There's more than one Reform politician who believes in UFOs

This video has received a lot of attention today, but don't mock Councillor Kieran Lay too hard. Because he's not the only Reform politician to believe in aliens and their UFOs.

Regular readers will be familiar with Rupert Matthews, the police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire. He was elected as a Conservative but later joined Reform UK.

And Matthews once told an American interviewer:

"The evidence for UFOs and for the humanoid creatures linked to them is pretty compelling."

Less amusing are Matthews' current plans for Market Harborough town centre. Rather than spend the money on more properly trained police offices or PCSOs, he's giving £2m to private security firms to provide street wardens.

This approach reminds me of an earlier post of mine about Matthews:

Rupert Matthews, the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland, has paid £250 to put up a Victorian-style police station blue lamp in Uppingham.

"The blue lamp is an iconic piece of British policing history and symbolises not only law, order and justice, but safety and sanctuary," he told BBC News.

Trouble is, there is no police station in Uppingham, and the inhabitants of Rutland's second city are far from impressed.

I'm afraid I couldn't resist the headline... Rupert Matthews: The lights are on but no one's at home.

A refusal to mourn the demise of police and crime commissioners

Home secretary Shabana Mahmood announced today that police and crime commissioners will be abolished in 2028 when their current terms expire.

A home office press release says:

Since 2012, PCCs have been elected to hold forces to account, but turnout at the polls and public knowledge of who their local PCC is has been incredibly low.  

Public understanding of, and engagement with, PCCs remains low despite efforts to raise their profile. Two in five people are unaware PCCs even exist. 

Their roles will be absorbed by regional mayors wherever possible, meaning measures to cut crime will be considered as part of wider public services such as education and healthcare.  

In areas not covered by a mayor, this role will be taken on by elected council leaders.

I'm pleased to see this move, having called for it 18 months ago.

I wrote then:

Yesterday saw the third round of PCC elections, and I believe we can now say that the experiment has failed. It has not delivered any of what Cameron and the Home Office promised.

Not only that, it has proved an expensive experiment. PCCs have discovered the need to appoint a deputy on a generous public salary as well as the need to employ researchers.

Here in Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, there was no visible campaign - on the doorstep or online - for the PCC election. And the Labour and Conservative candidates were both party hacks who have never made it to Westminster.

Though to be fair to Labour's Rory Palmer, he has, unlike his Conservative opponent Rupert Matthews, never been a lecturer on the paranormal for the International Metaphysical University or expressed the view that "the evidence for UFOs and for the humanoid creatures linked to them is pretty compelling".

You can still see a short clip of Rupert Matthews, who recently joined Reform UK, introducing his university course online.

As to the turnout for PCC elections, here in Leicestershire, at least, that was a function of the other elections being held at the same time. I said of the contest here:

In 2016 it took place at the same time as Leicester City Council elections, so the Labour vote came out there and we got a Labour PCC. Five years later it coincided with county council elections, so the Tory vote came out and we got a Tory PCC. 

The Guardian report on this story claims:

The abolition is a victory for chief constables and a sign of how influential they are in the Labour government’s thinking about policing.

It also makes the merger and abolition of local forces, which chiefs want and government is considering, potentially easier.

This doesn't cheer me, as something of a centralisation sceptic, but the PCC experiment has certainly failed.

Rupert Matthews, Leicestershire's Tory PCC, joins Reform UK

I leave Leicestershire for five minutes and look what happens. Our Conservative police and crime commissioner Rupert Matthews has defected to Reform UK.

Matthews, a publisher of books on esoteric subjects, got high on his own supply at some point and became a lecturer with the International Metaphysical University - it sometimes styled him as "Professor" Rupert Matthews.

There used to be a video of him introducing his course "PAR 501 Understanding Our Paranormal Universe" on the IMU website. That's been taken down, but you can still view an extract from it online.

The Liberal Democrats greeted the news of Matthews changing parties with:

"Elected Conservatives are becoming more and more like UFOs themselves - they're rarely if ever seen, and most people don't believe in them."

Do you what we did there? Rupert Matthews once told an American website:

The evidence for UFOs and for the humanoid creatures linked to them is pretty compelling. However, most of the evidence that suggests some sort of global threat is a lot less convincing.

But I suspect what will really worry Reform about him is this...

Police and Crime Commissioner Rupert Matthews has hailed the success of a state-of-the-art new solar farm at Police HQ which is helping the force reduce its carbon footprint and become greener. www.rupertmatthews.org.uk/news/new-sol...

