Welcome To The Outside

Of the four remaining Labour members out of 98 on Durham County Council, two gained their seats from the Conservatives. Here at Lanchester and Burnhope, congratulations to Alison Gray. But the other, at Barnard Castle, is Chris Foote-Wood. If you know, you know.

Reform UK does not correspond to the Alternative für Deutschland, nor Nigel Farage to Călin Georgescu, although it will doubt turn out very soon that the same could not be said of some people who were now councillors. But Reform should note well events in Germany and Romania. Including the detention and deportation of Chay Bowes, which echoes the demands to shut down GB News.

In fact, does Reform imagine that it is not already subject to measures such as have just been imposed on the AfD? Those, such as Farage, with long histories in politics but not in the uniparty could not possibly be so naïve. But people new to political activism, or used to a lifetime in the Conservative Party, may well have no idea, in the way that attendees at the Countryside March thought that the lightest policing of any demonstration that any of us had ever seen, or have seen to this day, was "heavy-handed". Now as then, welcome to the outside.