A week before Christmas in 1968 I turned 21 and from that moment I was eligible to vote, which ironically was around the time Parliament began making plans to reduce the voting age to 18. My first time I could vote was in the May 1969 local elections, I went to vote with my dear old dad in the local church hall and, as I did for many years after that, I placed my cross in the box on the ballot paper for the Conservative candidate.
By the time I could vote in my first general election in 1970 the legislation had gone through Parliament to allow 18 year olds to vote. Now the voting age is being reduced to 16 year olds who, in law, are still classed as children and in my own view are far too immature to have a say and affect the vote, which in turn, could create massive problems for the nation as a whole and especially their parents who are still providing for them. Many of these children, who are, at that age, full of ideological dreams and little sense of reality, will no doubt be inclined to vote for the insane Green Party with its dangerous leader, Jack Polanski, whose real name is David Paulden. This is a man who has betrayed his own Jewish religion, so much so, apart from his mother, none of his family will now have anything to do with him. Such a man with so little loyalty will destroy the UK and children voting for him will not be mature enough to realise this fact.
It is sad to say that, as Nigel Farage writing in the Daily Mail on Saturday 28th March 2026 warned, that Britain's democracy is rotting from within. So when did the rot start? After centuries where the mandate was only given to a few privileged souls, over the years it was extended to the lower orders and with emancipation and other tweaks, by the time Britain went to war in 1939 we reached a democratic peak and were a truly democratic nation. Sadly, the conflict meant democracy was cancelled for the duration of the war and the nation came together to fight the evil of Nazi fascism under a coalition Government, led by one of the two really great leaders of the twentieth century, Winston Churchill, the other being Margaret Thatcher who took on the far left fascist in the trade unions who were intent to bring the nation to a standstill. She too saved the nation.
It could be said the decline in democracy in the UK began with mass immigration, thanks to the Clement Attlee Labour Government enacting the British Nationality Act 1948 which opened the way for mass immigration. In effect this Act of Parliament gave British citizenship to all who lived in the British dependent territories and the Commonwealth, some could cynically say this was the Labour's first attempt at gerrymandering in an attempt to encourage potential Labour voters to come and live here, the thinking being, as it was the Labour Party made it easy for them to come to start a new life in the UK, they would be so grateful they would vote Labour. Fortunately for the nation at the time, there were still enough Conservative voters, along with the swing voters who, after six years of the usual chaos that always come with all Labour Government's, the nation re elected Winston Churchill and the Conservative Party in October 1951. A degree of sanity returned, war time rationing went and during the rest of the 1950's Britain boomed with low regulation and the the country rebuilding after the war.
Sadly, the Conservative Party was not immune to being undermined from within, its one nation Conservative's were Liberal and many left leaning who became the problem culminating with the Heath Government, which ironically I voted for in my first general election vote in 1970. Heath was the man I later referred to as the man who gave away the country due to him being so fanatical about taking us into what we then called, the Common Market. He took us in without consulting the British people and with only a passing comment in a small paragraph in his 1970 general election manifesto. He lied when he stated: "There is no question of Britain losing essential sovereignty.", he knew full well that the aim was for Britain, as well as the other member nations, would all lose their sovereignty as the eventual aim of what is now the EU was to create a United States of Europe. Of course, thanks to him taking us in he also seriously undermined not only the sovereignty of the nation, he stole our democracy due to Heath pushing through the 1972 European Communities Act which allowed all laws made in the Common Market to override all UK laws. In reality from the start of membership in 1973 the British people were voting in elections for who they wanted to govern yet it was the unelected, European community officials, who were in reality making all our laws and regulations without the people having any say or any means of voting them out. The moment we joined the Common Market/EU by sacrificing our sovereignty we also destroyed our democracy. Instead of electing a Government to govern the nation, we were electing people to administer all laws made by those unaccountable to the British electorate on the Continent. This was not democracy but a total con!
Although, to a degree we returned to being a democratic nation once again after finally coming to our senses and, after far too many years as members, by leaving the EU in 2020, there was still a major problem created by yet another pro-EU anti British Prime Minister, which was the damaging legacy to our voting system created by Tony Blair during his constitution wrecking spree in office. By making postal voting free and easy he opened the way to fraudsters to manipulate elections, mostly in Asian families and communities where the women are treated as second class citizens and expected to be obedient to their male masters. The leaders of whole communities in certain areas decided who their community should vote for, which was until recently, more often than not the Labour Party. The postal votes would be gathered en-masse and the person whose mandate to vote on these ballot papers would have no say and their votes would be cast for them. From the moment Blair tinkered with our previously relatively safe voting system he made all elections in many areas open to fraud and manipulation. Blair has a lot to answer for in the destruction of our once sound democracy.
In recent time we have seen what is described as 'family voting', notably in the Gorton & Denton by-election where the head of an Asian family would openly instruct his wife, or wives and other family, who to vote for within sight and sound of polling station officials. The end result was a nail in the coffin for British democracy followed by a cover up and denial that family voting had taken place. Despite many witnesses being able to prove otherwise, corrupt family voting allowing the election to be won by the hypercritical Green Party candidate. Sadly, until postal voting returns to only those in most serious need and election officers are more determined to apply the voting rules in polling stations, democracy in the UK will continue to be destroyed.