Now that things have settled down a little bit since the election, I have to admit that I am a little concerned with the rise of extremism and single issue protest politicians.
Nationally, we have seen people elected this year who would never have been elected even ten years ago. A lot of this has a much to do with the rise of misinformation on social media, funded by dark money and shared by an army of fake, robot accounts.
In the early 2000s, our country stood proudly against the rise of the BNP and then the EDL. Sadly, UKIP then followed and it basically was extremism in shirts and ties. Ultimately even Nigel Farage had to distance himself from what became a complete unmanageable rabble.
With the rise of Reform, we will undoubtedly see those who flirted with UKIP attempt to join this new Farage project, and this presents a very real danger to politics in Lincolnshire.
Look what happened when UKIP won a bunch of seats just over 12 years ago when things descended into utter chaos.
Protest and Single Issue Politicians most often have little to offer other than pointing out existing difficulties without offering any solutions to fix those issues.
Locally here in Spalding, look at the recent suggestions to “give up on” our CCTV network because it doesn’t catch 100 per cent of criminals.
This is despite the CCTV network leading to the conviction of more than 60 people.
How would “giving up on” the CCTV make Spalding less safer? And that is the question the protest politicians can’t or refuse to answer.
I will add that the fact operational details on the CCTV system have been leaked to the public via articles in certain media to undermine the system, I did some research as to why certain people are so against CCTV in our community and it has nothing to do with safety.
At the height of UKIP popularity, UKIP proposed to scrap CCTV because it was against “civil liberties” and that the Government should not be spying on citizens.
So rather than scrapping CCTV because it doesn’t catch every criminal in Spalding, it would appear that the recent rabble rousing by former UKIP members now claiming to be “independent” is more of a throwback to UKIP national policy.
Back to my original point about protest and single issue politicians being a cause for concern, do we really actually know who or what we are voting for with these newly established entities such as Reform or even the South Holland Independents?
I’d love to sit down with my new neighbour and county councillor Rob Gibson (formerly UKIP) to discuss questions relating to such issues, but I haven’t heard back from him. Why? As the leader of the opposition at SHDC, we don’t need them to protest against everything, we need to hear what they would do differently.
If the local UKIP throwbacks really want to “give up” on CCTV, what would they do differently and who would pay for it when the council is already operating on fumes?
Richard Garvie
Spalding
