I have lived in Warley for almost thirty years, and worked in and around West Bromwich for the majority of them.
I am not a career politician, in fact up until 2014, my career has been entirely in Computing.
My first employment was with Bass in West Brom, in 1986, as a trainee, I eventually worked my way up to Technical Support Manager, have since been made redundant twice (once voluntarily), and at various points, been ‘Permanent’, ‘Contract’ and ‘Part time’ employed as a Technical Consultant.
For a long time now I have been convinced that locally and nationally we are being consistently let down by our leaders, who no longer understand, or care, what the working man thinks, wants and expects from them,
– rather than simply sit and complain about what our politicians are doing, or not doing, I decided to join UKIP, and try to ‘make a difference’ myself.
I initially stood for counsellor for Bristnall(where I live), in the 2014 local elections, and despite being the first UKIP candidate to do so in this ward, achieved a relatively close second place.
I was then selected to represent UKIP in the constituency of Warley (also the constituency in which I have lived since 1990) in the General Election, held on May 7th, 2015, where I was narrowly edged out of second place.
In 2016 I stood in the Wesy Midlands Police and Crime Commission election, and received over 93,000 votes.
In 2017 I was a candidate to be the first West Midlands Metro Mayor.
I resigned from UKIP at the end of 2017, as it was clear that the party was heading down a very dark road.
In 2018 I was active within Leave Means Leave,
– heavily involved in the Brexit Party since its formation in the early part of 2019.
I love to travel, play cricket, chess, and also enjoy gardening and taking long walks and bike rides with my golden cocker spaniel, ‘Bex’ 
– I like to think that cricket has helped mould my strongly held principles of fair play, and that chess has developed my strategic skills,
There is no doubt that the ability to govern ourselves has been slowly drip fed over to the European Union, and that very soon it will reach the point where, if we don’t stop it by leaving, quite simply it will be too late,
– what we currently know as Great Britain will effectively have been dissolved/broken up, our hard fought freedoms and democracy will be lost forever, and we will simply be run from Brussels as a group of EU regions.
I believe that eventually the EU will become so large, bloated, bureaucratic and riddled with corruption that it will collapse into a bankrupt mess, leaving its member countries in exactly the same state, or the Euro currency will fail so dramatically that it brings the EU down with it,
– until that point however, if we don’t get out we will continue to pay ever increasing, already enormous sums, for the privilege of having our daily lives governed by unaccountable European Union bureaucrats, the vast majority of which we have ‘never heard of’, and almost certainly have never directly, or even indirectly been given the opportunity to vote for.
I would describe myself as a Libertarian, and a strong advocate of Direct Democracy,
– I believe that wherever possible the people should be trusted to decide their future, and the future of their nation.
It’s time to replace Political Correctness with Respect and Common Sense,
– time to replace career politicians, who have never had a real job, and are largely only really concerned with being re-elected and furthering their own career and interests,
– with people who know what it’s like to work long hours for very little pay, to go through the process of being made redundant,
– but who also happen to care passionately about this country and its future.
It’s time to replace all the lies, secrecy and spin,
– with openness and transparency, and to do this at both a local, and national level.
I want the UK to be able to trade as a sovereign nation again, and not to have to rely on EU bureaucrats and diplomats to negotiate deals with countries like the U.S. or China on our behalf, a process which can take many years, or even decades, and which, as with ‘all things EU’, is invariably conducted in total secrecy.
We can be certain of one thing only at the end of any EU negotiations, the UK will be disadvantaged financially in comparison with other more influential EU-bloc countries such as Germany and France,
– or worse, as with the highly secret TTIP negotiations (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) … our food safety, jobs, banking system, our privacy, democracy, and even the NHS will be at great risk
In summary, I am convinced that it’s time to stop our democracy being slowly taken away from us, time to stop all the most important decisions for the UK, and laws which affect us …. being made by unelected EU bureaucrats in Brussels or Strasbourg,
– and to give it back to the people, using local petitions and referenda.
I firmly believe that we should recognise and be proud of the fact that the way we govern ourselves, our Parliament and our judicial system, have rightly long been the envy of the rest of the world,
– I want all powers to govern the UK to be taken back from Brussels / Strasbourg, and to reside properly once again in Westminster, in the hands of MPs that we can vote for and replace,
– and for our judicial system to stop being subservient to the European Courts, which are normally populated by less qualified and experienced judges than we have in this country.
I want out of the European Union and all its institutions, and to be able to take full advantage of a wealth of opportunities for Britain to return to being ‘Great’ again.
The Conservatives have shown time after time that they can not be trusted, claiming to want to take back powers from the EU, whilst continuing to slowly hand over our sovereignty. They have been complicit in delaying Brexit for three and a half years, since we voted to Leave.
The Withdrawal Agreement that Boris has negotiated, just like its almost identical predecessor, aka ‘Theresa May’s deal’ has one main purpose,
– to prevent us from ‘diverging from the EU’ for many years to come, under the so-called ‘Transition Period’, meaning that ‘at a drop of a hat’… we can simply join again. For years to come the only thing that will change… is we lose our voting rights, ability to veto, and our voice.
Apparently this is ‘Getting Brexit Done’. Never have so many MPs, lied so much, to so many people in this country…. disgusting.
Labour and the Lib Dems are in favour of ‘more Europe’, not less, championing open borders and completely unlimited, unregulated migration to this country, a policy which has led to GP surgeries becoming swamped and quite simply unable to serve their communities, A and E services missing targets all over the country, road and rail travel becoming ever more under pressure and more than a quarter of parents being unable to get places in the school of choice for their children, and UK prisons overflowing, both with prisoners and drugs.
We simply will never be able to build new hospitals, roads, railways, schools, houses etc … fast enough to cope with a population increasing at a rate of around half a million a year, approximately 80% driven by immigration.
The Brexit Party is the only party which can be trusted to give the great British public what they want and deserve,
– ‘their country back’.
Pete Durnell 