Rowan swallow

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@ZubyMusic How about how they act in traffic?

[BootneckMajor 🇬🇧 @BootneckMajor]

The Steak Bake Battalions

I have said it for years.

The men who will save this country can be found every morning, from six until half past eight, at almost every Greggs in the land.

They are there before the office lights come on. Before the besuited pen-pushers arrive for their lattes. Before the morning fills with pushchairs, school runs and meetings about meetings.

They are already awake. Already moving. Already at work.

You will know them.

Men in high-vis and cargo shorts. In battered work trousers and steel toe-capped boots. Sometimes in hard hats. Paint-spattered. Plaster-caked. Oil beneath their fingernails. Bags beneath their eyes.

They queue for coffee, bacon rolls and Steak Bakes.

The banter is merciless. The humour is dark. The language is occasionally appalling. But the fellowship is real.

They are the grafters.

Tradesmen. Engineers. Drivers. Fitters. Welders. Bricklayers. Scaffolders. Electricians. Plumbers. Mechanics. Machine operators. Small businessmen. Employers and employees.

Working-class men. Middle-class men. Englishmen, Scotsmen, Welshmen and Northern Irishmen.

British men.

While much of the country still sleeps, they are leaving their wives, their children and their warm homes. They climb into cold vans. They drive through darkness and rain. They go where the work is.

They build Britain.

They keep the lights on and the water flowing. They repair the roads. Raise the scaffolding. Lay the bricks. Weld the steel. Fix the boilers. Clear the drains. Restore the roofs. Mend what is broken.

They rarely appear on television.

Nobody invites them onto fashionable panels. Nobody asks what they think. Nobody in Whitehall seems particularly interested in whether they can afford another van, another apprentice or another year of taxes, regulations and rising costs.

Yet without them, the country stops.

Completely.

These are the descendants of the men of Agincourt and Waterloo. Of the Somme and Dunkirk. Of D-Day, Korea, the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not trained soldiers, most of them. But recognisably of the same temper.

The same stubbornness. The same humour in adversity. The same refusal to make a song and dance of hardship. The same instinct to shoulder the load, finish the job and look after the man beside them.

They carry an inheritance shaped across centuries. Celt and Pict. Roman and Saxon. Viking and Norman. Generations forged by cold seas, hard ground, long winters, dangerous work and war.

Their forebears built ships, railways, bridges, factories and cities. They crossed oceans. They defeated Napoleon, Hitler and Galtieri. They created an empire of extraordinary reach and consequence, and then spent British blood and treasure destroying the slave trade across much of the world.

They were not flawless men. No nation is flawless.

But they were formidable.

And these men are formidable still.

They are not extremists. They are not fanatics. They do not spend their days raging online. Most ask for very little.

A fair wage. A decent home. Safe streets. A future for their children. The freedom to speak plainly. And a country that remembers who built it.

But beneath the dust, the laughter and the apparent indifference, something remains.

A deep attachment to home.

A quiet patriotism.

A line that can be pushed only so far.

When this country finally decides that mass immigration must end, that integration must mean something, that borders must be real and that Britain must remain recognisably British, it will not be delivered by consultants, commentators or career politicians.

It will be delivered by the people who already carry Britain on their backs.

They are out there every morning.

Millions of them.

Waiting patiently in the half-light. Vans lined along the kerb. Engines ticking. Reflective jackets catching the first grey light of dawn.

Coffee in one hand. Steak Bake in the other.

The backbone of Britain.

The Steak Bake Battalions.

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@WasAcop @donmcgowan 60000 ?

Great at maths, poor at counting.

[D. Scott @eclipsethis2003 @eclipsethis2003]

Absolutely STUNNING sight as seas of proud British surge to the streets of London for Unite the Kingdom rally.

Keir Starmer says ALL of them are right-wing extremists.

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@HumzaYousaf So all 12 have been released without charge. Turns out flying a drone isn’t terrorism.

The prayer gathering was organised by an Islamist terror group which is banned in several countries including Saudi Arabia.

Any kind of retraction from you sir?

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@campbellclaret @andyburnham So will we get to vote on whether we want these policies?

Isn’t that how Democracy works?

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@RmSalih @NJ_Timothy I needed a piss before I could find a toilet,so I just pissed up the side of mosque.

If you think that’s Islamophobic, you’re just paranoid.

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@narindertweets @CraigMurrayOrg So a guy was almost beheaded in the street a few days ago,

Little girls were butchered in Southport,

Teenage girls were blown up at a concert,

Girls up and down the country raped,

But THIS is the saddest thing you’ve seen?

Morally bankrupt.

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@AndrewHWestern @campbellclaret So the Henry Novak killing would have passed by and nobody would have been bothered about it , unless these people told them to be outraged?

You’re delusional.

Perhaps start dealing with the problems rather than smearing anyone who notices the problems.

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@AndyBurnhamGM If you’re elected, and if the pm is removed from office or resigns, would you commit to a general election?

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@annaturley And maybe you should be focused on making Britain better for British citizens.

The truth is very simple…… if labour did a good job, no one would want to vote for reform.

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@JoeleTax188567 @Femi_FPolitics Trying to explain nuance to @Femi_FPolitics ……good luck with that!

[Alex Napier Holland 🦍 @NapierHolland]

@Femi_FPolitics Most European healthcare systems are more privatised than the NHS — and superior.

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@AngelaRayner Have you ever run a business @AngelaRayner ??

Also, do you have any GCSE’s?

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@JohnD82602 @KimIversenShow @OzraeliAvi Personally, I would fight to protect my homeland then try to rebuild it.

What i wouldn’t do is leave my wife and children in that Homeland and pitch up in the aggressors country and claim benefits from them.

But that’s just me.

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@GunterFehlinger @elonmusk @X Should we ban and censor some one and take his company and then control the speech that’s used on that platform, in the name of free speech?

You’re either a moron or simply evil.

Or possibly both.

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@LBC @lewis_goodall Always willing to debate and have discourse?? You turn off replies to every tweet. You avoid questions about grooming gangs. One only need watch you in the London assembly to know this is bs

You’re a disgrace and a liar and the worse thing that has happened to London. They

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@thom_brooks @Keir_Starmer I do love a good parody account

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@DavidLammy Was it in your manifesto? Did people vote for it? Have you polled to see if the people that you’re supposed to serve want it?

Your job is to do what we want. You and your comrades would do well to remember that.

It’s called democracy

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@dave43law @Nigel_Farage Was cancelling trial by jury in labour’s manifesto?

[Rowan swallow @rowansco]

@Keir_Starmer Dude, no one believes you.