Unusually for a politician I don’t think Nigel Farage is exaggerating. There is something very worrying in the air. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but my sense is that the Reform leader is right when he claims the UK is on the brink of ‘’societal collapse".
Could that phrase be too strong? Farage is certainly not alone with his concerns. For instance, I had an odd conversation with a local estate agent yesterday who I’ve known for twenty years.
Two of her wealthiest clients had urged her to sell all her assets (she hasn’t got much) and go to cash as both were certain a crash was coming.
It’s certainly true that house prices are heading downwards and unemployment heading upwards. A couple of poor signs. Labour will be delighted that a house round my way that had only been on the market for six weeks has just cut its price from £3.6million to £2.6million. Ouch.
More importantly, there is a feeling that chickens are coming home to roost in Britain after living beyond our means since the 2000s.
The OBR has just forecast that welfare spending, which was £296billion in 2024, will rise to £373billion before Starmer is kicked out in 2029.
A 26 per cent rise, and yet our economic growth will be in single figures over that period, which can only mean more huge tax rises.
Our taxes are already at a record, and one more push and people will either rise up or simply refuse to pay. That’s a card which has yet to be played, but I fear that with doctors showing unreasonable militancy pays, we may not be that far away.
I think people are frightened. Farage understood that. He said people were scared to go to the shops and tourists were staying away from London as a result of soaring mugging and brazen shoplifting.
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| We are one push away from rising up. But what if the first shot has already been fired? - Kelvin MacKenzieNobody seems concerned about breaking the law these days. Outside my local rail station in Weybridge, Surrey, there was a down-at-heel chap in his forties sitting on the wall in view of everybody smoking weed. I know that because I had to fight my way through the fog to get to the station.
A few yards away, a couple of teenage boys were eyeing up cycles on a rack. I glared at them and then took my train. My bet is that they had crime in their heart.
I suspect this is the norm round your way, too, which is why I think, not for the first time, that Farage is on a winner with his law-and-order push. I like the idea of 30,000 more police officers and the fact that they will have to be big and burly to get in.
I like the idea of derelict or disused council buildings being turned into custody centres. There are so few council staff turning up for work that nearly all the local authority buildings can be used to house criminals.
Farage hit the nail on the head when he said that respect for those in uniform had declined massively. I would make it an offence not to show respect to an officer.
The shit that they have to take from people they wouldn’t use to clean their shoes is disgraceful. At the very minimum, if somebody uses a swearword against them, they can be arrested.
This plan will cost money, with Reform saying it can be done for £17.4billion. He should fund this by cutting benefits. I’m afraid sufferers from anxiety or depression will no longer be able to claim £10,000-a-year under PIP.
They will have to rely on medicines and go to work like everybody else. Or if really bad, it will have to be a family matter. Remember the family? That’s what they are there for, or have we forgotten?