Election ’23 statement – UK Reform Party

There are two smaller parties with their hat in the ring for the West Berkshire Council elections.

Aside from John Gotelee who is standing as an independent, there are two candidates from Reform UK and one from the Heritage Party.

James Andrew Anfield  and Jose Ferriera are both standing for the Reform UK party.

They have targeted Newbury’s Greenham and Speen wards.

Speen is one of the more hotly contested wards, and has the current West Berkshire Council leader as the incumbent, fighting for her seat.

It has with eight candidates after two seats.

James Anfield is a newbie to the election circuit – this is his first time.

“It seems to me that all of the main parties are basically one party wearing different colour rosettes so I want to offer something different,” he said.

“I have no idea what chance we have in these local elections. Reform is only recently converted from the BREXIT party and does not have the hundreds of years of party apparatus built for us so we will just have to see how things develop. I am very positive about our chances over the long term.

“I grew up in Newbury and I moved back here around nine months ago after working in Manchester for a decade so it seemed a good place to stand as it is home to me.”

Like most of the other parties and candidates he wants to sort out the pot holes.

“I will oppose the imposition of low traffic neighbourhoods (LTN) or similar schemes that penalise motorists,” he added. “I will also oppose any imposition of discriminatory quotas such as gender or racial quotas within local government – these are becoming popular in local authorities. 

“As of yet I have not heard of these proposed in Newbury and I wish to keep it that way.”

He also opposes “smart” motorways and other such schemes which he says are typically designed to use motorists as a cash cow, often make roads more dangerous – such as removing hard shoulders – and simply increase surveillance on the general public.

Despite the new post-BREXIT party name he says people have so far been polite and friendly on the campaign trail.

Politics is a new thing for Mr Anfield who teaches English as a foreign language online.

“I got into politics because we are in a mess in this country,” he said.

“I was completely uninterested in politics up until the last five years and I voted remain in the referendum but since then the punitive and underhand way that both the EU and the hardcore remainers have acted have turned me into a staunch Brexiteer and the rise of the woke, socialist identity politics into our mainstream is something which is hard for anyone to ignore so I decided to look for people who were offering real solutions to our country’s problems and found Reform.”