Lex Shrapnel: The Law, the Blast Radius, and the Opening Credits

We were sitting there watching the 2nd series of Red Eye, minding our own business, following the plot, when the credits roll up a name that detonates whatever narrative tension the writers have so carefully assembled.

Lex Shrapnel.

At that point the drama is over. Not because it is bad, but because my brain has left the aircraft and is circling the concept of nominative determinism at 35,000 feet. You cannot casually introduce a man called Lex Shrapnel and expect the audience to focus on anything else. It is not a name, it is a plot device.

“Lex” implies law, authority, Rome, tablets of stone, the cool weight of precedent. “Shrapnel” implies sudden noise, chaos, fragments embedded in places they should never have reached. Together they suggest a legal system administered by high explosive. Habeas corpus, but with a blast radius.

You half expect his characters not to enter scenes but breach them. Doors fly open. Policies collapse. Minor characters dive for cover. Even if he is playing someone entirely benign, say an earnest civil servant or a quietly competent officer, the name alone suggests that something nearby is about to go catastrophically wrong. But he was only a bit player.

What makes it even better is that it is entirely real. Not a stage name cooked up by an agent with a sense of irony. Not a post-drama-school rebrand. Just a straight-faced inheritance, handed down without mercy. Some people are born sounding like accountants. Others like dentists. Lex Shrapnel sounds like a clause in the Geneva Conventions.

And then there is the historical twist. The surname Shrapnel did not begin life as an explosive. It already existed. The family was established in Wiltshire centuries before anyone thought to pack iron balls into artillery shells. When Henry Shrapnel lent his name to a new and particularly efficient way of turning cannon fire into airborne chaos, the language simply seized the opportunity.

That is why it works so disturbingly well. The surname effectively split in two. One branch remained a perfectly respectable family name. The other escaped into the language as flying metal. Most surnames do not get that privilege.

So Lex Shrapnel is not named after an explosive device. He is named after a family whose name was later turned into one. Which is arguably worse. It means the menace was there all along, patiently waiting for the Industrial Revolution to catch up.

And yet he wears it with admirable restraint. No wink. No nudge. No attempt to defuse it. Just calm professionalism, as if everyone else is peculiar for noticing. Which, frankly, is the most British response possible.

So yes, Red Eye is very watchable. Taut, well paced, solid television. But for me it will always be remembered as the moment when the credits reminded us that sometimes the most explosive thing in a drama is not the plot, but the name quietly sitting underneath it.

Trumper, ICE and the Business of Rounding Up

I was watching Shaun the Sheep the other evening. Harmless comfort viewing. Sheep wandering about, the farmer blissfully incompetent, nothing heavier than a misplaced sandwich.

Then Trumper the dog catcher arrives. That is his actual name. Trumper. You could not make it up if you tried.

He pulls up in his van and gets on with the business of collecting anything that does not belong where he thinks it should. No grand speech, no moral struggle, just steady confidence and a system that runs without hesitation. The sheep are in the wrong place according to the rulebook. That is sufficient.

And yes, the name does rather sit there on its own.

What struck me was not villainy but conviction. Trumper believes in the net. He believes in the cage. He believes in process. Once the sheep are categorised as strays, the rest follows automatically. Their individual woolly lives are irrelevant. They become units to be gathered.

It is difficult not to see shades of ICE in that mindset. Not because claymation equals federal policy, but because of the same mechanical certainty. Label someone illegal and the conversation contracts. Context fades. Family, work, contribution, history. The apparatus does what it was designed to do and measures success by visible activity.

Recent events in Minneapolis have amplified that impression. A heavy federal presence, conspicuous enforcement, statements delivered with unwavering assurance. The display of control becomes the message. Whether the display reassures anyone seems secondary.

No serious person disputes that immigration law exists or that it has to be enforced. The issue is temperament. There is a difference between restraint and zeal. When enforcement begins to look proud of its own visibility, something shifts. Jackets emblazoned with large letters. Convoys that feel as though they are part of a production. Language that leaves little room for doubt or reflection.

In the film, Trumper is faintly absurd because he never pauses to consider whether his solution fits the situation. He has cages, so he uses cages. Children laugh because the overreach is obvious. The sheep are not masterminds. They are simply in the way.

With ICE, the laughter drains away. When the system is built around removal, removal becomes the measure of competence. The bigger the operation, the firmer it appears. Meanwhile, communities are left tense and divided, wondering whether this display of authority has solved anything at all.

