candidates are exposed as the unpleasant strangelings that many are, you begin to see the spite in their eyes more clearly.

Farage’s recent tetchiness as he’s been forced to pick between his bestest pal Donald and majority opinion against the Iran war is revealing.

As the rhetoric heats up, put your chest out in confidence that this malignant tumour on our politics is an aberration built on the lies of bad people and the credulity of idiots.

We’re better than that that, and we’ll prove it.