BY ALEX STORY

“Are you thinking what we are thinking?” asked the billboard close to Denton town centre, close to Manchester. 

Not far from the billboard, as the Conservative candidate for Denton & Reddish for the 2005 General Election, I was talking to three ladies.

One was 28, the other 15, the last laid in a pram.

“Are you sisters?” I asked.

“No”, roared the oldest.  

Wiping tears from her eyes and much of her make-up with it, she tittered: “I’m the grandmother”.

We all laughed while I pressed a leaflet for the forthcoming election in her hand.

I didn’t give the mother one. She was too young to vote.

Be that as it may, the leaflet, probably, went straight into a bin.

And with it Michael Howard’s picture and message.

At the behest of Lynton Crosby, the Australian political strategist, the Conversative Party would fight much of the campaign on immigration.

Nationally, it was a very big change.

The general elections of 1997 and 2001 barely mentioned the topic.

In the 2001 census, 92% of people on the Island were of British descent. 1.3% of mixed parentage. Islam represented less than 3%.

In the meantime, Tony Blair threw Britain’s borders open to much of Eastern Europe in 2004. With Ireland, She was the only country to do so across the European Union.

Between 1997 and 2005, Tony Blair’s government also significantly loosened immigration policies, abolishing, among other things, “primary purpose rule” designed to stop foreign spouses joining British residents and expanding work permits.

Locally, though, immigration had been a real issue and for quite some time.

In parts of the country, there were increasing numbers of ‘no-go’ areas.

In April 2001, WWII D-day veteran, Walter Chamberlain, 76 years old at the time, was beaten up by three men of Pakistani descent in Oldham, apparently shouting “get out of our area”.

The Daily Mirror headlines screamed: “Beaten for being white: OAP, 76, attacked in Asian no-go area”.

“Race Riots” ensued.

Surprisingly, in a predominantly Muslim area, no one from the tight knit Islamic community came forward to betray their kin.

There were no witnesses. As a result, a mugging, so the judge said, it became.

In November 2005, a Jamaican girl, so the rumour went, was raped by up to “25 Pakistani men in a suburban beauty store” in Birmingham.

Another “race riot” ensued.

The institutionally revered religion of Multiculturalism was demonstrating some serious drawbacks.

Some cultures, you see, don’t mix.

However, the official cult’s many downsides hadn’t quite made it to the mainstream. Rotherham was still six years away.

Meanwhile, Andrew Gwynne, the Labour candidate for Denton & Reddish beat me handsomely.

He became the Member of Parliament for Denton & Reddish, taking 57% of the votes.

I, on behalf of the Conservative Party, received 19.3% of the votes. The Liberal Democrats came third. The turn-out was around 50%.

Fast forward two decades and Gwynne was suspended from the Labour Party. His sin: He was rude on WhatsApp messages.

Earlier this year, he retired due to ill health, opening the door to a by-election.

Over time, not much had changed but the tumour had grown fast.  

Today, nearly 30% of the total UK population are of foreign descent, more than quadrupling in 25 years.

In that time, adherents of Mohammed on the Island have more than doubled.

By 2060, it is expected that people of British descent will be a minority.

In last week’s by-election, the Greens, led by loon Zack Polanski, a pro-Islamic Jew, won with 41% of the votes, selling “global intifada”, free drugs and sex a gogo.

Matt Goodwin and Reform, for their part, took close to 29% of the votes, taking up the old Conservative mantle of immigration.

Labour came third and the Tories lost their deposit.

The turnout, at around 48%, was similar to that of 2005.

Keir Starmer made much of the Greens splitting the “progressive” vote and “sowing division”.

Keir was being selfish.

After all, the progressive mindset dominates all our institutions.

“Progressivism” is nothing more that our State cult.

There is no actual difference between Green and Labour, or any other progressive outfit for that matter.

For all of them, immigration provides temporary electoral strength.

The support they receive from it, though, is superficial, submissive and transient.

The key, to them, is political power in the short term to legislate your foes into a fossilised political corner, forever if possible.

Any alliance with anyone (the Fabian playbook) is permitted and will last so long as the target still stands.

That is why Polanski could say that “there’s no no-go areas for the Green Party”, while for Walter Chamberlain’s progeny there are increasingly more.

The enemies, the Tories “scum”, polled 70% less in 2026 than UKIP did in 2005.

If not dead, they are on life support. UKIP received 3.2% of the votes in 2005.

The “Socialist Alliance”, with all its alternatives, has succeeded in killing what was once a political giant.

Reform has already replaced the Tories in the pantheon of Progressive, “majority-of-minority”, hatred.

For Reform, though, the fate of the Tories is a cautionary tale. Fail to deliver on Immigration, writ large, and you will suffer the same fate.

Failure, for Reform, means disappearance.

Matt Goodwin, Reform’s candidate, said after the count: “I think what you’ve seen is the emergence of a dangerous sectarianism in British politics. I think the Greens are riding a very dangerous wave.”

Sectarianism, however, has in fact been embedded in our society for decades.

It is the unending flow of scandals, such as murders, thefts and rapes, that has slowly woken people up.

The State is wedded to the principle of “Multiculturalism”. Sectarism is its corollary. It is what took us to where we are.

Sectarianism is becoming ever more visible, and unpleasant. It will be difficult to defeat it at the ballot box.

In 2026, we are all thinking whatever it was that Michael Howard was thinking but that Nigel Farage is now saying.

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Alex Story is an Olympian, entrepreneur and writer on economic and social issues.