Long-standing Tory Dan Kirk who is a councillor on Skegness Town Council has quit the party and joined Reform. We join him on a stroll along the coast where he explains his decision.
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00:00So I've decided to cancel my Conservative Party membership. Now, I could set out all the reasons in a really lengthy Word document, but the reality is I don't think people would spend the time to read it, sorry Paul, but yeah, that's why I've decided to put my opinions into this video instead.
00:21What I'm going to do is explain the reasons from a national level, looking at the national situation, but also, and importantly, local issues as well that I don't think the Conservative Party have addressed in any way, shape or form.
00:38Now I don't mean this is not going to be a toxic video, of course not, I will be naming specific people and specific councillors because I think it's really important to share the overall picture, but yeah, I'm going to offer my opinions and hopefully you'll understand the reasons for doing so.
00:56For the two people that want to get a bag of popcorn, be my guest, but for the rest of you, you probably want to watch this at one and a half speed, why not, and yeah, I think I'll go for a walk, get a clear picture of what I want to say, and yeah, I'll take you along with me.
01:16So why did I join the Conservative Party in the first place? Well, this was at a time when the Labour government were giving away free laptops to people, and when I was in the first year of when tuition fees were brought in for university students.
01:43And yeah, if you ever wondered why there were so many low-spec Acer Aspire laptops for sale on eBay, then yeah, that's the Labour government to thank for that. So I thought, there's no point being a keyboard warrior, because obviously social media was starting to get a bit more popular then, I thought I'll see what it's all about, and I joined.
02:06I was asked if I would like to stand for town council, and well, I thought, what have I got to lose, I was a paper candidate, and yeah, for some reason, some people voted me in.
02:20So why the change of heart? Well, it was a huge shock to the Conservatives out for Boston and Skegness when Richard Tice got elected as MP. We didn't think it would happen, you know, one of the safest seats in the UK, and boom, yeah, pretty successful result for Richard, and well deserved too.
02:47I decided to follow him, because at the end of the day, he's representing our area, I need to know what's going on, and he was speaking a lot of truth.
03:00So I dug into the manifesto of reform, and you know what, taking thousands of people out of income tax thresholds and making work actually pay, that was a true Conservative message. I thought, hmm, that's a bit interesting.
03:20Another surprise, well, probably not a surprise, but one of Richard's first speeches in the Commons about the rental market and housing crisis for young people, and you know, he made a very eloquent point that the reason why rent is going up and up and up and demand is increasing
03:47is because, well, the supply has been attacked and battered by Conservative policy, and Labour don't seem to be doing anything about it either, you know, they're going to impose Band C for EPC certificates, what's that going to do?
04:05It's just going to force people to sell their rental properties, which increases the rent prices, people then can't get on the property ladder because they're paying too much in rent, it spirals out of control. It's absolutely crazy. And he keeps speaking a lot of sense and core Conservative values to me.
04:28Now one of my quite well-educated friends introduced me to a term DINK, it's an acronym that's dual income, no children, and we're in a bit of a crisis actually when it comes to birth rate here in the UK.
04:48We can't rely on migration, well that's what we've been doing for, well, decades now, and the reality is we've got lots of dual income couples that are deciding not to have kids because of the expense, there's no support, sure there's a bit more free childcare places, but those places just don't exist.
05:13The nurseries can't afford to provide places for the fees that they're able to draw down from the government. We need some serious reform to entice young couples, millennials, Gen Zers, that actually having a family is fantastic, and it's also doing you a part for king and country.
05:35It's just, they're choosing not to for the obvious financial reasons. So yeah, there's lots of reasons nationally, but let's look at the MPs themselves.
05:47Now, you've got the current leader of the Conservative Party. You know, the reality is the majority of Conservative Party members did not vote her to be a leader.
06:02In my opinion, a good leader is chosen by the people. They don't manoeuvre in the background to try and take out their competition and backstab here and, you know, to me that's not what a good leader should be all about.
06:22Are there any people currently in Parliament that are nothing other than career politicians? I don't know. I don't really pay a huge amount of attention to them, to be honest, because they're not inspiring.
06:35Yeah, they might budge the price of beer a penny here and there and two pence a litre of petrol, but that's not going to make any difference. We need radical, big decisions, and it's just not happening currently in the UK.
06:54So that's one reason why I just don't align, or I don't align as much as I used to with Conservative policy. I'm just going to wait here for a few moments.
07:06So let's discuss a bit more locally then, what's happening locally within the Conservative Party. Now I said I don't intend to be toxic or anything like that, but I do need to point out some individual names because the electorate needs to know what happens.