Sitting in Old Sodbury with a cup of tea, it was hard to ignore the irony. A children’s character named Trumper, dedicated to rounding up anything out of place, feels less like innocent satire and more like uncomfortable commentary. When the van and the cage become symbols of virtue in themselves, judgement has quietly stepped aside.

And that, unlike plasticine sheep, does not spring harmlessly back into shape when the credits roll.

Principle or Partisanship?

It is curious how quickly the principle of responsibility becomes selective.

When Jacob Rees-Mogg advised the late Queen to prorogue Parliament, and the Supreme Court later ruled it unlawful, nobody serious suggested Her late Majesty should have abdicated. The monarch acts on ministerial advice. Responsibility lay with those who gave it. The liar, if liar there was, owned the lie.

Fast forward. Mandelson gives assurances. Vetting is sought. On current public information there were no ignored warnings, no suppressed intelligence, no red flags knowingly overridden. Later, those assurances unravel. Suddenly we are told the Prime Minister must fall because he trusted them.

So which principle are we applying?

Either we accept that responsibility for deception lies with the person who deceives, or we invent a doctrine in which anyone who relies in good faith on formal vetting must resign the moment that trust proves misplaced.

Political accountability still sits at the top. Of course it does. But accountability is not the same as culpability. The liar owns the lie. The appointer owns the decision made on the basis of it.

If further evidence were to show that Starmer ignored clear warnings or knowingly brushed aside serious concerns, then yes, he should go. That would cross the line from misjudgement into negligence.

But deciding that he must resign now, absent such evidence, is not constitutional principle. It is tribal politics dressed up as moral outrage.

Standards either apply consistently, or they are just tribal weapons swung at whoever happens to be in office.

Winter Olympics

Every four years the Winter Olympics arrives like an unexpected house guest from Scandinavia.

It stands politely at the door, wrapped in Lycra and frost, while Britain peers out from behind the curtain and says, "Do we know you?"

The Summer Games make sense. We understand running. We occasionally do it ourselves, usually for a bus, an overdue train, or an appointment we swore was at half past. We grasp swimming. Some of us even throw things, albeit normally at the recycling bin. There is a comforting familiarity about it all.

But the Winter Olympics? That is a fortnight devoted to sliding about in specialist pyjamas on terrain we normally avoid in a Range Rover. And I must confess, I do not watch it. Not a minute. Not even accidentally while searching for the news.

I can just about process skiing in theory. Man on plank goes downhill quickly. Fine. Gravity is relatable. But luge? Skeleton? Two grown adults voluntarily launching themselves head first down an ice chute at motorway speeds on what appears to be a reinforced baking tray? I struggle to see this as sport rather than an elaborate Scandinavian insurance claim.

And then there is curling. Ah yes, competitive housework. One individual gently nudges a granite kettle across the ice while two colleagues sweep furiously in front of it as if trying to erase the evidence. I am assured this is a contest of subtle angles and tactical genius. To me it looks like a domestic mishap unfolding in slow motion.

Entire nations take this very seriously. In Norway, cross country skiing commands audiences that would make a Premier League club weep. Small children there can ski before they can spell. In Britain we close the schools at the sight of a single flake and issue stern warnings about grit supplies. Our natural winter sport is peering suspiciously at the boiler.

Interest here, when it flickers, depends on whether we have a medal hope. When Lizzy Yarnold wins gold, we are briefly a nation of aerodynamicists. When Eddie the Eagle hurled himself nobly off a ramp, we adopted him as a patron saint of pluck. But once the novelty fades, so do we.

The truth is that the Winter Olympics feels like a magnificent spectacle conducted in a climate entirely alien to the damp pragmatism of the British Isles. It is impressive, certainly. Brave, undoubtedly. But compelling to those of us whose winter athleticism extends to walking briskly to the car? Not especially.

So when the snowbound fortnight rolls around, I nod respectfully at the highlights on the news, make a cup of tea, and return to pursuits that do not involve intentional contact with ice. I leave the hurtling, sweeping and airborne theatrics to the Norwegians. They seem very keen.

It's a national disgrace that there's no 'Wrong Snow on the Railway Lines' competition.

Speed vs Accuracy

I’ve developed a small domestic ritual when it comes to UK news. If something is breaking, I go to Sky News. If I want to know whether it’s actually true, I wait for BBC.

That is not a moral judgement. It is a workflow.

