Nigel Farage reminds me of Mae West – ‘ When I’m bad, I’m good, but when I’m worse I’m even better’. (If you don’t know who Mae West is, ask your grandad).

Ther consensus is that people are so fed up with the main political parties that they voted for Reform to shake things up. Tories and Labour were massacred.

I don’t vote Tory or for Reform but the current Labour Party, of which I am a member, is appalling.

Starmer got elected as leader of the Labour Party by lying and by throwing out thousands of members who he branded ‘antisemites’. He moved the party ‘to the right’ to win the mythical ‘middle ground’ and ditched its soul and with it its decency – the only part of it that has ever appealed to me. Objecting to genocide – as some of us do every Saturday morning in Colford Market Place – is almost enough to get you suspended as a supporter of ‘terrorism’. It is Orwellian.

The Tories are a joke. Their leader is a black woman with a plummy accent. Like many outsiders who want to be accepted, she has become more Tory than the most Tory backwoodswoman.

The Lib Dems leader Ed Davy is decent man who has resorted to embarrassing gimmicks to catch attention as a substitute for identity. Tory where there is a Labour administration and Labour where there is a Tory administration.

The Greens are still seen as an ‘interesting’ experiment.

The leaflet the Conservatives produced for the May1st County election was first rate conventional propaganda. It tried to turn the election into a referendum on Local Government reorganisation. ‘We are going for a practical solution that will save shedloads of money, AND which will preserve ‘our’ wonderful County and is a LABOUR GOVERNMENT plan in the NATIONAL INTEREST’. They pay attention to their primary perceived challenge – the naughty ‘spoilers’ in Reform. ‘A vote for them rather than us will cost you money’.

It was a good plan which usually would have worked. It failed because no matter how good your propaganda is, if the electorate is fed up it doesn’t look for answers – it doesn’t even listen and looks to punish those it holds responsible. Like any stage act that the audience turns against, there is nothing that can be done. The catcalls drown the act out. The audience wants you off the stage. Then they start throwing things.

Ruthless politicians up against good propaganda change the narrative either by simply attacking the enemy or highlighting something as ‘much more important’ – such as immigrants or paedophiles or that eternal recidivist, Vladimir Putin!!

This is exactly what Reform did. Attack, Attack, Attack – blame immigrants and ‘the system’ for everything and ride the mood of protest. It works not because people are inveterate racists – but because they are sick and tired of a 24 hour a day political culture in which nothing seems to get done.

Reform won’t do much – BUT it is a wake-up call.