Michael Pudney

Business Consultant,Political Activist.Proud.Compassionate One Nation Tory believing in Social Justice for [email protected] Conservative Alumni

[Kevin Hollinrake MP @kevinhollinrake]

🚨 Yorkshire Water’s CEO took home £1.6m last year – including undisclosed payments from its parent company.

For a monopoly with ongoing pollution & service issues, this is unacceptable. I’m demanding full transparency & a review of exec pay. 👇

#Accountability

[Johnny Mercer @JohnnyMercerUK]

Apologies for not responding to media requests today. Here is a statement:

[Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson]

Very persuasive film. The regulatory burden for new houses also deters small companies and consolidates power of the big five builders.

[Simon Clarke @SirSimonClarke]

Delighted to announce @UKOnward are partnering officially with the @Conservatives on the housing questions of the Party’s policy review.

We’ll be supporting @kevinhollinrake to come up with the best answers.

Let's make the centre-right the home of the builders again!

[Charlie Mullins OBE @CharlieM_OBE]

Devastated to discover my apprenticeship training scheme has been scrapped and all the apprentices @PimlicoPlumbers let go by the American corporation that bought the company.
https://t.co/k9OGVeSczR
@reformparty_uk @GBNEWS @SkyNews
@UKLabour [And the reasons given include NI & minimum wage hikes]

At @WeFix_London we are taking on as many as we can, but very demoralising and another reason why I regret selling the company.

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

I have received countless questions on my recommendation for who to vote for this Thursday, and I have thought long and hard about the answer. Here is my honest assessment:

For months, I pushed Reform to propose radical, but credible policies. To detail it, with substance and costings. Write it down, produce policy documents. I was mocked and ignored. I hoped that there might be some form of plan for these elections, maybe a well-thought out policy or two? To even go as far to write a proposal - not thrown together on a flashy social media graphic, but in properly constructed sentences on an actual document. None came. Nothing.

All we get, day after day after day, is glossy pictures of Nigel Farage. No manifesto, just an empty promise that ‘Reform will fix it’. HOW? Please, tell me how? If I have to watch another overproduced video of Farage, I’ll vomit turquoise coloured confetti. Sweeping shots, backed by booming dramatic music, of the man going about mundane campaigning activities. It’s a parody. Where is the policy?! All we get is vacuous bull, piled on top of more vacuous bull - purely designed to pump up Farage’s ego at a time when British airspace is already dangerously full.

I’m not interested. I want numbers, detail, substance. A plan.

When even vague policy has been discussed by Reform, what happened?

In January, when Farage announced that Reform would hold an inquiry into the rape gangs - I was so proud to be a Reform MP. Using our parliamentary platform in order to deliver justice. Launching a campaign that would bring real change for thousands of victims. We gave those women and their families genuine hope. What did Farage do? He took the credit, did the media rounds, got his social media views and then dumped the idea. With no explanation, and with no apology. It makes my skin crawl.

I felt so ashamed to have been a part of that vile circus act. I still do. It’s just not how I operate. I am sorry for my role in it. As you know, I have worked so hard over the last month attempting to repair that mistake through launching our own inquiry. What was Farage’s response to that fundraising effort from almost 20,000 supporters? He said there’s ‘no point’. Class, he certainly lacks.

Then on deportations, amazingly Farage won’t commit to deporting all illegal migrants - he still refers to those ‘that enter’, future tense. Every illegal migrant living in the country must go. We don’t need clever word play, we need categorical commitments. As you know, Farage personally instructed me to remove the term ‘mass deportations’ of illegal migrants from my speech. He calls it a ‘political impossibility’, and ‘a very grave, dark and dangerous use of language.’

Reform even blocked me on their social media channels for quoting Farage’s own words on this. A party of supposed ‘free speech’ should be willing to take some mild criticism from an independent MP, surely?

I tabled a motion in the Commons calling exactly for the mass deportation of all illegal migrants.

Has Farage signed it? Tice? Anderson? No. None. More Conservative MPs have supported my mass deportation motion than Reform.

Please listen to me when I say this - Reform’s leadership does not share the opinions of the membership on so much of such importance. Perhaps most concerningly? Farage alarmingly states if we ‘politically alienate’ the whole of Islam, we ‘will lose’. Think very carefully about what he is saying here.

My view? There needs to be an honest national debate around the influence of Islam, and how it is shaping our way of life against the wishes of the vast majority. Farage does not share that opinion, and pushes the same crippling cowardice that has allowed our civilisation to be held hostage out of fear of offending one religion - Islam.

British values need to be robustly and courageously defended, even if that results in unpleasant insults of racism and ‘islamophobia’ from an establishment that will always hate us. I don’t care about that. Sadly, Farage does and that fear shapes him.

The Reform suggestion of ‘Net Zero’ immigration is entirely inadequate - that would still be accepting hundreds of thousands of migrants into the country every year. For the foreseeable future, there needs to be significantly more people leaving the UK than entering. Not just including the removal of illegal migrants, but also those who came legally yet have failed to uphold their end of the deal.

Again, just more Reform pandering to the ‘middle’ ground of politics. We don’t need additional centrist rot. We need radical change. Reform does not offer that, and it’s getting softer every day.

I won’t dwell on my own experience with the exit from Reform - you all know what happened. I want to focus on policy and substance.

So please tell me, where are the comprehensive local election policies? On potholes, social care, high street renewal, bins, public transport, housing policies, education, SEND support, children’s care, planning, business rates, parking. I could go on. Can you name one proper detailed local election policy? I can’t.