Sky is like the bloke who shouts “Fire!” the moment he smells smoke. The BBC is the chap who checks whether it’s the toaster before ringing the brigade. One is fast, the other cautious. Both have a role. The mistake is thinking speed and accuracy are the same thing.

We live in an age where “breaking” has become theatre. Red banners. Urgent tones. Instant outrage. Within minutes, half the country has decided who is villain and who is victim. The difficulty is that in the first hour of any big story, facts are fluid. Context is missing. Motives are guessed at.

Even something like the current lawsuit from Donald Trump against the BBC over a Panorama edit is a neat illustration. It arrives with a ten billion dollar headline and predictable outrage. The slower reality is procedural: jurisdictional arguments, motions to dismiss, and the possibility that it may be thrown out for a number of reasons. Not least because claiming reputational and commercial harm opens the door to financial disclosure, something Mr Trump has historically treated as a guarded state secret. The bang is immediate. The substance is incremental.

Sky will tell you what is being reported. The BBC will tell you what it is prepared to stand behind.

And here is the uncomfortable truth. Caution now looks like bias to people who have already chosen their conclusion. If the BBC does not instantly frame a story in the way someone prefers, it must, in their eyes, be suppressing something. If it waits for confirmation, it must be dragging its feet.

Oh, and What Do You Do?

There is one question that arrives early in almost every conversation, usually just after names and before anyone risks saying something genuine.

“Oh, and what do you do?”

It sounds friendly. It’s anything but. It’s not curiosity, it’s calibration. A quick scan to work out where you sit, how carefully to listen, and whether this conversation is worth investing in beyond polite nodding.

We pretend it’s small talk. It’s actually shorthand. A way of skipping the messy business of finding out who someone is by jumping straight to what they’re for.

If you answer with a job title, the exchange resolves instantly. The mental filing cabinet slides open. Consultant. Engineer. Director of something with a budget. You are indexed, weighed, and assigned a default level of seriousness. You could say something quite stupid after that and still be indulged, because the label is doing the heavy lifting.

If you say “I’m retired”, the system hesitates.

Not in a dramatic way. Worse than that. In a quiet, barely perceptible way. Like a screen freezing for half a second before carrying on as if nothing happened.

Retired isn’t an identity. It’s a blank space. It tells people only that you no longer do something that can be printed on a lanyard. It collapses a lifetime of judgement, experience, mistakes, competence and scar tissue into a single administrative outcome. Formerly something. Now… nothing in particular.

You can feel yourself fade slightly at the edges.

Not shunned. Not dismissed. Just… de prioritised. The conversational equivalent of being gently dimmed. You’re still there, still pleasant, still welcome. But no longer central to the exchange. You haven’t said anything wrong. You’ve just removed the hook they were planning to hang you on.

This is where the follow up questions arrive, almost on autopilot. “Ah. Keeping busy?” “Doing a bit of travelling?” “Got any hobbies?” They are not really interested. They are fishing for something that looks like activity, something that can be weighed, ranked, or at least politely admired without effort.

Because we don’t really know how to talk to people without first establishing their status.

This is why many retired people develop a sudden and quite pronounced distaste for small talk. Not because they’ve become antisocial, but because small talk is almost entirely about hierarchy. Who does what. Who’s important. Who’s busy. Who’s still in the game. Once you’re out of it, the whole ritual starts to look faintly absurd, like watching people compare rank insignia from a war you’ve already left.

There are moments when you’re tempted to answer more honestly. “I’m on permanent standby.” Or “I’ve gone freelance on time.” Or “I no longer do anything that appears on a spreadsheet.” All accurate. All guaranteed to kill the conversation stone dead and possibly have you gently edged away from the canapés.

So you stick with “retired”. The socially approved shrug. And you watch yourself become slightly less visible in real time, like someone slowly backing out of a photograph without anyone quite noticing.

The darker joke is that nothing about you has actually changed. You haven’t lost your ability to think, judge, observe, or contribute. You just no longer come with a status badge attached, and without one, many people don’t quite know what to do with you.

This isn’t about ego. It’s about how thin our categories are. We have no decent language for people who are not currently exchanging time for money that doesn’t sound either congratulatory or faintly apologetic. Lucky you. Must be nice. As if the only meaningful thing a person can do is be busy on someone else’s behalf.

Once you notice this, you can’t unhear it. How often “what do you do?” is really “why should I care?” in a nicer jacket. How rarely anyone asks what you’re interested in, what you’ve learned, or what you’ve changed your mind about. None of that fits neatly into the social machinery of polite conversation.

