Hi, my name is Pete Durnell, and I’ve lived and worked in Warley, now part of the new Smethwick constituency, for more than 30 years.

Full statement

The first 20 or so of these, I worked in a variety of IT roles, essentially a “problem fixer”, for the last ten years I’ve been heavily involved with politics, decades of useless and self-serving Conservative and Labour administrations, both locally and nationally, have left our country with a lot of very serious problems that need fixing urgently.

I have witnessed our local towns transformed, from thriving to threadbare, from prosperous to poverty stricken, from being a great place to work and to spend your leisure time, to “best avoided”.

I helped set up Reform UK three and a half years ago, because I believed then that a new party, with common sense policies and made up of committed, passionate people, who both care deeply about the UK, and have the strength to face up to the huge problems that we face as a nation,

• was the only hope of turning the fortunes of our local area, and great country around.

I still believe this today, if anything even more so. The idea that we should entrust the parties who have got us into a horrendous mess to get us out of it again, I find, quite frankly, a bizarre one.

Not going to happen. They won’t. They will very happily continue to “steer us into oblivion”, as long as they can line their own pockets nicely in the process.

We must have new people with new ideas. We must end the culture of virtue signalling, weakness and self interest. We need politicians driven by common sense, passion, and an unwavering desire to focus on doing what’s best for the country and everyone who lives here.

This is what Reform UK represents, and it’s why I am proud to be your Reform UK candidate for the new constituency of Smethwick in the General Election being held on July 4th.

Please take a few moments to read more about Reform Uk’s policies, ideas and principles, and discover exactly why it really is very different from the so-called mainstream parties, you will find a lot of information on this site.

I think you will like what you read... Conservatives and Labour have sadly, completely and utterly “broken Britain”, but we can, and with your help and support on July 4th will, “fix it again”.

Thank you.