I’m a keen follower of politics, so when it was announced that the former Conservative minister, and former MP, Jake Berry had defected to Nigel Farage’s private limited company Reform UK Ltd it was a bit of a ‘meh’ moment. For most people, I suspect it will have been a ‘WHO???’ moment. Either way, Berry has been on what folk call ‘a journey.
His journey was from that of ardent supporter of remaining in the EU and of net zero. He was still a bit of a shit, mind you, when in 2022 as a member of Liz Truss’s mercifully brief government urged poor people struggling with utility bills to “cut their consumption or get a higher-paid job.” Stay classy, Jake. In fact, Boris Johnson thought him so classy he gave him a knighthood for “political and public service to the North of England”, or doing your job, as most of us call it. Losing his seat at the last election has persuaded ‘Sir’ Jake to join Reform UK Ltd and embrace the abandonment of net zero and the Brexit which continues to make Britain poorer and less influential in the world. His statement announcing his defection is superb. Enjoy this:
“Britain is broken. We literally live in a country where you can’t walk down the street with a phone in your hand.
“We have taxes that are so sky high that the brightest and best are leaving our country in droves, while at the same time a benefits system that is bringing the world’s poor to our shores with no control.
“If you literally wanted to design a system to destroy a country, you would struggle to do better. And I know who broke it, because I was there.”
Where to begin? I have literally just walked down the street with a phone in my hand. We have higher taxes than we used to because of the actions of the Conservative government he was closely involved in for 14 years until 2024. The benefits system does not bring the world’s poor to our shores because a) refugees and asylum seekers cannot claim benefits (or work) and b) no migrant can claim benefits without passing the habitual residents test. And the system Jake berates was indeed broken, as was the country, by ‘Sir’ Jake Berry and three prime ministers, Theresa May, his best pal Boris Johnson (who, let us remind ourselves made him a knight of the realm) and the idiot known as Liz Truss who all gave him jobs.. The sheer brass neck of the bloke. A Tory wrecker resurrected as a member of Reform UK Ltd, a company masquerading as a political party, that has done more to wreck Britain than any other.
Opportunist, unprincipled, grifter – these are words that apply to ‘Sir’ Jake, just like his fellow travellers on the far right of British politics. The best description came from a (typically) unnamed Conservative ‘source’ who said that Berry “had more positions than the karma (sic) sutra.”
Reform UK Ltd has become the home not just of cranks and fruitcakes but of failed Tory MPs. Expect Liz Truss and Suella (Cruella) Braverman to line-up behind Farage anytime soon, but not alongside him: the old narcissist wouldn’t allow anyone else to have equal billing. As someone who sees Reform UK Ltd as a new reiteration of the British Union of Fascists and Farage as a thoroughly modern Mosley, I happen to think that some of the worst people the Tory party could produce would do nothing but harm to their brand.
God knows why Reform UK Ltd is so popular with working class people. All it’s top people are privately educated and filthy rich and Reform’s policies, such as they are, would gut vital public services, especially the NHS and cutting taxes for filthy rich people like them. If working people put the likes of Berry and Farage into positions of power, I’m afraid they will deserve everything they’ll get. The rest of us, not so much.
