Marching Orders?

This is no night for an ageing cripple to be out, especially when he keeps a well-stocked home, so here I am.

Reform UK is on the march here in the North East, but the march to where? Peter Hitchens has no time for those drug legalising suicide assistants, and I take his point, although I will give them that they did not vote to keep the two-child benefit cap, and that they voted against the withdrawal of the Winter Fuel Payment. 

Reform is expected to vote in favour of a Liberal Democrat motion to compensate the WASPI women, when all eyes will be on the Conservatives, who also abstained on the cap and voted the right way on a Payment that they had always made in office, but whose abstention might save the Government from defeat this time. I do wonder where all the potential Labour rebels were on the previous questions of rather clearer injustice, but, again, here we are.

As with so many things, what baffles me about Reform in general is what its enthusiasts see in it. Rupert Lowe sings the praises of Javier Milei, who firmly maintains Argentina's claim to the Falkland Islands, and Lee Anderson, admittedly articulating normal opinion in Great Britain, cannot see what is anything other than plainly and simply Irish about people from Northern Ireland. The late Queen put it better. When, if ever, did any member of the Royal Family last attend an example of "that silly marching business"?

Of course, that is the same attitude as the Labour Leadership has to the Durham Miners' Gala, which they would rather be seen dead than attending, as it would be to the Tolpuddle Martyrs' Festival if they had ever heard of it. But the people who turn up to Durham and Tolpuddle despise the Labour Leadership in return. Next year as thus, the platform stars at Durham will be Jeremy Corbyn and Jamie Driscoll. Whereas the Right is, I ask again, on the march to where, exactly?