The People Who Check the Bolts by Denis Podany

There’s a certain type of Brit who doesn’t trust headlines.

Not because they’re miserable sods. Not because they’re conspiracy nuts. But because they’ve spent their life fixing things that other people confidently said were “absolutely fine”.

If you’ve ever worked on a site, in a depot, on the roads, behind the wheel, in tech support, or anywhere else you need to make something actually function by Friday, you develop a habit. You don’t listen to speeches. You look at the bolts.

Because life teaches you a simple rule: If something doesn’t add up, it’s never an accident. It’s someone hoping you won’t look too closely.

And once you learn that, you never unlearn it.

Politics

Politics from the outside looks like grown men shouting at each other.

But underneath? It’s worse. It’s not so much that decisions are always wrong. It’s that they’re explained badly, late, or not at all. Or hidden behind a smokescreen designed to bore you into submission: four PDFs, three committees, two acronyms and a “consultation process.”

A number disappears. A decision is “not really a decision”. A reassurance answers a question nobody asked.

You don’t need a PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) degree from Oxford to smell that. You need experience of having to fix the problem when someone else’s bright idea collapses on contact with reality.

And so, people who understand these things start to disengage. But not because they’re stupid. They disengage because they’re tired of being treated like they’re stupid.

Working Britain doesn’t mind bad news. It minds being pissed on and told it’s raining.

Who is Columbo?

Every culture has a hero: Columbo. The scruffy detective. The cheap coat. The polite voice. The killer instinct.

He’s not the smartest person in the room. He’s the one who actually listens. He spots the detail the self-declared “geniuses” missed because they were too busy admiring their own cleverness.

Real life is full of Columbos. The mechanic who spots the flaw the engineer missed. The nurse who sees the crisis before the minister does. The driver who knows the roads better than the council do. The builder who knows the plan’s impossible before the architect’s done bragging. The programmer who has to patch the database to help users work around the chief designer’s error. The small businessman who’s struggling because of bad policies that make it harder for his customers to reach him. The factory worker who knows the system’s failing before management have finished their pastries.

These aren’t prophets. They’re people exposed to consequences.

And increasingly, they’re voting Reform. Because they’re sick of being patronised by people whose hands have never met a callus, whose minds have never solved a real-world problem.

Facts First

(No fluff. No wishy-washy academic acrobatics.)

Fact: Reform’s support is heavily working class.

Fact: Working-class people meet the system when it’s broken – not in theory, but in their bills, commutes, schools, hospitals, and streets.

Fact: People who deal with real failure develop real instincts.

Two Kinds of Intelligence

Psychologists talk about two kinds of intelligence: crystallised intelligence and fluid intelligence.

All of us have some of both. But some have far more of one, and others far more of the other.

Crystallised intelligence is good at memorising frameworks. At quoting documents. At peddling narratives. At influencing committees. At using phrases like “stakeholder synergy” without laughing. At explaining why a broken policy is actually brilliant “in context.”

Fluid intelligence, on the other hand, is good at spotting patterns. At catching inconsistencies. At noticing when something’s not right. At asking the forbidden question: “Does this actually bloody work?” At improvising solutions when it doesn’t.

Modern Britain is run almost entirely by crystallised intelligence. Which means it’s run by people who mistake describing a system for understanding it.

Meanwhile, working Britain runs on fluid intelligence – the natural ability to detect nonsense before it becomes a disaster. People with a high level of fluid intelligence aren’t usually rebels. They’re detectors. They can smell bullshit a mile off.

Working Britons check the bolts. They spot the cracks first. And yet, the system tells them “Everything’s fine.” When they know it isn’t.

Parade of the Villains

(No capes. Just CVs.)

Tony Blair. The CEO of Narrative Britain.  Blair replaced honest politics with PowerPoint politics. Government became a brand. Reality became optional.

Great for PR. Disastrous for competence. Disastrous for the people.

Gordon Brown. The High Priest of Over-Engineering. If a problem needed a hammer, Brown invented a hydraulic, carbon-adjusted, means-tested, multi-agency mallet panel.