These local councils really matter - they play a huge part in all of our lives.

I simply cannot endorse a party that has put so frighteningly little thought into what it would actually do with power. Reform’s plan is to ride the protest wave, faced with two obscenely unpopular mainstream parties, but offer absolutely nothing constructive - chasing power for the sake of power. To ‘win’ the game, and it is a game to them.

Reform leadership has treated its own membership like dirt - dictated to them, ignored them, used them. Central planning doesn't work in politics any more than it worked in the Soviet Union. Real movements trust their people. Reform does not. Members cast aside, failing ‘vetting’ for no good reason, woeful delegation. The branches are what makes a political party. The work is done on the streets, not in some flashy London office. Reform members are good, honest people - they deserve better.

Great leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.

In Reform, there is space for one, and only one. There can only ever be one.

For years, people on our side of politics voted for the ‘least worst option’. It got us nowhere. I don’t see any point doing it again - principles matter. Would I vote for Reform? No, is the honest answer. Britain doesn’t need a protest, it needs a plan - Reform has not presented anything near one. A vote for Reform on Thursday is an endorsement of their condescending electoral strategy, fuelled by arrogance, rage and ego - not a genuine passion for any radical change.

Reform is not the answer.

This is not a General Election. Vote for a candidate who cares about your local community, and has considered/presented credible policies on how they can actually benefit your area. I wouldn’t worry too much about the colour of the rosette this time - do what is right for your community. It’s not ‘letting Labour in’. Labour is in. And will be firmly ‘in’ until 2029. Nothing that happens this week will change that.

At the time of these elections, I will be an independent MP - it will not remain that way forever.

There will be an alternative to Reform, I promise you that.

[Andy Street @andy4wm]

Seeing Birmingham’s reputation in the mud again because of the strikes is deeply depressing.

So many did so much to change Brum’s perception, and now that’s all being undone.

But Brummie believers please don’t lose hope. Our city will bounce back, & it’ll need us more than ever

[Julian Ellacott @JulianEllacott]

Well well well…all is not well here. Reform is clearly not a democratic or grassroots led party…

[Tory Reform Group @ToryReformGroup]

The @ToryReformGroup is celebrating fifty years in 2025! #TRG50

Join us for our first TRG@50 event with one of our longest standing MP patrons, Richard Fuller CBE MP!

Tickets and details below:

https://t.co/IberCJFLLG

[Rishi Sunak @RishiSunak]

Later this year, Akshata and I will launch The Richmond Project - a new charity focused on improving numeracy.

Confidence with numbers transforms lives. It unlocks opportunity, fuels social mobility, and helps people thrive. But right now, too many struggle.

More to come soon.

[Johnny Mercer @JohnnyMercerUK]

Leaving Kyiv tonight.

They’re not going to fold. They have a thirst for freedom not fully understood back home.

A decisive time for them, and a decisive time for us. Even if we’re the last ones standing, we should not abandon our support for them and what they stand for. 🇬🇧🇺🇦

[Owen Meredith @owenlmeredith]

I’ve written for ⁦@ConHome⁩ about the #MakeItFair campaign which launched today and why defending property and our culture heritage against Labour vandalism should be a basic Tory aim | Conservative Home https://t.co/ChV4cMg6dO

[James Cowling @JamesRCowling]

Barcelona has 5-6 story blocks across the whole city.

It’s full of younger people. Rents affordable, high streets are viable, no 1 hour commute.

If the UK is going to build on greenfield, why not this rather than boxy sprawl?

[Tory Reform Group @ToryReformGroup]

We’re adding our voice to the growing demands for the Government to rethink on #Chagos

https://t.co/SHq1S7bU8w

[David Cameron @David_Cameron]

Nothing can ever prepare you to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau. My own visit will forever remain etched on my memory.

On this #HolocaustMemorialDay - also marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of that heinous place - let us commemorate the 6 million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust; remember the horrors that took place during humanity’s darkest hour; and when the scourge of antisemitism is alarmingly on the rise, renew our pledge to continue educating others about the evil that was the Holocaust; the need to stand up to hatred; and why we must never stop saying loud and clear: #NeverAgain.

[Kevin Foster @kevin_j_foster]

There are plenty of things @LukePollard and I disagree on, yet he is right to say a new combined authority covering #Devon & #Cornwall would be the best option for our region, given the Govt has indicated we must have a mayor. #TorbayHour #ElectedMayor #BoostTorbay

[Ben Howlett @benhowlettuk]

10 years ago I walked into No.10 to discuss social care reform with then Prime Minister, David Cameron - not much has changed. We don’t need to wait until 2028 to deliver reform, in 2025 @CuriaUK will be setting out plans for what @DHSCgovuk can do in 2025 to support the system.

[Michael Pudney @MPudney]

Buy cheap train tickets | Great Western Railway https://t.co/oTtzzQzaEU

[Ben Howlett @benhowlettuk]

Flatlining economy, unemployment on the rise, cost of living still high, expensive travel costs and struggling public services, but don’t worry politicians are rambling on about bloody soggy sandwiches - completely out of touch - get a ruddy grip! 🤦‍♂️

[Next Gen Tories @NextGenTories]

ReGeneration - our new nationwide campaign for renewal.

🌳The Next Gen Network - bringing together a new generation of leaders.

📈 A new advisory board to scale NGT’s mission.

💡New policy and media campaigns, moving the party towards winning the next election.