[image or embed]

— Rupert Matthews (@rupertmatthews.bsky.social) 30 June 2025 at 12:29

The Joy of Six 1386

“The government is about to publish a White Paper on Election Regulation, in preparation for the Elections Bill it will bring forward in the next parliamentary session.  Both have major implications for British democracy; both take us away from a Liberal approach." William Wallace on Liberal localism and Labour centralism.”

Phoebe Weston reports from the biodiversity desert that is Dartmoor today: “We have become so used to these landscapes,” says author and campaigner Guy Shrubsole, who advocates for Right to Roam on Dartmoor. “Good geology hides a lot of problems. We’re admiring rocks and not what should be a living ecosystem.”

“Nigel Farage spent a decade thundering about the virtues of British parliamentary democracy – the sanctity of ‘taking back control’, of laws made by “our” elected representatives in ‘our’ sovereign chamber. But now that he’s finally secured a seat in the House of Commons, he’s treating it with contempt.” Sam Bright says Farage’s disappearing act is a portent of things to come.

“Levellers had been briefly consulted on a new constitution, but the discussions were quietly forgotten once the business of deposing and killing the king was done. Their last significant challenge to the new regime was a sadly quixotic mutiny, defeated by the army leadership at Burford, making the honey-coloured Cotswold town an unlikely site of pilgrimage for later radicals.” Jonathan Healey reviews two books on England under the Commonwealth.

Off the Records listens to Hot Chocolate's UFO-themed hit No Doubt About It, which made number 2 in the UK singles chart in 1980, and explains why its subject matter was so topical.

A London Inheritance takes us to Highgate Archway, where a collapsed tunnel was replaced by a bridge.

The mysterious drones seen over New Jersey and the phantom airships of 1909

From the Guardian:

The mysterious reported sightings of drone clusters in the night skies over New Jersey and other parts of the US north-east has prompted frustrated outbursts from Congress members, triggering calls for a limited state of emergency to be declared over the region.

Jon Bramnick, a Republican state senator in New Jersey, has demanded a ban on all drones until the mystery is solved. ABC’s Action News reported that he called for a “limited state of emergency … until the public receives an explanation regarding these multiple sightings”.

Concern about unexplained drone sightings began in mid-November as isolated postings by local residents on social media. The issue has steadily risen up the political food chain, bursting this week on to the stage of state and federal authorities.

And you can see a report from yesterday's CBS Evening News above - note its use of that fashionable measure  of size, the small car.

People do see strange things when they look up, but maybe what they see depends on what they expect to see or are worried they might see.

I am reminded of the phantom airships seen over England in 1909:

The reporter failed to find the airship's base, but he found a good supply of fresh witnesses who were prepared to say they had seen it in the air. One of these was a Mr C.W. Allen, described as "the pedestrian holder of the 2,000 miles road record" who claimed he distinctly saw the craft whilst driving with two friends near the Northamptonshire town of Market Harborough on 5 May 1909:

"we had been for a night run, and when we were passing through the village of Kelmarsh, we heard a loud report in the air like the backfire of a motorcar. Then we heard distinctly from above our heads the 'tock-tock-tock' of a swiftly-running motor-engine, and we looked up. I was sitting on the front seat, next to the driver, and had a clear view of a dark shape looming up out of the night. 

It was an oblong airship, with lights in front and behind, flying swiftly through the air. It seemed some five or six hundred feet up, and must have been at least a hundred feet long, although owing to its altitude it looked smaller. The lights were not very bright, but we could distinctly see the torpedo-shape and what appeared to be men on the platform below. 

We slowed up our motorcar and stopped to watch it. The steady buzz of the engines could be heard through the still air, and we watched it under it passed out of sight in a northeasterly direction towards Peterborough."

Flying saucers over Market Harborough

The Leicester Mercury has a round up of three recent UFO sightings in the county. Among them is:

Last year also saw reported UFO sightings above Market Harborough when "highly reflective" objects were seen moving slowly in the sky. The objects, which also flashed at times, had an "unusual hue" according to the reports, while they were also irregular in shape.

Talk of UFOs naturally makes me think of our Conservative police and crime commissioner Rupert Matthews.

Sadly, a search reveals that, not only has the introductory video for his course for the International Metaphysical University disappeared from the web, but not the American site where he said:

"The evidence for UFOs and for the humanoid creatures linked to them is pretty compelling. However, most of the evidence that suggests some sort of global threat is a lot less convincing. It rests on dubious testimony or simply does not mesh with the mass of evidence about UFOs available elsewhere."

