Was this the biggest moment of the year?

We are all aware that all is not well in our own nation. You are right, society does need to change, but possibly not for the reasons you think. This is a political piece, it may offend you, that is not my intention.

As yet another person is murdered by ICE, and the Trump Government lie about it, attempting to justify extreme violence towards an ordinary person like you and me, calling the individual a domestic terrorist (again) as part of their plan to remove opposition or dissenting voices through intimidation, arrest and execution.

It is the total lack of remorse, accountability or integrity that is displayed. These people are who they show themselves to be, as much as some wish to pretend otherwise, they are fascists and they won’t stop grabbing power and wealth until they are ended and it won’t be by “democratic means”.

Here in the UK, thankfully we don’t have anything like the same level of weapons or guns, but remember the Reform leader and his candidates invariably support Trump or Putin in their authoritarian approach. They don’t condemn heinous crimes by them, in fact they want their own version, they want to copy it and they push false narratives about anyone not white. If anything, their push for Brexit and independence has made us more vulnerable and isolated.

I understand why poor people might feel unheard, disrespected, ignored and don’t seem to have many prospects in life, want change – but they are being lied to, that this has anything to do with skin colour or religion or people fleeing war, starvation and persecution. How things appear often isn’t how they actually are. It is the structure of society and the truly wealthy and multinational companies not contributing a fair share to the social pot. The marches and the flags are attempts to be seen, but are also designed to intimidate and threaten. This is deeply wrong and racist and not what Britain is. Our flag should be something to gather around in celebration of what we are today, not stolen by white nationalists trying to tell us what we are not. Epsom take note.

Those who are ‘well off’ (our clients) have money and financial security, with connections and a sense of place in society. Many of you pay a lot in tax, some of which I would agree is desperately unfair. However, as noted in Spotlight, tax rates are actually lower than they were 40 years ago. Our top rate of tax is 45%.

None of us like to see our money wasted, yes it is easy to spend other people’s money, yes you are not thanked properly, yes we have to acknowledge that you need to look after your own, the tax system isn’t good, it’s far from simple and far from perfect, I know that very well, but it’s that which needs to change, not simply to cut away from those who need our support so that we can have a thriving and just society.

We need entrepreneurs who create jobs and wealth and are encouraged to do so, but this should not be at the expense of people. Nobody needs a billion, nobody. Those who feel hard done by that make a lot of noise in the media really should reassess their good fortune. We also need artists, poets, carers, thinkers, therapists, medics, engineers, designers and community leaders to inspire us to better. We need proper investigative journalists to bring corruption to light and the law to act justly. We need each other – wasn’t that the learned message from the pandemic?

You know that London isn’t a war zone, that actually it’s a thriving city, in fact you prosper as it does. The only shame I feel about London is the fact that we have homeless people. They need help. We are told that we pay tax to support lazy people, yet it’s these people (people like me and you) who can largely select our hours of work for a good income. Yet the irony is that these beliefs and arguments are very reductive lazy thinking.  Granted, we may have worked hard, but we had opportunities, tools, sufficient encouragement, health and even the setbacks were things we could overcome, we don’t work 2 or 3 jobs with vile employers just to be able to feed ourselves. We have not lost any rights or advantages other than those reduced by Brexit.

Racism isn’t always deliberate or obvious, it’s born through the gradual acceptance and accumulation of bad data. We all have unconscious biases and fears. It is the continual work of character formation that helps understand ourselves and change. Often we need confronting about what we presume. It doesn’t help when we are fed easy answers to difficult problems, (who doesn’t want easy solutions!) by people who have no intention of understanding, but merely regurgitating their own badly formed opinions.

Racists eventually hate any minority in any form because they are afraid of difference. Just because Reform has some women and some non-whites in view, does not mean that they want this, as ever, it’s a means to an end (power) and if once established, you will see the same regressive policies as in the US…(yes Donald Trump does the window dressing with plastic women, he’s a salesman) which at best is a gradual removal of economic and social independence, dismantling democracy, but ends with no jobs for women, increasingly reducing their freedoms (no say, no vote, no personal property) and of course removal of anyone who isn’t on board with the white replacement nonsense. This is deceitfully packaged at true patriotism, or traditional values or even ‘Christian’. This is what far right is. Any male with a mother, sister, aunt, wife, daughter, niece or female friend should think very carefully.

There will inevitably come a point where I won’t be able to see the good in those whose default position is to defend the indefensible racist garbage, where people are viewed as non-people.

These are dreadful individuals, vile – yes that’s Trump, Farage, Musk, Theil, Fox and those that platform them and their inner circle. They don’t care about society and certainly don’t care about you and me.

There is a heap of evidence about all this, it is deeply concerning and pretending that it’s not the same here is naive – look at the way American democracy is being rapidly destroyed, listen to Mark Carney. As he said in Davos:

“We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture, we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and most to gain from genuine cooperation.”

Of course, Trump attempted to chastise Carney in his own ‘speech’, but as ever, he can barely string a few words together coherently. As Greenpeace say, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Hating is never a solution and we have a diverse group of clients who we like and serve.

Carney video: https://youtu.be/JnE2HTfDivQ?si=dz7qygn4Dfmims0W

References:

Davos – World Forum: https://www.weforum.org/meetings/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2026/

ICE Murders and detentions: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/ice-deaths-shootings-2026/

Bloomberg Billionaires Index: https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/ 

Truth about Asylum: https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/stay-informed/explainers/the-truth-about-asylum/

Myths about Refugees: https://www.rescue.org/uk/article/11-myths-and-misconceptions-about-refugees-debunked

Refugee Action: https://www.refugee-action.org.uk/about/facts-about-refugees/

UK Official statistics about asylum: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01403/

Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada: https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/about