The Glorious Past Wasn’t That Glorious - And It’s Not Where Our Future Lives

You don’t build a better future by walking backwards into it.

“Inch by inch Reform UK will reset Britain to its glorious past” - a comment which, honestly, has me shaking my head in a bit of confusion.

This comment has come from Dame Andrea Jenkyns, the newly minted Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire for Reform And while I’m sure she believes it - perhaps with the kind of conviction that comes from watching too much GB News, the question that immediately springs to mind is: what past, exactly, are we resetting to?

Because when people say things like “Make Britain Great Again” or “I want my country back”, or they pine for a “glorious past”, they’re not referencing an actual, specific era. They’re summoning a vibe - a sort of hazy, nostalgic, Union Jack-soaked fever dream where everyone knew their place, everything was cheaper, and the trains definitely still ran on time (spoiler: they didn’t).

I would also like to make an important distinction at this point - this isn’t conservatism. It’s not about carefully preserving what works. It’s Regressivism - a political movement built entirely around going backwards. Back to before what, exactly? Before EU membership? Before women’s rights? Before the NHS? Before brown and gay people got a bit too comfortable?

That “glorious past” wasn’t all teacakes and village fêtes (though of course, there were plenty of those - and they had their charm).

It was also smog, strikes, and slums. Section 28 and state-sanctioned discrimination. It was institutional classism, a glass ceiling reinforced by gender and race, crumbling industry abandoned by those in power, and a global empire maintained by force and brutality. It was a world where opportunity was rationed, often arbitrarily, and freedom was conditional - on where you were born, who you loved, how you prayed, or the colour of your skin.

Of course, there were things worth remembering - thriving communities, a strong post-war safety net, a time when good union jobs sustained entire families. There was real pride in public service, and a belief that government could and should work for ordinary people. But let’s not confuse that with utopia.

So yes, there are lessons to draw from our past. But nostalgia isn’t a blueprint. It’s a comfort blanket. And if we’re honest, this yearning to “reset” Britain doesn’t stem from a plan to build something better - it stems from a refusal to imagine anything new.

I’ll also admit that there is real frustration out there. People are tired. Fourteen years of Tory governments have delivered austerity, broken services, stagnant wages, and endless crisis. Labour has come in and for all their best intentions, feel like they’ve stalled. People want change. Deserve change.

The problem is though, that Reform aren’t offering change. They’re offering recoil - a desperate lurch away from modernity, from nuance, from complexity.

Just yesterday, off the back of taking overall control of a few local councils, Nigel Farage declared that anyone working in those councils on climate change or diversity “needs to find new careers.”

Not a word about governance, service delivery, or community outcomes. Just a gleeful purging of the very people trying to address two of the defining challenges of our time: the rapidly heating planet and the basic human right to be included.

This isn’t reform. It’s retaliation.

And it’s built on a false diagnosis. The UK is not in political and social malaise because someone added pronouns to their email signature or put solar panels on the leisure centre roof.

It’s in malaise because we’ve had fifteen years of stagnant wages, soaring inequality, threadbare public services, inaccessible housing, and a political class that too often speaks at people instead of to them. We’ve had scandal after scandal with little consequence. We’ve seen Brexit weaponised and mishandled. We’ve lived through a global pandemic where contracts were handed out like raffle prizes to donors and mates.

People feel disillusioned because trust has been eroded - not by inclusion officers or climate strategy leads - but by those in power who promised better and delivered worse.

And yet, into that vacuum steps Reform UK, waving the Union Jack and promising a return to something simpler - easier. But scapegoating marginalised people or those trying to futureproof policy isn’t just lazy, it’s dangerous. It’s the politics of resentment dressed up as revolution. A reset that doesn’t fix anything - it just deletes the progress we’ve made.

And here’s a very uncomfortable truth: if Reform ever did take real power, I’d probably be just fine. I’m a white, educated, high-earning, middle-class gay man. I tick enough of the right boxes to avoid the worst of it. I might even benefit. But that’s exactly why I don’t trust it. Because the cost of my comfort would be carried by others - by those who aren’t in the club. And that’s not a future I want any part in.

The long and short of it is that, yes, we do need reform. Just not Reform.

The future we need won’t come by rewinding the clock - it’ll be built. Brick by brick, policy by policy. Not by indulging in nostalgia, but by daring to imagine something better.

Because the future doesn’t get brighter by pretending the past was perfect. It gets brighter by learning from it - and refusing to repeat it. That’s the real reform we should be fighting for.