Footage of online meeting showed Kent county council leader remonstrating with councillors

Earlier I pointed out that, in his Today interview this morning, the Reform MP Danny Kruger was strangely reticent when it came to explaining why the size of the civil service has grown so much in recent years. (See 11.09am.)

In his speech this morning Kruger was a bit more forthcoming. He said:

Let me be very clear. The growth of the civil service will be reversed. After falling in the wake of the global financial crisis, the headcount of the civil service rose again after Brexit – shame on the Tories – and it passed 500,000 in 2023.

Nothing works properly. It’s impossible to build anything. The streets are dirty and unsafe. Taxes and prices are far too high. Immigration is changing our country for the worse and far too fast. And we’re becoming poor, sick and unhappy. There is a malaise over Britain.

These problems are complex. But the effective cause of them is simple. Since 1997 we have had governments that, firstly don’t share the attitude of the country they govern, and secondly, they aren’t properly in charge of the state.

This announcement only reinforces climate policy as a dividing line in our politics, rather than being the unifying issue it once was.

And, for the Conservative party, it risks chasing votes from Reform at the expense of the wider electorate.

By undermining the judiciary we further erode public trust in the institutions of our democracy and therefore in democracy itself.

So I say to those seeking to villainise a judiciary that cannot easily answer back, who wilfully discredit our legal system for their own expediency – it’s time to show responsible leadership.

This is not just about short-term decisions to make it easier to deal with public concerns about immigration.

Our support for human rights has its origin in Magna Carta. How we deal with issues of human rights is fundamental to our ability to deal with autocracies and dictatorships.

In the world of power where the club of strong men want to carve the world up in their own interests, populism and polarisation are enablers.

And those politicians in the Western world who use populism and polarisation for their own short-term political ends risk handing a victory to our enemies.