So retirement doesn’t make you invisible. It just removes the costume that made you legible. And without it, you start to see how much of everyday conversation is less about connection and more about sorting, ranking, and quietly deciding who matters.

Which is why a lot of retired people stop bothering with small talk altogether. Not out of bitterness. Out of clarity. Once you’ve stepped outside the status game, watching others play it can feel less like socialising and more like loitering near a scoreboard you no longer recognise or are interested in.

“Oh, and what do you do?”

It turns out it was never a very good question. It was just a convenient one.

Clearance Is Not Judgement

Let’s keep this anchored in how the British state actually works, rather than how it is caricatured online.

Security vetting in the UK does not change with the colour of the government. UKSV, MI5 and Cabinet Office procedures are institutional. An ambassador under Labour goes through the same clearance framework as one under the Conservatives. The machinery is designed to be politically neutral.

But clearance is not endorsement. It answers a narrow question: is this person suitable to hold access to classified material at a given level? It does not answer whether appointing them is politically wise, reputationally resilient, or strategically elegant.

That distinction is where this argument lives.

Starmer has apologised for appointing Mandelson to Washington. He says he relied on Mandelson’s account of his relationship with Epstein and now regrets the decision in light of what has emerged. That does not automatically prove anyone ignored security advice. It does, however, raise a serious procedural question. Was full disclosure made? Did the vetting process have everything it needed? Were potential vulnerabilities properly interrogated before the appointment was confirmed?

Those are institutional questions, not partisan ones.

Contrast that with Johnson’s decision to grant a peerage to Evgeny Lebedev, despite reports at the time of security concerns because of his father’s KGB background. That was not a criminal case. It was a judgement call in the face of alleged caution. If concerns were raised and proceeded past, that is a conscious executive choice about risk tolerance.

Then there is Nathan Gill, convicted of taking money to promote Russian interests. That was criminal corruption, and it rightly attracted prosecution. But it did not involve control of British state machinery or access to classified diplomatic channels. Influence is not the same as executive authority.

Mandelson sits much closer to the nerve centre. An ambassador to Washington is not ceremonial. It is one of the most sensitive diplomatic posts in the system, operating at the junction of trade, defence and intelligence cooperation.

There was, to be fair, a strategic logic to the appointment. When dealing with Donald Trump, a transactional operator who respects leverage and deal-making instinct, there is an argument for sending someone equally seasoned. Set a thief to catch a thief, as the old phrase has it. Send a political bruiser who understands power games and will not be overawed.

But that logic only holds if the bruiser has no unresolved vulnerabilities. In a world of transactional politics, undisclosed baggage is not a footnote. It is leverage. And leverage in the wrong hands becomes risk.

So the core question is not whether Mandelson was cunning enough to handle Trump. It is whether the system satisfied itself that nothing in his past could be used to handle him.

Security vetting is colour blind. Political judgement is not. Clearance assesses vulnerability. Leaders decide whether to accept or discount risk.

Starmer’s apology does not prove clairvoyance was lacking. It acknowledges that the decision did not withstand scrutiny once fuller information emerged. The issue now is whether the machinery designed to surface relevant risks was given the full picture and functioned as intended at the time.

This government was elected on a promise of seriousness and competence. That promise applies most when decisions are finely balanced and reputational risk is present. The test is not hindsight perfection. It is whether safeguards were robust, advice was properly sought, and risk was weighed with sufficient caution.

The real measure is simple: did the safeguards work as designed, or did political confidence outrun institutional caution?

Shouting Like Tribes, Governing Like Coalitions

Polarisation was supposed to simplify politics. Pick a side. Nail your colours to the mast. Stop pretending everyone can be satisfied.

Instead, in Britain, it has produced something far stranger. The louder politics becomes, the broader the winning parties have to be.

Under FPTP, you cannot govern with a faction. You need 35 to 45 percent of the country. That means stitching together voters who do not agree about very much beyond a few headline issues. The compromise happens inside the party before polling day.

That is why both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party feel permanently unstable. They are not ideological movements. They are pre - election coalitions pretending to be unified tribes.

The Conservatives after Brexit had free - market libertarians, Red Wall statists, cultural traditionalists and City pragmatists under one roof. That alliance was built around a single mission. Once that mission was complete, the internal contradictions were exposed. The leadership churn was not accidental. It was structural tension meeting poor judgement.

