A former Tory MP has warned that she does not “feel safe” in the UK any more, and blamed previous governments for this – including ones she served in.
Dame Andrea Jenkyns has claimed the country is becoming “soft touch Britain”, with crime going unpunished.
The Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire was speaking at a press conference event called Women for Reform in London on Monday morning, which focussed on violence against women and girls.
Dame Andrea began by listing a litany of incidents she alleged to have happened to her, including receiving death threats, one of her activists being chased by somebody with a sledgehammer, and a man flashing herself and her eight-year-old son.
She said that she “couldn’t get justice” and that “these daily occurrences” are happening in “every village, every town, every inch of our country”.
The Reform UK politician continued: “I don’t feel safe. And as a mother, I no longer feel that our children live in a safe, beautiful haven, a Britain that I grew up in.”
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Dame Andrea also warned that children are being exposed to “left-wing indoctrination”, such as the idea that there are more than two genders – and laid the blame on previous Conservative governments.
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She said: “Under the Conservatives, we lived under an NHS that allowed children to be on puberty blockers and allowed them to change genders. And the NHS swapped – erased – the word mother and replaced it with birthing parents, and replaced breastfeeding with chest feeding.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m proud to be a mother, and I’m proud to have breasts.”
Dame Andrea served as a minister in several of these governments, working as an assistant government whip, then as a junior education minister under then-PM Boris Johnson. She also worked as an education minister when Liz Truss became prime minister, before being sacked by Truss’ successor, Rishi Sunak, and losing her seat in the general election last year.
The Reform mayor told those at the press conference that she stood before them “not as a politician, but as a mother of a wonderful eight-year-old”.
“I’m fighting for his future,” she said.
‘Increasing threats to women and girls are a national emergency’
Sarah Pochin, Reform UK’s only female MP, also spoke at the conference and warned that the “heightened and increasing threat to the safety and security of women and girls” is a “national emergency”.
Ms Pochin accused the government of “enabling” this through illegal immigration and criticised the use of hotels to house asylum seekers. She said that “few areas of the UK have remained untouched by this wave of state supported illegal migration”.
The government has pledged to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by 2029.
But Pochin added: “We’re talking about the daily influx of people who do not share our values, who do not share our culture, but who are being welcomed into this country, all at vast expense to us, the taxpayer.”
She went on to allege that the majority of those arriving in the UK illegally are “young military aged males”, from “predominantly Muslim countries like Afghanistan”, who hold a “medieval view of women’s rights” and become “sexually frustrated”.
Ms Pochin called this a “betrayal of our women and girls”, and accused the government of being “in denial”.
Labour: ‘Reform are incapable of putting forward any kind of credible policies’
Responding to the conference, a Labour spokesperson said: “If Farage’s party wanted to be taken seriously when it comes to tackling the scourge of violence against women and girls, they wouldn’t have tried to block Labour’s new laws to crack down on perpetrators of such vile criminality and get justice for victims.”
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The spokesperson pointed out that Reform MPs voted against “crucial new measures to make women and girls safer on our streets”, and highlighted the party’s opposition to the Online Safety Act, which they said will protect women and girls online.
The spokesperson continued: “Yet again, Reform is incapable of putting forward any kind of credible policies to the challenges this country faces.
“Only this Labour government has a serious plan to halve violence against women and girls and make our streets safer.”