Lots of paperwork. Very little fixing. Again, disastrous for the people.

David Cameron. The Man Who Patted the Machine and said “There, there.” His “austerity” didn’t reform the system. It just made the public pay for its failures. Less meat, same bones.

Theresa May. The “Bloody Difficult Woman.” Promised to get Brexit done, then worked against it.

Boris Johnson. The Consummate Hypocrite. He made socializing “illegal,” then broke his own rule. And having exhorted everyone to cut CO₂ emissions at the Glasgow climate gabfest, he flew to London by private jet for no better reason than a dinner engagement.

Liz Truss. The only prime minister in decades who wasn’t actually a villain. So, the establishment terminated her.

Rishi Sunak. The Spreadsheet PM. Ran Britain like a mid-tier consultancy: “If the numbers look tidy, everything must be fine.”

But anyone who’s done a real job knows tidy spreadsheets are a sign something’s wrong.

Keir Starmer. Head Prefect of the Managerial Left. Promised “change” and wore a different tie, but just ran the same old machine, while tightening the screws harder and harder.

The consultant class

Britain now spends billions on: Advisory frameworks. Strategic reviews. Transformation programmes. “Stakeholder engagement.” All run by highly-paid quangocrats, and consultancy firms who charge anything up to £6,000 a man-day. And all this is doing a lot more harm than good to ordinary people.

They’ve never fixed anything, yet they tell the people who do the fixing how they ought to fix it.

Why Reform terrifies the Westminster blob

Reform doesn’t scare the establishment because of its policies.

It scares them because of its question: “Why doesn’t any of this actually work?”

That question is kryptonite to a system powered by waffle.

It blows through narratives, frameworks, “stakeholder feedback loops” and 200-page strategy documents that could be replaced with a single sentence: “We don’t know what we’re doing, but we’d like a raise.”

Britain’s Real Problem: Over-Management

Britain didn’t decline because of stupidity. It declined because of bureaucracy.

Competence got replaced by process. Process got replaced by paperwork. Paperwork got buried in managerial constipation.

If Brunel lived today, he wouldn’t be building railways. He’d be stuck in a Zoom call titled something like: “Inclusive Vision Alignment Workshop for Rail Journey Experiences.” And the line still wouldn’t be built.

Working Britons know this. Because they’re the ones tightening the bolts while the suits hold strategy meetings about bolt-tightening strategies.

The Most Insulting Sentence in UK Politics

For years, elites have soothed themselves with: “Working-class voters are being misled.” But no. They’re being condescended to.

The elites seem to think the British public is too thick to realise that the NHS is buckling. That immigration is being maximised, not minimised. That local councils are broke. That infrastructure is failing. That roads are crumbling. That housing is a joke. That services don’t work, and everything costs more.

These voters aren’t misled. They’re fed up.

Reform Isn’t the Fire – It’s the Alarm

Reform didn’t create this frustration. The frustration helped create Reform.

Reform isn’t the problem. It isn’t the fire that needs to be put out. It’s the alarm.

Shouting at the alarm doesn’t fix the fire.

The Final Truth

(No spin. No consultancy language. Just British common sense.)

Working-class and small-business Britain isn’t radical. It’s practical.

It doesn’t want miracles. It wants honesty.

It wants a government that says what’s wrong, fixes what it can, and stops pretending everything is “world leading”.

And maybe – just maybe – this is why people like us spot problems others miss. Not because we’re angry. Not because we’re “extreme.” But because we’ve been around long enough to know that when someone in authority says: “Don’t worry, it’s all in hand,” that’s precisely when you start checking the bolts.

And if the bolts are loose, you don’t vote for the people who installed them. You vote for the ones who are willing to say: “Mate, those bolts are hanging on by a wing and a prayer.” You vote Reform. Not because it’s perfect. But because pretending everything’s fine, when everyone can see it isn’t, is taking the piss.

And there’s only so long you can piss on the public’s leg and tell them it’s raining before they look up, squint, and say: “Hang on a minute…”

Image credit on main page: rawpixel.com on Freepik