Labour now performs a similar balancing act from a different angle. Trade unionists, urban liberals, fiscal moderates, climate activists, socially cautious ex - Tories. The arithmetic of the electoral system forces coexistence. The culture of polarisation punishes compromise. Leaders must sound absolute and govern conditionally.

Compare that with proportional systems such as in Germany. Parties like the CDU or the SPD can be more distinct. They aim for their share. The bargaining happens after the votes are counted, in a formal coalition agreement.

The compromise is visible and contractual. In Britain it is internal and personal.

But here is the crucial point. Coalition systems do not remove compromise. They relocate it. Polarisation does not remove coalition - building. It makes it emotionally harder.

Institutional design decides where the argument takes place. Leadership decides whether it looks like governance or civil war.

We complain that modern leaders seem weak. Often they are simply operating in a system that demands breadth while rewarding ideological theatre. They must hold together uneasy alliances while activists demand purity.

Polarisation promised clarity. The voting system still demands coalition. The friction between the two is where authority now goes to die.

Screw Caps

Right. So I have finally discovered why silicone sealant always ends up costing about three times what it says on the tube. It is not because the stuff is expensive, or because I apply it like I am icing a cake, or because I do DIY in the normal British way: 20 minutes of optimism followed by two days of swearing and a trip to Screwfix. 

It is because the moment you open a tube of silicone, you are no longer the owner of that sealant. You are merely the caretaker of a slow chemical process that is absolutely determined to turn your money into rubber.

And yes, before anyone starts, I did not just leave it sitting there with the nozzle open like a yoghurt pot in the sun. I did what every vaguely competent person does when they want to keep a cartridge usable. I jammed a nail in it, wrapped it in clingfilm, taped it, and generally performed the traditional rites of silicone preservation. It still set, because silicone does not respect folk remedies, no matter how confidently you apply them.

The key thing people miss is that silicone is not “drying” like paint. It is curing, which means a chemical reaction is taking place. Most household silicone is moisture curing, so it reacts with water vapour in the air and cross links into a solid rubber. That is literally the job. That is why it exists. Once you have squeezed out a bead and the sealant at the tip has met air, the reaction has started, and you have effectively lit the fuse. Blocking the opening afterwards is not the same as stopping the chemistry, especially if you have trapped a little pocket of moisture around the end.

In fact, a nail can make things worse, which is the sort of news that makes you want to sit down. The sealant cures from the outside in, so you get a plug forming at the tip. But if the nail does not seal perfectly, or if it leaves a tiny path for humid air to creep in, you have created a slow leak of moisture into a confined space. That is basically ideal conditions for curing, like a tiny damp greenhouse for polymers. Over weeks, the curing front can move deeper into the nozzle, and sometimes into the cartridge itself, until the whole thing turns into a rubber baton. You do not just lose the nozzle, you lose the tube, and you are left holding a perfectly cured product that is now only useful as a doorstop or an insult.

Clingfilm is not much better. It feels clever, because it is what you use to keep food fresh, and silicone is basically just a condiment for bathrooms. But clingfilm does not make an airtight seal on a nozzle that is already sticky, and it can trap moisture as well. So you come back a month later and unwrap a damp little parcel of disappointment, only to find the nozzle has become a solid plasticised fossil. You poke it with a nail, drill it out, cut it back, cut it back again, and eventually the hole is so wide that any “neat bead” becomes a kind of architectural extrusion.

I have tried those little caps that go on the nozzle too, and they are a lovely idea if you have never actually met silicone sealant in real life. In practice, they do not stop the nozzle curing, they simply help it cure neatly and efficiently. The nozzle still sets solid, because it is still full of sealant and still exposed to whatever air and moisture you have failed to exclude. It is like putting a hat on a man who is drowning. He looks slightly more presentable, but the outcome is unchanged.

So I assumed this was simply the way of things. Like printer ink, or washing machines that sound like a helicopter, or the fact that every “ten minute job” becomes a three hour saga involving blood. I assumed we were all meant to accept that half a tube of silicone will inevitably be sacrificed to the gods, and the only question is how quickly it happens.

And then I discovered these screw caps. Not the nozzle caps, not the little hats for the end of the applicator, but proper caps that screw onto the thread of the tube itself. Which means you can remove the nozzle entirely and seal the cartridge like a normal, civilised container, rather than a one shot dispenser designed to self destruct the moment you stop looking at it. It is such an obvious idea that it immediately raises the question: why have I never seen them before?