The Joy of Six 1081

If satire were going to bring the Conservatives down, it would have done so a decade ago. Still, it keeps our spirits up and Euan McColm is in good form here: "Plaudits, too, for Jacob Rees-Mogg, who hit the airwaves a day later. The secretary of state for business has created a character for the ages, part Christopher Robin, part 1950s hangman. Beneath a plummy and polite exterior lurks the terrifying stench of menace."

Harry Shukman reports from the Ukip conference: "Today, fifty members of Ukip fit into the function room of a country pub outside Skegness, and there are plenty of empty chairs. The guest list barely stretches onto a second sheet of A4. There is talk of policies and history and electoral success but the room gives off the impression of a village cricket AGM instead of a party that recently took four million votes in a general election. Without Farage and without Brexit, Ukip is bereft."

Lucy Scholes praises The Glass Pearls, a forgotten novel by Emeric Pressburger about a Nazi war criminal hiding in plain sight in the streets of Pimlico.

Robert Hugill enjoys an evening of queered 18th-century music.

"My father took the following photo of Baldwin’s Gardens in 1949. The view is looking down towards Gray's Inn Road. In the early years of the war, the area suffered from the impact of several high explosive bombs and the effects of these can be seen to the right of the street." Baldwin's Gardens runs from Gray's Inn Road to Leather Lane and is a street I remember from Liberator paste ups long ago. This is a typically interesting post from A London Inheritance.

London's first UFO was spotted over St James's Park and Bloomsbury by a well-known physician called Cromwell Mortimer in 1746. Ertan Karpazli has the story.

Tory UFO expert wants to be in charge of Leicestershire's police

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This blog used to have great fun with Rupert Matthews, the wannabee Tory MEP who believed that "the evidence for UFOs and for the humanoid creatures linked to them is pretty compelling".

In July 2017 he finally got his wish and things went quiet.

But he will soon need a new job, hence this report in the Leicester Mercury:

Three Conservatives are in the running to try to win back the seat of Leicestershire police and crime commissioner from Labour. 

The next PCC election will be held in May 2020 and the Tories are due to select their candidate next month. 

Deputy leader of Melton Borough Council Leigh Higgins, East Midlands MEP Rupert Matthews, and Leicestershire County Council cabinet member Blake Pain have been shortlisted for the candidacy.

It makes you wonder what the long list looked like.

Six of the Best 818

"One thing I heard a few times at Liberal Democrat Conference was an assertion along the lines of 'most people are centrists, therefore they’ll want to join us and vote for us if we just give them a chance'." Nick Barlow unpicks this centrist fallacy.

Want a guide to making your voice heard on the proposed changes to the Lib Dem membership and constitution? Paul Walter is your man.

Antonio Garcia Martinez says Silicon Valley's economics are fuelling a new caste system: "One of the most refreshing things about living in Europe (or small towns in the rural US) is  knowing that the poor aren’t condemned to a completely separate, and inferior, life. Your place in the world isn’t wholly defined by wealth. The story is rather different in San Francisco."

"Like a shooting star, Willkie burned brightly, if briefly, over this country’s political landscape, leaving behind an astonishing legacy of bipartisanship that had an outsize impact on the outcome of the war." Lynne Olson reviews a biography of Wendell Willkie, the unsuccessful Republican challenger to FDR in 1940.

Alex Evans argues that we should address political polarisation as a clinical psychologist would help the traumatised.

Richard Bratby shares tales of UFOs and mysterious big cats from Cannock Chase.   

'Lost in space' Bakewell pudding found in Lincolnshire

The BBC News Derbyshire pages win our Headline of the Day Award.

Well done everybody.

Saucers over the Stiperstones

Despite the local elections, there has been proper news this week too.

Take the Shropshire Star, which prints a photograph of mysterious lights in the sky:

The image was captured by a Shropshire Star reader in Habberley, near Pontesbury, on Monday evening. 

He said: "They were not aircraft of any kind and having served in the forces for over 30 years I can bet my pension they are not known to the military. 

"They moved slowly around the back of Pontesbury Hill and out towards Eastridge Woods and the Stiperstones."

Did the Jacobites reach Anstey? and other strange matters

How far south did Bonnie Prince Charlie get?

The history books will telly that he turned back at Derby, and the really good books will mention that he sent men to sieze the bridge over the Trent at Swarkestone before he made that decision.

