#takebackBritain update. We have way too many members for in-house mailmerge to work. A good problem to have. So until I settle on a good mailing platform, my update is here.
First up: thank you. Extraordinary, website-buckling response. Heartfelt, insightful messages. A wealth of talent and experience for me to tap into as we grow.
You wanted me to liaise with others and I am doing that. Met some amazing activists, organisations and politicians. It's not quite a rebel alliance. But we're getting there.
For all our massive support, we need more if we are to become 'undeniable'. #takebackBritain remains in recruitment mode at least until Christmas. Tell your friends. Sign up at reimagine.uk.com
Got some good stuff planned for early next year. Not just activism but also ideas to delight and inspire. Meanwhile, our first call to arms is below.
But first a note about protesting. Many of you who wrote to me said that you were new to activism. Me too. It's a strange feeling. Exhilarating maybe. Also sad and infuriating that it has become so necessary.
But hang onto that strange, sad, infuriating feeling. And use it. You're an activist now. And that means action.
There is no assault on our country quite like an assault on the NHS. An NHS already on its knees.
But that’s what this outrageous government wants to do with its Health and Care Bill.
We can’t fight every malicious manoeuvre, but we must fight this one.
What’s wrong with it?
The Johnson government’s NHS Bill is a Privatisation Bill.
We’ve all seen in the pandemic how bringing in private firms has wasted vast sums, and absolutely failed us as patients and as a country. What on earth are Johnson and co thinking?
Just heard Boris Johnson has morally outflanked Starmer by declaring MPs should be banned from taking consultancies, giving gigantic contracts to friends and family, selling peerages for £3m and using murky sources of cash literally to line their walls with gold.
Tomorrow there will be further announcements in which the PM will ban his government from privatising health with its NHS Bill, rigging votes with its Elections Bill, and provoking a trade war with the EU over the NI Protocol. Opposition neutered! HOWZAT!?
And in a final, poetic, stunningly strategic coup de grace, PM Johnson will refer himself to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for his hitherto unacknowledged policies of herd immunity. That'll show Starmer.
#takebackBritain update. All day, and all through the night, the emails are rolling in. I'm so glad I did it this way, with an email address, and not a form on a website. Because people are writing to me. Not just registering. They are telling me their stories.
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They are sharing their horror. Their disbelief. Their outrage. And they are speaking up for a Britain with values. Compassion and integrity and fairness and accountability. And above all honesty. There is a great Britain in their minds, and this ain't it.
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There is a future they want for themselves or their children or their grandchildren, and this ain't it. The passion is real ("I've never despised a government before.") ...
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#takebackBritain update. I'm bowled over by the emails coming in - amazing people, amazing organisations, standing by, ready to take action against this failed regime. Incredible.
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What's really striking is that so many people have taken the trouble not just to register their readiness, but to explain why. Sometimes at length. The frustration and outrage is palpable, and so well articulated.
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Taken together, these emailed letters are an indictment of our times. But they are also a measure of the true "spirit of Britain" so disgracefully appropriated by our dear leader. The true spirit is alive and motivated. Ready to mobilise and ready to roar.
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It's official: our pandemic response was horrendously, shockingly bad. We knew that, but thanks for confirming it.
But I don't buy the defence that herd immunity was the product of well-meaning "fatalistic group think". The tone for this was set by Johnson, who saw himself as
the "cloak flowing supercharged champion" of liberty in the face of "panic beyond what is medically rational". (Greenwich Speech, 3 Feb 2020)
That's not "group think" . That's one man setting a course. Right from the get-go.
One man. Insisting on fighting a virus with ideology.
And did he even learn? Again and again he denied and refused and hoped the virus would respond to his machismo. The British people suffered unimaginable loss. And after all that, what does he say? "Let the bodies pile high." His response always was, and remains, ideological.