Because I have been to tool shops. I have bought more sealant than any household should ever need. I have watched tradesmen do this stuff in ten seconds flat while holding a coffee and a cigarette and somehow still get a perfect finish. I have never once seen someone casually whip out one of these caps and reseal a tube properly. Which suggests either it is a new invention, or it has been deliberately kept from the public by Big Sealant, who make a tidy living off the fact that we all accept waste as normal.

The funniest part is how I found out. I did not learn this from a builder, or from a DIY forum where the usual advice is to store it upside down and sacrifice a goat. I learned it by asking ChatGPT, because apparently we have reached the stage of civilisation where you ask a robot how to stop a tube of goo turning into a brick. And the robot, to its credit, did not recommend another nail. It did not recommend more clingfilm. It did not recommend prayer. It simply pointed out that there is a cap, a simple screw cap, that seals the tube properly. It has taken me 70 years to learn this.

So yes, I am buying a bag of them. I am putting them in the drawer. I will never again lose half a tube of silicone to the slow, inevitable chemistry of moisture curing cross linking, quietly turning my money into rubber while I am off making a cup of tea. If anyone asks why I am so pleased with a tiny orange plastic cap, I will tell them the truth. It is because I have finally won a long war against a tube of sealant, and that is as close to victory as British DIY ever gets.

The Hedge Fund Wing of the Pub Car Park

A new poll has broken down voting intention by education level, and the numbers are… telling. It says 42% of people whose top qualification is GCSE or lower would vote Reform, while only 13% of people educated to degree level would back Reform.

That stat is already being waved around online like a trophy. Proof, apparently, that Reform are the party of the “ordinary working bloke”, while the educated lot are too busy sipping flat whites and reading The Guardian to notice Britain collapsing.

So I made a slightly snide comment about that 13% being millionaires and hedge fund managers. Which, in fairness, was more sarcasm than sociology. Still, it landed because it pokes at something real: Reform’s loudest cheerleaders tend to be the ones with the least to lose, while the people who actually benefit from the agenda are often the ones you never see in the comments.

Then someone popped up and said, “I’ve got a degree and I’m voting Reform, and I’m not a millionaire.”

Fair enough. Degrees are not magical talismans that repel nonsense. Plenty of clever people believe daft things, especially when the daft thing comes wrapped in identity, anger, and a promise to punish the right targets.

But here’s the bit that matters. I started questioning the 13% figure because it felt a bit high. Surely anyone educated to degree level can see Reform’s policies are mostly theatre: big promises, thin numbers, and the usual magical thinking about deportations, tax cuts and instant NHS miracles. Then I realised the more interesting question isn’t who votes Reform, it’s who Reform actually benefits if they ever got near power.

Because when you strip away the pub chat, the Union Flag waving, and the endless talk about boats, what sits underneath is not a working class rescue plan. It’s the same old right wing offer, just louder. Tax cuts dressed up as patriotism, deregulation sold as “freedom”, and the state shrunk until it can no longer do anything except police the poor and subsidise the rich.

And this is where the graduate vote starts to make grim sense. If you’re educated enough to read the policies properly, you can also work out who wins. Some of those 13% won’t be voting Reform despite the economics, but because of them. If you’re already wealthy, or you expect to become wealthy, you can look at the direction of travel and think: lower taxes, fewer rules, less redistribution, more room to keep what you’ve got. You don’t have to love Farage’s pantomime to see the personal upside.

That’s why you’ll always find a slice of graduates voting Reform. Not because they’re all millionaires, but because a portion of them are comfortable enough to treat politics like a culture war hobby, and secure enough to see the economic angle as a bonus. They like the idea of a smaller state, lower taxes, and fewer constraints, and they’re far enough from the sharp end to think it will only hurt “someone else”.

Meanwhile, the people most likely to get clobbered by that agenda are the very voters Reform courts hardest. The ones who rely on the NHS, on social care, on local services that have already been hollowed out. The ones who have seen wages stagnate, housing disappear, and public services buckle. The ones who are then told, relentlessly, that the real enemy is a bloke in a dinghy.

It’s a brilliant con, if you think about it. Convince people who need a functioning state to vote for a party that wants to dismantle it, and distract them with immigration while you do it. It’s political pickpocketing. Keep them looking at the noise at the top of the screen while you quietly lift the wallet.