But did some of his troops venture further south?

Maybe. There is a tradition at Anstey that a Jacobite foraging party reached the village. (I am sure there used to be more about this on the web - its disappearance is surely suspicious.)

Then there is the story that the last wolf in England was killed near the village.

Finally, there is this strange incident mentioned in the Fortean Times forums:

Man with No Face ... 

Location: Anstey (Leicestershire) - Fields along Anstey Road, leading to Leicester 

Type: UFO 

Date / Time: Late 1920s 

Further Comments: Thought to be an early alien encounter (though it can also be interpreted as ghostly in nature), a woman playing in the fields came across a figure without a face dressed in black. Behind him, she could see a circular 'hut'. By the time she had awoken her father, who was sleeping in a nearby field, both hut and man had gone.

I know from experience that the best way of finding traces of such strange occurences is to print your photographs in black-and-white and study them closely.

Call it pareidolia if that comforts you.

Tory expert on UFOs and the paranormal, Rupert Matthews, finally makes it to the European parliament

Back at the end of 2011, Roger Helmer was still a Conservative MEP. He was minded to retire from the European parliament, but wanted assurances that the first unelected candidate on the party's East Midlands list at the 2009 Euro elections would be appointed in his place.

This brought that candidate, Rupert Matthews, blinking into the light.

It turned out that Matthews was an author and publisher, and that among whose interests were the ghosts and UFOs. Nothing wrong with that - I have labels for ghosts and UFOs on this blog.

But it also transpired that something called the International Metaphysical University was describing Matthews as one of their professors - you can see him in action in the video above - and that he was on record as saying that

"The evidence for UFOs and for the humanoid creatures linked to them is pretty compelling. However, most of the evidence that suggests some sort of global threat is a lot less convincing. It rests on dubious testimony or simply does not mesh with the mass of evidence about UFOs available elsewhere."

Though, judging by the searches that brought Conservative Central Office to this blog, it was Matthews' publication of a book with this charming cover that spooked them.

Whatever the reason, Tory high command declined to give Roger Helmer the assurances he sought. So he stayed in the European parliament but left the party and joined Ukip.

Then the 2014 Euro elections took place and Matthews was again the first unelected candidate on the Conservative list.

At last month's general election one of the Conservative MEPs for the East Midlands, Andrew Lewer, was elected MP for Northampton South and resigned from the European parliament.

Today it was announced that Rupert Matthews will take his place at the European parliament.

His views on Europe make his paranormal investigations sound sensible. So he should fit in with the group very well.

Roger Helmer to quit the European Parliament

Reaction to the news that Roger Helmer is to stand down as one of the East Midlands MEPs is meeting with a mixed reaction across the region.

Reports are reaching us of wailing and gnashing of teeth in Market Bosworth and the more remote regions of Kesteven, while there has been dancing in the streets of Matlock.

As we go to press there are Facebook rumours of outbreaks of public disorder in Cropwell Bishop.

But I thought it would be appropriate if Liberal England paid its own tribute to Mr Helmer. He has certainly given us plenty to write about.

He first spoke of retiring from the European parliament in 2011 when he was still a Conservative. But when the Tories declined to allow him to be succeeded by a self-proclaimed expert on UFOs and alien abductions, he decided to say on and cross the floor to Ukip.

In August 2012 he was obliged to move his office from the Harborough Innovation Centre, a facility for start-up tech companies opened with the help of public money. "I have to admit I'm not a start-up tech company,” he admitted.

That same month he was a few seconds from providing this blog with a scoop.

In August 2013 he told Stephen Nolan of his belief that girls aged under 16 could consent to sex.

And in October 2014 he performed the considerable feat of discovering a Thai massage parlour in Lutterworth.

Since then things have been quieter. But, truly, we shall not see his like again.

A few minutes later. A report on the Guardian site suggests we may not have heard the last of Mr Helmer:

Roger Helmer, a key member of Ukip’s top team, is resigning from the European parliament, ahead of a demand to repay around £100,000 of EU money for alleged misuse of public funds.

Michael Howard is an alien

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How do we account for his desire to launch a war with Spain, that strange accent and his belief that prison works?

I have vague memories of writing a column for Liberal Democrat News back in 1997 about an alien spacecraft being sighted over Michael Howard's Kent home.

And it seems those memories are accurate.