07:34Let's start with the Lancashire County Councillors. So right at the top, North, Colin Davey. I don't really know a huge amount about him, to be honest. I know he's a career, a stereotypical career politician.
07:47A really nice salary that goes with it, plus expenses. What has he actually done, other than the Gateway project and that billboard that rotted away to oblivion?
08:02And then we've got Carl Macy. Now, as a councillor for the people of Skegness, he's done a really good job. I'm not going to beat around the bush about it. He's followed things up, he's got in contact with officers, he's helped resolve lots of matters, things like traffic regulation orders and all these sorts of good stuff.
08:32But as a Conservative councillor, all he cares about is towing the party line and it needs to stop and we need to have a shake-up. He was arguing that black was white when we were trying to ascertain who was responsible for the brick wall around the clock tower.
08:55He was adamant it was East Lindsay, arguing with his colleagues left, right and centre, his Conservative councillors, that now it's got nothing to do with LCC. Well, it was. It just delayed matters.
09:09And then we've got Sue Nutman. Well, she's been completely absent from Skegness since she got elected, let's be perfectly honest. How can you think that that's acceptable?
09:27And about a year ago now, the Boston and Skegness Association, it was time for re-selection of candidates and I was a bit annoyed with the fact that Sue was doing literally nothing in Skegness at all. It was Carl that was taking the slack for the entirety of Skegness, that's not right.
09:52And I decided to stand against her. The first set of selection, did my speech to the Executive Council and, yeah, I got approved.
10:06Only the issue was, through some Conservative rules, it was rescinded, that decision was rescinded. That's absolutely fine, not a problem. I thought there's no way that people could support somebody that's literally completely absent from Skeg.
10:27But, yeah, general election came, huge shake-up, thank you very much. That postponed the re-selection committee. So I put my name down again and this time there was plenty of whipping and manoeuvring going on.
10:48The old guard of the Skegness and Boston Association decided not to rock the boat. Oh, don't worry, we lost this general election. I don't think they've ever lost a general election in their lifetimes, to be honest, but yeah, that's fine, we'd lose a general election.
11:04We don't need to change. We'll stick with what we know, safe Sue. And, well, how was that? Fine, no problem.
11:16So we fast-forward to now and receive notification that Sue's no longer standing. She's had a bit of pressure put on her to deliver. Hey, off he goes.
11:34All right then, come on. It's too late now. So, yeah, I've decided to reapply, seeing as how Sue's now dropped down and, you know, again, there's a bit of manoeuvring in the background.
11:56And I decided to not pursue it because, to be fair, there's a couple of half-decent candidates that I know that would do a pretty good job at Lincolnshire County Council, so I decided, you know what, it's not a battle for me.
12:14I'm more interested in unity, and that is the name of the Conservative and Unionist party at the end of the day. We need to be together as a team. A few days of thinking about it, I just don't think that's the case, to be honest.
12:32And then we've got, you know, Wendy Beaucat. She does quite a lot of work for Wainfleet, don't get me wrong, she's quite well liked. But when challenged about the state of the A52 Wainfleet bypass, that it's literally a rattle trap, she just said it's absolutely fine.
12:54The whole point is, all of these Lincolnshire County Councillors, Conservative Lincolnshire County Councillors, all just stick together, follow the status quo. Why? Because they get a whacking great big salary for doing so. And expenses, of course.
13:10And if they tow the pilot line, they might be offered a chairmanship of a non-important committee of some kind. That's another cushty thousand, few thousand pounds in a bank. So, you know, that can all be taken away.
13:30I'm not saying that these people aren't worth, you know, a Councillor isn't worth paying, because you know what, some people do work a lot of hours. Anton Danny is well liked in Boston and seems to be doing a pretty good job, for example. But if they're not towing the party line, they're shut out. Needs to change.
13:54We've got a couple of years of Lincolnshire County Council left before it gets consolidated into a Lincolnshire Unitary Authority. Thank goodness. Let's shake up the career politicians that have had it quite cushty for the past few decades.
14:12So, yeah, that's local. That's my reason why, locally, I think it's time for me to give up being a Conservative. I may upset a little bit, but if I'm being perfectly honest, there are plenty of other things out there that are more inclined to my way of thinking.
14:36So, closing thoughts then. If you've managed to get it this far into the video, my God, thanks. But, yeah, I'm going to cancel the membership and I'm going to join an organisation that best represents my views and, in my opinion, that's going to do a better job at sorting the country out and Lincolnshire in Skegness.
15:06Thank you very much for watching and, yeah, I'll speak to you soon.