A Guardian article from 2010 says:

But the opening of the latest batch of Britain's own "X-files" today reveals that the RAF in March 1997 did mount an inquiry into reports from six members of the public, including two firefighters, of a large, triangular "humming" object in the sky above his Folkestone home during his last months as home secretary. 

The Ministry of Defence file reports that witnesses said the UFO hovered for several minutes above a field before shooting off in a flash of light. Sophie Wadleigh, 25, from Hythe, told the Folkestone Herald: "It was so peculiar, it all felt really odd and I heard this humming noise. As I looked across the field I saw a large triangular shaped flying craft hovering about 300 feet off the ground." 

The MoD file includes a report from Chris Rolfe, of the East Kent UFO monitoring group, which says he believes it could have been looking for the former home secretary, as it was not interested in Wadleigh: "This … has left me wondering if its purpose had something to do with Mr Howard."

I think Mr Rolfe may have been on to something.

Is Shropshire a UFO hotspot?

Christian Delaney of the Shropshire Paranormal and UFO Society thinks it is. He told the Shropshire Star that he has seen UFOs over the county for a number of years:

"I've seen something yellow that looked like a cigar do a figure of eight over the Wrekin for three or four minutes getting faster and faster ... 

"And on Lyth Hill one ... appeared and the light got bigger and bigger like it was expanding and then changed colour. 

"I don't know what it is about Shropshire but they do seem to have quite a presence here,"

A West Mercia Police spokesman is not convinced:

"We've had no reports of UFOs over the Shropshire area since March of this year. In that case the report turned out to be a helicopter."

The return of the Rutland Panther

Important news from the Rutland & Stamford Mercury:

A pair of cyclists believe they spotted the elusive Rutland panther while out for a ride yesterday evening. 

Tim Bateman and son Harry, 16, were on the road between Teigh and Market Overton when they saw the mysterious beast prowling in a field. 

It was black, had a long tail and was seen chasing a pheasant at great speed through long grass. 

Tim, who lives in Market Overton, said: “At first I thought it could be a deer, or perhaps a dog, but it was so fast and agile I’m convinced it was the Rutland panther.

I note the sighting took place near Teigh. Could it have been the spirit of the Revd Henry Stanley Tibbs they saw haunting the fields?

Meanwhile in Shropshire, a 'Flying Dorito UFO' has been spotted by a walker on The Wrekin.

Strange days indeed.

Six of the Best 574

Eric Avebury, the Liberal Democrat peer and Liberal victor in the famous Orpington by-election, has died. Lib Dem Voice has an interview about his life that he gave to his son John and Seth Thevoz last year.

Emran Mian says we should not harangue Google for paying so little tax in Britain but globalise taxation.

"At Petworth we can walk through the realised dreams of the landlords: a glorious country estate that projects the power, prestige, even the seeming naturalness, of the aristocracy. The history of our more humble ancestors ... are smoothed over, buried, obscured." Mark Hailwood goes for a walk in the country.

Nicholas Whyte has been to the Royal College of Physicians' exhibition on John Dee - "scholar, courtier, magician".

"John Perry was heard crying out for assistance in the garden. When help arrived, he was found alone but in a state of some agitation. He claimed that, while working in the garden, he had been unaccountably set upon by two men dressed in white, who had assaulted him with their swords." Alwyn Turner examines what sounds very like a 17th-century UFO abduction.

Historic England presents nine breweries of architectural distinction.

Kasparov loses to man who believes chess was invented by aliens

Bad news for world chess: Garry Kasparov has failed in his attempt to become president of FIDE - the World Chess Federation (or Fédération Internationale des Échecs).

He was defeated by the incumbent Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.

Let the New York Times introduce you to Mr Ilyumzhinov:

Mr. Ilyumzhinov, 52, a native of Kalmykia, a poor Russian republic on the Caspian Sea, has led the chess federation since 1995, but not without controversy. He cultivated friendships with Saddam Hussein, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, and claims that he was abducted by space aliens one night in 1997. He also claims the game was invented by extraterrestrials.

But why did national representatives from around the globe vote for such an obvious fruitcake?

In part because Kasparov is a liberal critic of the Putin regime, so the Russian government lobbied against him.

But largely because, in the words of a sensible British player and journalist:

I just did BBC World Service interview "FIDE makes FIFA look like pure transparent organisation" #4moreyearsinwilderness
— Malcolm Pein (@TelegraphChess) August 11, 2014

Was Carmarthenshire sheep abducted by aliens?

Our Headline of the Day comes from the Carmarthenshire Journal.